Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - When Marymount Manhattan College’s board of trustees decided last year to merge with Northeastern University, becoming a part of that Boston-based university’s global system, the vote was unanimous. As Jeff and Michael continue their ongoing exploration (some might say obsession) with mergers and acquisitions in higher ed, they talk to one of Marymount Manhattan’s trustees, Abby Fiorella, on this episode to get a board member’s perspective on how mergers can be strategic wins for smaller institutions, as well as key to protecting their core missions. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Group.
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“God and Man at Yale,” by William F. Buckley.
"The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World," by Michael Smith,
Mission statement of Arizona State University
Mission statement of Southern New Hampshire University
“Why a University Proactively Sought a Merger," our other episode this season about M&A in higher ed.
0:00 - Why Do We Keep Talking About Mergers?
3:50 - Introducing Our Guest, Abby Fiorella
5:17 - How to Prepare a Board for a Merger
9:19 - Deciding on Institutional Priorities
12:44 - What Is Marymount Manhattan College Doing to Preserve Its Identity?
17:17 - How Can a Board Come to Peace With a Merger?
21:40 - How Can Boards Make Mergers Less Taboo?
24:29 - Reframing Merging As an Opportunity
27:01 - Closing Thoughts From a Trustee
28:54 - Sponsor Break
29:38 - What It Means for a Board to Be Responsible to a Mission
36:21 - How Can Universities Put Mission Statements Into Practice?
38:52 - Why College Mergers Require ‘Courage’
39:21 - Making Time in Board Meetings for Strategic Planning
44:56 - The Role of Communication Between Presidents and Boards in Considering Mergers
47:59 - Why Most Boards Should Set Up Systems to Prepare for an Uncertain Future
48:37 - Lightning Round With Abby Fiorella
Michael Horn
Here we go again, Jeff, talking about mergers and acquisitions.
Jeff Selingo
Okay. I get it, Michael, that maybe our listeners think we're doing too much on this M&A stuff. But interest in the topic is clearly picking up.
And today we're gonna turn the lens to the other side of the desk.
A few weeks ago, we heard from a president from Gannon University who refused to sit and wait for something to happen to his institution, so he went looking for a merger.
Now we're gonna go and look at M&A from the other side, the trustees who ultimately have fiduciary responsibility for the institution. What are the questions they should be asking?
That’s on this episode of Future U.
Sponsor
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, share it with your friends so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.
Jeff Selingo
I'm Jeff Selingo.
Michael Horn
And I'm Michael Horn.
Jeff, we joke about the number of episodes that we've done on M&A, but one perspective that we really haven't explored that much is that of the trustees.
And as we've noted many times, it's the trustees who are ultimately responsible for what happens to an institution. In the corporate world, of course, board members are responsible to the shareholders, whereas in higher education, trustees are responsible for the mission.
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. Michael, you've said that before, and that line has always kinda confused me.
So on the back half of this episode, I kinda really want to explore the role of trustees a little bit more. Like, what does it mean given there's not a financial metric around mission?
And by the way, I bet most trustees really don't even know what their mission really is. You know, we say without margin, meaning without money, there is no mission. So is it that once a school runs out of money and thus can't fulfill its mission, then it's time to pursue a merger?
I think these are key questions to ask in the second half of this episode.
And, you know, as we've heard countless times when discussing M&A on the show, the issue with trustees seems to be that they wait too long to figure out it's too late, in other words. So how might one corral a board and get them on the same page to agree that maybe it is time to wind down your mission and at that point pursue a merger?
I know it's a question that I plan to ask our guest today as well.
Michael Horn
Well, I'm looking forward to it because I do think it's really tricky, Jeff. Like, as a trustee you might not always be peering around corners or know how to ask for the right information, or, frankly, know when to make a move because when things are still okay, but there are challenges, you might think, ‘Hey. If we're looking for a partner right now, that could be a sign of weakness that will be self-fulfilling in some way or that you'll be giving up on behalf of all the alums who've come before and the current faculty and staff of the school or the mission or something like that.’
But, you know, flip side, right, if you wait 'til it really is too late, then it's awfully hard to find any willing partner at all.
All to say, it's not easy, I think, to walk this tightrope.
Jeff Selingo
No. I think it's a great point, Michael, about being that trustee on the other side.
And that's why I wanted to invite a trustee that I met at a convening around mergers and acquisitions in higher ed last year.
