In eight years as president of Wilson College, in Chambersburg, Pa., Barbara K. Mistick oversaw the kind of revival that many small-college trustees dream of.
Shortly after she arrived, the struggling women’s college spent a year and a half debating possibilities for achieving sustainability before admitting men to its traditional undergraduate program, which enrolled barely more than 300 students. At the same time that it went coed, it lowered its tuition, announced a novel loan-buyback program, and added programs in nursing and other career-oriented disciplines. In the fall of 2018, the traditional undergraduate count was 662, and total enrollment was 1,499 — by far the largest in its history.
Before coming to Wilson, Mistick had been president of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where she championed a referendum that significantly increased public financial support for the system — and avoided shuttering branches. Prior to that, she was a professor of entrepreneurship and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Now she is leaving to become president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. The Chronicle spoke with her in the president’s house at Wilson about the downside of being honest, her advice for small-college presidents, and what she’d do differently if she could do it all again.
At Wilson, you were brought in as a change agent, right?
That’s what the board said they wanted. But once you get here, they’re not quite sure. They want to hire a change agent, but they don’t want you to change anything. I think that mind-set has to change for higher education. The mind-set has to be so much more agile, and has to be able to change much more quickly. In our change process, I can’t tell you how many people said: “Oh, we just need more time. Isn’t this higher ed? We want to go study this a little bit further.”
I do think one thing that has changed is the willingness of institutions to talk about their challenges. We do great things all the time. We do great things even if we’re struggling financially. We’re changing kids’ lives, we’re having these amazing outcomes, and we want to talk about that. It’s important for us to talk about those things and be positive. But if you can’t be honest with your community, you really can’t have honest change — change that serves the institution.
A lot of the work in small institutions that really need to change and re-examine their mission is hard. It’s polarizing, and it’s very frustrating for presidents. It’s not an easy road. As a new president, you can get really penalized for being honest, for highlighting the challenges for the institution. I lost a lot of sleep in this process. You want to do the best for the institution, but you can feel like no one’s got your back. It can be very lonely.
I do think that governance plays a part in the challenges that you’re seeing for institutions. Trustees really need to know the nuts and bolts. I believe that the audit serves as the official record for your institution. You as a trustee should be aware of what’s in the audit and what is the financial impact on the institution. I think every institution should have their trustees vote on their audit, so that everybody reads that audit and understands the fiscal picture of the institution. You can’t just show up for ribbon cuttings and graduation and think that that’s the institution.
Did your experience outside of academe help you here?
Before I came here I was the president of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh system, and the library system had funding challenges. That was Andrew Carnegie’s first public library that had branches, and as you can imagine, it was such a treasured resource in the community.
One of the things I took away from my experience in Pittsburgh was the importance of listening — how important it is to constantly be listening to your community, to people’s history with institutions, and how people use institutions. What I heard was that in some of the communities that were most affected by the loss of population, factories had closed, schools had closed, churches had closed. As we were listening to people respond to the prospect of downsizing the library system, this was the last thing that was there for them. It was the only hope that they had. It was so powerful to hear that, and to hear about the library being the only safe place in the community.
I feel strongly that there is a point of diminishing returns for institutions, be it a library or a college, where you’re not providing enough service. I think for a college, if you get really small, your classes are so small you miss out on the dialogue and the exchange. I often said at Wilson that we could be small — we have this line in our alma mater, “small and mighty,” and people take great pride in that line — but you can’t be tiny. Now we’re back to being a small institution, and I think that’s a great thing to be.
Did running a small college turn out to be easier than running a citywide library system?
The No. 1 thing people said when I came here was, “This has got to be so much harder than that was.” I’m not really sure I want to say that it was harder. Change is just really hard anywhere today. The thing that I will say is different is the buy-in — I was not quite prepared for that. The way that alums feel ownership of Wilson was more intense than I expected, much more intense.
Do you have other advice for small-college presidents?
Know your market. The No. 1 thing I ask when we do open houses is, What do you think the average debt level is in the nation for a student who graduates with a four-year bachelor’s degree? How many of you think that the average debt level is above $100,000? I’m telling you, it’s 85 percent of the room. I’ve been doing this for eight years. I ask them, how many believe it’s between $50,000 and $100,000, and I get the other 15 percent. Our average debt level is $25,500. The average in Pennsylvania is right about $32,000 this year.
There is so much misunderstanding among families. And what we’re doing — I think it’s just critical, it’s work I’m looking forward to — is talking about what the real cost of college is today and trying to break down the myths that are out there, in particular that independent higher education isn’t affordable. It’s going to be a critical part of the conversation going forward.
Is there anything that, in retrospect, you’d have done differently here?
I’ve spent a good amount of time here talking about the student experience, but I might have started with that lens instead of the financial lens. We started with the financial lens — I do have three business degrees — but I think if I had talked more about how the student experience would be better if we had more students, maybe it would have helped people understand the need for change. I do hope that, long term, rather than remembering my tenure for the change to coeducation, people will remember the addition of health sciences. At this past commencement, veterinary education and nursing were tied for the most students.
The other thing that we recognized is that you’ve got to be market-responsive. I know faculty feel beaten up because there aren’t more students in the humanities, but students are middle income and their parents are worried about jobs, and they’re worried about jobs, and they’re worried about paying down their debt after college. They do want the skills of being good writers and being good communicators, but they’re not seeing that as a place to major. That’s a hard reality for us to face.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