And our guest today is Abby Fiorella, who is a member of the board at Marymount Manhattan College. Now a little bit more about this college for our listeners who may or may not be familiar with it. It's less than a century old. It was founded in 1936 as a women's college and later became a full-fledged co-ed four year institution on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Last year, the boards of Marymount Manhattan College and Northeastern University entered into an agreement to have Marymount Manhattan folded into Northeastern's global university system pending some regulatory approvals. They're almost near the end of that stage right now. And when it's completed, it's going to create something called Northeastern New York City.
Michael Horn
So, Jeff, as you mentioned, we're really excited to have Abby with us today from Marymount Manhattan's board. She was first elected to the board in 2015. She's a 1983 graduate of the institution and had a 20-year career with Mastercard, retiring as its chief technology risk officer.
Abby, welcome to Future U.
Abby Fiorella
Thank you for having me. It's great to see you as well. Yeah.
Michael Horn
You bet.
So Jeff was talking about in the intro and when he heard you speak last spring at a small meeting that the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal had hosted on M&A in higher ed. And you talked there about the importance of preparing a board for thinking about a merger. Can you say more about that?
When did you start thinking this — and particularly how you thought about the composition of the board going into what is such a monumental decision for an institution?
Abby Fiorella
Yeah. I think there's preparing the college and preparing the board. And I think in our favor, we had a president that came to us early to talk about both opportunities and challenges. And those challenges were, you know, declining enrollments over a period of years, rising costs that the COVID epidemic obviously accelerated.
But we were not in dire straits. We were not at a point of no return, but we had tough choices to make.
And so the first thing that we did was sort of look around the boardroom. And not surprisingly, you know, higher ed has typically large boards, upwards of two dozen oftentimes. And, you know, historically, has mostly been alumni trustees. These are volunteer positions, typically alumni, and very philanthropic.
So we said to ourselves, look, that's all well and good, and they obviously have the college's best interests at heart. But do we have the right folks around the table and in the room, or do we have blind spots? Because we're gonna have to do sort of a search far and wide for options, and we're gonna have to make decisions that are in the long-term best interest of our community.
And so we had sort of the loyal and the faithful, but we knew what we didn't have. Look, I had also while being an alum, been in corporate America, been in business, done compliance, done risk, done audit. We needed to strengthen the board in relation to finance, in terms of regulatory, because we don't operate sort of on an island. We operate in a broader context.
So we made, and we did outreach. We brought in people from not-for-profits who were familiar with that world, and those that had done, you know, partnerships and been engaged in M&A. So we had a terrific mix, and we did that before we were on a path in particular.
So I'll say we started with board composition and said, do we have the right folks around the table in the room? Do we have blind spots? We worked on board composition.
And then we worked on the committee structure. And the first thing that we did was we put together a strategic opportunities committee to say we need to make a dedicated effort to look at our future.
And it can't be off to the side, and it can't be something that we talk about as a full board only at board meetings every quarter. That wasn't gonna do.
So I would say those were the two big things that we did off the bat.
The third thing was to say ... Look, before I think oftentimes people get it in their head, 'I'm gonna look for a partner. I'm gonna merge.' As I said, we didn't have an outcome in mind. But we said before we travel down a path and look at our options and look at opportunities, what matters to us?
So the first order of business for the strategic opportunities committee was to put together priority attributes. What are the must-haves about who we are as an institution and the community that we serve? What are the nice-to-haves? And what's the okay-if-we-don't-have?
And I will say that became our North Star for looking at our future.
Michael Horn
Two quick follow-ups on that because I think that's really interesting on a couple fronts. I think a lot of times boards feel like, 'Our composition is sort of set. We have to sort of follow the calendar that we have.' Just give us a sense of the timeline in which you added these new board members and how, you know, how rapidly you were able to move to make that composition shift, if you will, and what was involved in it. And the second question is just, when you say those must-haves, the priorities, what really were those priorities for you all?
Abby Fiorella
Yeah. So in terms of the board shift, as you know in higher ed and probably anywhere, nothing happens overnight.
Michael Horn
Nope.
Abby Fiorella
So you have to be really thoughtful. You have to be very deliberate. You have to be very intentional.
I will say we did that over a couple of years. And we did it, again, while we were noticing changes both in our sort of, you know, mission as well as in the broader educational landscape. So we did that sort of very proactively. So I'll say probably over the course of a year and a half to two years was the board composition.
The Strategic Opportunities Committee met and aligned on attributes and the like, you know, before we settled on a path, and we gave ourselves several paths. We said, 'What would it take for us to continue as sort of an independent, you know, self'sustaining institution?' 'What did a partnership look like?' 'What did a collaborative sort of venture look like?' And, ultimately, 'What would a merger look like?'
And we brought in outside consultants as well. Because I think if you talk to yourself, we not only would have had blind spots on the board had we not made those changes, but I think also you're close to it and you're living it daily, if not quarterly. I think an outside-in perspective is important as well to challenge your thinking and make sure that you haven't missed anything.
Michael Horn
What ultimately led the board to think, 'Hey, this is the time a merger is the way forward?'
Abby Fiorella
So two things. I realized I didn't answer your other question in terms of the priority attributes, so I do wanna talk about that. I think first and foremost for us was that it be student-centered education. This was, you know, we started with our students. We end with our students. It's all about our students.
Making sure the mission aligned. And I think we found that in our partner, but it was really educating a diverse student body, fostering intellectual achievement and personal growth, and then very much about experiential and lifelong learning. Those were important to us.
We also wanted to make sure that our signature programs in the performing arts and prison education were preserved. We wanted to make sure that there was a lifeline for our faculty that brought a richness and a very sort of individualized philosophy to teaching. And so those things were very important to us.
Things that we lost along the way like a name, again, are emotionally charged. But in the end, we wanted to sort of be in service of our students and our educational mission, which meant more than just a name.
Michael Horn
So super interesting because you brought up something that's been intriguing to me, which is that Marymount Manhattan is quite different from Northeastern as a performing arts-focused college. And since culture fit and the student-centeredness is such an important issue with college mergers, are you worried at all about Marymount Manhattan losing its identity as it merges with this larger and pretty different institution?
Or what are you doing proactively to keep that at the center of, you know, of what is to be?
Abby Fiorella
Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things.
So first off, we cast a very wide net when we were looking at partners. And what we didn't wanna do was sell for parts, and we didn't wanna be at a place where we didn't have leverage.
And I think getting into the conversation early, when we were not in a state of insolvency or crisis, helped us to decide our own fate. We had choices to make. So we cast a wide net.
And Northeastern emerged for a couple of reasons. I talked about sort of that commitment to sort of serving a diverse student body. Northeastern started as a commuter school back in the day. There were similarities in terms of philosophies. Before you get to paper, it's all about building trust and community. And so we met early and often with the Northeastern leadership to just make sure there was a chemistry there, that there was trust, that we were credible and equally invested.
And for both of us it was, 'How do we make one and one equal three?' How do we do together what we cannot do alone?
And we knew that we had strong creative and performing-arts programs. We knew that was something that Northeastern didn't have, And yet they had sciences and technology that we did not have and stronger liberal arts programs. And I think we saw the benefit in bringing those together, in fusing.
They had the financial wherewithal. They could make the investments. And I think as you look at sort of putting graduates into the workforce today, you need leadership. You need entrepreneurs. You have to think out of the box.
Things like improv for data scientists makes a world of difference. And so you think about that if you're studying the sciences and physiology, if you're a dance major, these things fit in ways that you have to imagine. And so we started, as I said, by thinking, 'What could we each bring to the table?' 'How would those not overlap but complement one another to bring a differentiated value proposition to the world of higher education?'
And then I think it really is about, ‘How do you ultimately get that from an idea to on paper… And on paper, we secured investments in those performing and creative arts programs, as well as our social justice initiatives, our prison education programs, which were very important to us, very important to Northeastern. We made those commitments. But in the end, it's gotta come off the paper, and it's gotta live and breathe.
And so I think the benefit of time here as well, beyond sort of the investment and the preservation of our signature programs, was we had an elongated timeline, taking into account a creditor review and regulatory approvals. That's allowed for this year, Northeastern has introduced the New York City Scholars Program. So that's introducing some of their first-year students onto the Marymount campus. That's a wonderful opportunity to bring those two sort of groups together for the first time. And it's melding beautifully.
So I think there's ways that you can introduce and seed. The other thing that we've done, candidly, is created faculty circles so that our faculty who develops and then delivers the curriculums work together on the art of the possible.
So I think those are ways that you ensure what you've put on paper and where you've gotten commitments actually can sort of be realized in life.
Michael Horn
Abby, you mentioned, obviously, changing the composition of the board.
But one of the things I'm really curious about is those alums like yourself that were still on it. How did you come to peace with this ultimate decision? Because I think that's, like, emotionally, it's where a lot of boards, even not made up, frankly, of alumni get stuck.
It's like they see we're not in dire straits. They sort of say hope is a strategy and sort of get caught in this, you know, sort of never world, if you will, between these two decisions and not a lot of forward progress made. And but, you know, clearly it's not like two airlines or two grocery chains merging. Right?
So, you know, these are places where people invest a lot of emotion, which is reflected, I think, in some of these challenges to actually make a decision either way. So I'm just sort of curious how the alums on the board got their head around where you ultimately end up.
Abby Fiorella
Yeah. Look. And as I said, I think the fact that I was an alum helped. And we've — like any college, a small liberal arts independent college, especially in New York City — we've weathered storms in the past. And, you know, hope and a lot of, you know, hard work got us through. So, you know, why was this different?
And so we had to be prepared to have some tough conversations.
I think you have to start by leaving space for emotion. And we did. We did. We grieved. We commiserated.
But emotion can't make the decision. It can't guide the strategy.
And so, time allows you to leave space to air those views, and then say, 'What is it that we're holding onto?' And, 'How do we make sure that this is preserved for generations to come and doesn't get lost?'
And, again, those priority attributes became our North Star. That to me was the single most important thing that we did because we just kept coming back to that. Here's what we don't wanna lose. Here's who we are. How do we make sure that we keep educating students in the way in which we've done and we've succeeded. And so that really was sort of the guiding premise.
And I will tell you that I think that that philosophy is true even outside the boardroom. We knew. You've got you know... We're in the middle of Manhattan. You have neighbors. You have, you know, interested parties, not just your alum, and you have faculty. I think as we seeded this early and often, we couldn't get into the details of the deal.
And interestingly enough, when we started down this path with Northeastern there was not a path in New York State for an out-of-state institution to come through. So we couldn't get ahead of ourselves. We couldn't presume. We had to engage accreditors, the state, early and often, and take and follow their lead. We were not dictating. We were not in control of that equation.
But with our community as well, what was really important was that we let them know that we had formed a Strategic Opportunities Committee of the board, that we were facing enrollment challenges, we were facing financial challenges, that we were okay for now, but there was an iceberg ahead, and that we were invested in ensuring the long-term sustainability and the viability of the college.
And we, in turn, needed to give them time as we socialize the messaging and shared more details along the way for them to grieve. We had had our time. We couldn't celebrate the success when they were hearing it for the first time, but we had been living it for some time.
So again, that emotion ... Give space and oxygen for sort of the emotion to come up and come out, but make sure you're grounded. In the end, nobody gets everything. But here's what matters most. Here's what we got, and we live to see another day and be better and stronger than what we are, even though it may look a little different.
Jeff Selingo
So Abby, you had the benefit of time, which gave you that room for emotion. It gave you that room to know it wasn't ... You weren't at the cliff yet, but the cliff was coming. But in so many of the shows that we've done on this topic, the thing we keep hearing so often is boards just bring this up too late. Boards and presidents just talk about this too late because they're afraid to bring it up, meaning M&A.
So how do you think boards, particularly, since I wanna focus on the board perspective here, how can boards make the M&A topic less taboo? So that if you're a board member out there listening to it, how might I bring it up?
Abby Fiorella
Yeah. No. I think it's a great question.
I will say ... And by the way just to sort of come back and tie it to the prior response. We got the board to unanimity, which is pretty remarkable. And we talked about sort of the size of a higher ed board.
So there's a couple of things. First, you have to get out of your own way, which is, I think, hope and belief are good things, but not when the financials and the demographics don't support it. And that's important.
You also need to know that your college leadership is working in partnership with the board to think not only about, you know, the semester ahead or a year out, but long term.
The last thing that I'll say in terms of, you know, seeding it with the board is you have to demystify these things, including terms like M&A. Because I think people hear it, and they hear, 'I'm gonna be acquired,' and that means all sorts of things, which is you're gonna lose yourself, you're gonna lose your identity. You know, 'Our students are gonna be, you know, pushed to the side.' 'Our faculty is gonna be pushed out.' You gotta move away from those buzzwords.
And I think you just have to talk about what matters to us, how do we preserve it, what might that look like. No two deals are ever the same. It doesn't matter that somebody's been there, they've done it before. And there were many folks, and I will say even I talked about the fact that we went and we engaged consultants along the way that said to us, 'No, it can't be done.' Because remember, for Northeastern, there was not a path in New York State. 'It can't be done.'
And our response was, 'There's a whole host of things that you can tell us about why we can't do this, but how about we talk about how we can do this?' And I think maybe the fact that, you know, my background is risk. You gotta be prepared to have those conversations.
So I get, you know, what I'm super happy when things go right, but you have to have a boardroom that's willing to tackle, What could go wrong and how prepared are we for that?’
Jeff Selingo
Okay. So let's talk a little bit more about this motivation. So that's how somebody could bring it up. But how do you get proactive around this view that M&A can be a choice as opposed to something being forced on you in undesirable circumstances? Because it seems to me so many institutions are just kinda waiting it out instead of making that proactive choice.
And given there's no profit motive here, that seems to be pretty tricky for a lot of colleges and leaders.
Abby Fiorella
Yeah. I think it's very insular thinking. I think you've gotta look at it like it's an opportunity. This is not something that you're... That it's not loss. You've gotta look at it as gain. And so I think if you think that way, and you've got... Look, at every institution you're always gonna hit roadblocks along the way. Things happen.
But I think if you sort of look at it as, 'What's the upside?' And, 'What could this look like?' And, 'How could we get more and do more than we could on our own?' And I'll give it from our perspective. I talked about the performing arts program, which Marymount is known for. You know, we were recently named, I think, one of the top 10 in sort of, you know, performers of having our graduates be performers on Broadway. Fabulous. We're a small liberal arts college, independent, in Manhattan. We can't grow that program. Why? Because we have limited real estate. We have limited funds, and it's costly. We don't have additional performance space. We can't do it. We can't do it on our own.
And is, you know, graduating that small class very impactful, very good? Is that sustainable? Or if we do have someone like a Northeastern that has the financial wherewithal and can make investments in those programs, just think about how we could amplify that and get that to so many more students. It's things like that.
So, you know, rather than think in the negative, turn that into a positive. But it's the board being engaged with the leadership of the college on strategy. And, candidly, that's the board's mission. Financial solvency mission and strategy.
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. So, Abby, as we get ready to wrap up here. You've shared a lot of lessons for our listeners. But is there one lesson that you've learned through this process, maybe that you've told us, maybe that you haven't told us yet, that you wanna share with other institutions considering this or already going through this?
And again, maybe from the perspective of board members in particular, given that's where you sit. Any lesson you would wanna share?
Abby Fiorella
I wanna say there's probably two things.
Jeff Selingo
Okay.
Abby Fiorella
One, don't take anything off the table too soon, and don't not ask the question.
And don't presume the answer either.
I think those two things are the most important.
And boards need to trust one another, communicate, and challenge one another. No one person on the board has all the answers, and there isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer to begin with.
So I think that was a learning for me, which is, you know, as much as I know, there's so much more that I don't know. And giving enough, you know, air in the room for people to voice their opinions is really important. So that's what I would say in terms of trying to bring a board together and along and do the work of, you know, sort of preserving an institution and furthering its mission.
Jeff Selingo
Great. Well, Abby, thank you so much for your time today. And particularly, by the way, for leading the institution through this. This is obviously something that I think most colleges and universities are going to be going through over the next couple of years, and I just love the idea of being more proactive about it from the board perspective rather than sitting back. So thank you.
And we'll be right back after this message.
Sponsor
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. Ascendium envisions a world where low-income learners succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as paths to upward mobility. Ascendium's grantees are removing systemic barriers and helping to build evidence about what works so learners can achieve their career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Michael Horn
Welcome back to Future U.
There was a lot in that conversation, Jeff. I found it fascinating. I'm really glad you invited Abby, and I think some of the points that she made perhaps gave a way to answer some of the questions that you've had around what it means to be a fiduciary of a mission in essence and how that might really actually be very hard to do in higher ed.
And maybe that's the complicating thing in your mind is like the higher ed version of this is very difficult to figure out. But maybe we ought to rapid fire back and forth, some of the thoughts and questions we had coming out of that conversation. How does that sound?
Jeff Selingo
I think that sounds like a great one, Michael.
And I really still want to dig into this notion because, you know, nonprofit colleges, as I've told you before, they don't have shareholders. And if you're on a public board or you're on a board of any corporation or company, you're going to have shareholders that you're ultimately responsible for.
And as we said at the top, mission can be very vague. You know, when I read mission statements, it's hard to tell the differences between them. But more than that, if I asked a random trustee at most of the colleges that I visit if they could recite their mission statement or if they could even tell us what's in it, I'd be surprised if many of them can.
So what does that really look like when a college or university trustee is connected, is ultimately responsible, for their mission statement? Who is the arbiter there?
Michael Horn
Yeah, Jeff, a few thoughts. And I think we're in the same wavelength of the current challenges of this in the sector. But first, like, if you go back to the 1950s, right, William F. Buckley, you know, obviously known as the sort of the father of the modern conservative movement or maybe the 'past modern,' I guess you would say, because it's not the current version. But he thought the responsibility of schools was to alumni. That was, you know, sort of part of his argument in "God and Man at Yale," his first big book.
But that actually, in my view, Jeff, might be where institutions get into trouble. Right? I mean, I get why it's easy to see the appeal, but you've long noted that if you have a board full of alums, they're constantly saying, 'Well, that's not how it was when I was here,' and a constant, you know, desire to return to the past as opposed to perhaps realize, 'Hey. the context has changed.' 'How we deliver against that mission has changed as well.'
And I guess what I feel like in your comments that you're consistently pointing to, is that a lot of mission statements in higher ed are really vague. And I say that as someone who's about to make a mea culpa because I often feel like when boards like, they love to wordsmith the mission statement, and it a lot of times feels like an exercise in silliness to me or a waste of time.
But I guess through your repeated questions and your dissatisfaction at my legal answer here, I think I'm learning something because it occurs to me that when I heard Michael Smith, talking about his book, "The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World" — this came out a few years ago — an argument that he was making was that almost all mission statements in higher ed are completely meaningless. You could literally take, you know, 10 of them on a screen, and you'll have almost no idea which ones belong to which institutions.
And I think he said, I could be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure he said that in analyzing the mission statements of several 100 universities for the book, he only found a few that were distinct.
One of them was one you know well, Arizona State University, and that mission is: "ASU is a comprehensive public research university measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed, advancing research and discovery of public value and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural, and overall health of the communities it serves." I actually think that's incredibly specific, and it bounds it in some really important ways.
And then the other one, I think, that he cited was Southern New Hampshire University, which is: "Transforms lives by expanding access to education through high-quality, workforce-relevant, and meaningful learning experiences. We drive equitable outcomes by providing learner-centric pathways and support designed to meet the individual needs of our learners, enabling them to reach their goals."
And I guess, Jeff, out of this, what it occurs to me is that when you have a distinct mission statement, as I think those two institutions do, it makes the work of what you do, your strategy, which is, you know, what you choose to do, but also what you choose not to do, far clearer and perhaps, you know, worth fighting for, frankly.
But it's also clear when you're preserving it and when you're not.
And that's what I found so important about what Abby said, and I wanna connect it here to the conversation we just had. Because before they even decided what they wanted to do, before they decided, you know, 'Do we go it alone?' 'Do we have a merger?' They thought about what do we as an institution stand for? And the way they did it, I loved it because, you know, look, was similar to the set of exercises that we have in our book, "Job Moves," but it was essentially what are our must-have priorities? We must preserve these things. What are the nice-to-haves? What are the things that we would love to do in a perfect world, but we can live without doing them?
And this allowed them to have clarity around really, like, not sort of an airy fairy, you know, we exist to perpetuate leaders in society or something like sort of meaningless around that, but real clarity around what actually our mission means.
And then they could also make trade-offs. Right? They were also able to say, 'In an ideal world, we'd love to have this, but this is the thing we're really gonna strengthen.' Because she was clear, whatever path they took, they were not gonna be able to have it all as it existed, as the institution existed at its stand-alone height.
And, you know, look, Abby said they wanted to lean into their strong creative performing arts programs. And what I thought was so interesting was that they realized …
Jeff Selingo
They couldn't do it. Yeah.
Michael Horn
They couldn't have done that. Right, if they were stand-alone.
And you've said that. Right? Like, the purpose of M&A should be to actually make the institution stronger, not just to consolidate for consolidation's stance.
And so I just think, you know, rather than what William F. Buckley maybe said or others have said, it's really about the mission. And to do that, Abby said, actually, we had to get some people on the board who were not alums so we could have that clarity of conversation because it was a little muddled perhaps if it was all alumni.
Jeff Selingo
Yeah, Michael. I think there's a couple of thoughts, from Abby's conversation and your reaction to it right here.
First of all, I do think that most mission statements are muddled, and as a result, they don't have a strong connection then to the strategy or to the tactics and design principles.
So you read ASU's beautiful, in my mind, mission statement, but then that is connected to a set of design principles, we might call these tactics. Okay. 'How do we put this in place?' Not necessarily a strategic plan. Many universities and colleges would have it as a strategic plan. But they're tactics about how we put that mission into place.
I think that in most universities, there is not a strong connection between the mission statement and the tactics and their strategic plan. I think that strategic plans kinda come and go depending on the president, depending on the board. They often don't refer back to or often review the mission statement as a result.
So I might actually think differently about our fiduciary responsibility is to the mission, but maybe it's to the current strategy of the university. You know, 'Are we actually going to be able to fulfill this strategy?'
So most boards put together new strategic plans. New presidents come in, put together strategic plans. I would love to ask often, 'We're putting this together, but is this really achievable?' Because as you know, by the time the strategic plan's over, the president might be gone, half the board might have turned over, and there's nobody to say, 'We didn't actually achieve anything.' Right? We didn't actually achieve most of these things.
Michael Horn
Well, and I think it's because they have that lack of clarity. I think you're right.The connection has to be there.
And what I love about ASU, right, it's clear. Like, this is not about selective admissions. You immediately get that, right, from its mission statement. This is not about sort of, you know, global benefit or something like that. It's about the communities we serve. Right? Like, there's very clear things that get pulled out about it.
Southern New Hampshire is like, it's our learners first. It's not the faculty. Right? Like, that's a very clear thing. And then we build faculty experience around serving learners. The clarity is incredibly crisp.
So I think you're right. Like, strategy, tactics can actually flow up, if you will, to mission. Whereas when you have a vague one, it's just sort of like, what every other university does, and it's hard to know what to preserve.
Jeff Selingo
So let me go let me go back to one other thing, though, Michael, about what Abby said about how they decided that, by the way, we have these really critical programs, for example, that we're not gonna be able to really fulfill at the rate we're going. We don't have the financial sustainability to do that.
And I think that takes ... First of all, it takes courage, and we've heard that so many times. In every episode we've done around M&A, the word 'courage' comes up over and over again — willing to say those difficult things in boardrooms.
But the other thing that I think it takes is time.
Now, we talk often about time and that it's often too late by the time colleges and universities decide they need to merge.
But the time I think boards need is in their meetings to really focus on these questions.
And as you know, I spend a lot of time with boards this past year, six or seven boards, that I've spent time with, and as I talk to their presidents, as I talk to their board chairs about the cadence of their meetings and how their most recent meetings have gone, I'm just shocked at how much they try to pack into what is literally a couple of days. Maybe they're together three or four times a year at the most. They really are not dedicating enough time to do what I think Abby and the Marymount Manhattan board has done here, which is essentially say, 'Okay, here's our mission, here's how our mission connects to our current programs, and by the way, these are our strongest programs.'
I think that's another interesting thing here, is if we can't even maintain our strongest programs, something is amiss, and we have to do something about it.
But often that happens too late because boards haven't spent enough time in their intervening years, in those previous years, really focused on, 'What do we stand for and how does that, kind of show up every day in our programs?'
Michael Horn
I agree.
There's an executive ed program I took at HBS, at Harvard Business School, probably over a decade ago at this point. But one of the faculty members said, 'A president ought to write just a four-page memo for the board before every meeting that basically updates where we are against our strategy, against, you know, health of the institution, but also, like, competition, where our customers, like, what's their buying power, how is that, you know, changing over time, is it affordable, etcetera, etcetera.'
And then each meeting be devoted to one pillar of that as opposed to, like, trying to cover the gambit, if you will.
Because otherwise, you can't do what Abby talked about.
And I thought this was — I had a couple other thoughts, but this was another one that really stood out for me — was she said that they grieved and commemorated the institution.
Like, you have to have serious time to be able to do that, and it'll then allow them to move past that stage.
And I think it actually echoes the threat/opportunity research that Clark Gilbert, who's been on the show and has led higher ed institutions, his research was around this. And the basic idea was that when organizations are facing a significant discontinuous threat, you need to frame it as that, a threat, and you need to dwell there because if you don't, you won't commit resources to actually dealing with this.
But then also if you leave it as a threat, it creates paralysis. You have to have the ability to reframe it as an opportunity at some point. And I think that's what happened here. Right? They dwelled on the threat. They grieved. They commemorated it. And then they asked the question....
Jeff Selingo
And then they moved on.
Michael Horn
Right. They moved on. And they said, 'What can we build with Northeastern?' Science and tech with the arts, for example. 'Yes, please,' they ultimately said, and this is a big opportunity.
So I actually think, you know, they got some of their nice-to-haves through that as well. Right? The social-justice initiatives and so forth.
Maybe we messed up. We should have asked what do they have to trade off, in this merger more explicitly. But I think that time they spent was significant. Right, Jeff?
Jeff Selingo
Well, and I think Michael keeps coming back to time.
I know this emotional piece has been incredibly important to you as we've been talking about M&A because it really is unlike a company where again, if you're on the board, you don't really have an emotional tie necessarily to the company. And again, your ultimate responsibility is to the shareholders. So if you pursue a merger or you have to, you know, declare bankruptcy or whatever, you're not gonna necessarily cry over it.
But if you're on a board, and again, majority of the boards being alums, so, that's another nice thing that, as you mentioned earlier, Abby talked about is getting more non-alums on the board so that they could pursue this with less emotion. Because I think there's just so much emotion tied up in these boards because many of them had their formative experiences at these institutions, and then you tie that together with the fact that they don't have enough time to pursue these mergers. They're often under the gun to do it, and so they don't have enough time then to really think about their emotions and really figure out, 'Okay, how do we get through that so that they could think about that next thing?'
So time and emotion really play a role here. And so if we have more non-alums on the board, I think that could help.
But again, it requires a board chair to say, 'Okay. We're about to move into probably M&A activity. Thus we need to rethink the constitution of the board or how the board is constituted, I should say.' And it takes courage. I just don't see a lot of boards doing that.
Michael Horn
Yeah. Well, look, I've been on the boards of a couple organizations that we've had to shut down while I was on the boards, and one of them was a nonprofit, one of them was a for-profit. They're not pretty processes. Right? And it's when it was staring at us in the face, the reality that we sort of made the move that we did.
But I think you're right. Like, having sober-minded people who can step outside is really important.
But I guess that's the other thing that as we start to wrap up, Jeff, I'd love to give like, I think we should give some plaudits to the president, right, to the coming to the board early and being transparent. Like, 'This is our actual position' — laying it all out there.
And then the president being open to and, of course, actually leading the creation of a real process. I don't think that typically happens. Like, they had a committee to explore different options even before they decided M&A, and presumably they had staff that staffed that committee and really owned it.
And it seems to me that they really took your admonition from our last episode on M&A to heart, which is the purpose if we do this is to make the institution stronger than it would have been alone.
And it seems to me, at least on paper, that they've met that here.
Final final thoughts from you, Jeff?
Jeff Selingo
Yeah.
And I guess, Michael, where does this start?
Because I think that most presidents are essentially afraid of their boards if the institution is in trouble, so they try to hold on as long as possible, and try to improve the situation before they really have to go to the board, which is again why this is often so late in the game and the board doesn't really know the right questions to ask because they may not be given the right information. It may not be as transparent as it was in this situation.
So I guess the question I have is, 'Who does this start with? Where does it start?' It's almost a partnership where the board chair has to tell the president, 'Hey, listen. The next couple of years are not gonna be easy in higher ed. We know this institution isn't in great financial shape. It's not coming into this period in great financial shape. We need to start making real decisions here. I trust you to help lead this institution, but you have to come to me when you think our time is running out, or that the runway is not as long as you thought. And we're gonna kinda protect you there as long as, by the way, there wasn't just bad management. And then we're gonna look at a pathway forward.
I think it really has to come from the board chair in this case because they're ultimately responsible for hiring and firing the president.
Then I think the president has to then have the courage not to wait too long and say, 'This is not a failure. I'm actually succeeding in helping this institution survive for the long run.'
And again, this has been a constant theme of mine, Michael, throughout this, is that we see M&A as a failure.
Michael Horn
We've got to reset that. Yeah.
Jeff Selingo
We see closure as a failure. Right? It's not.
And I think that the more that colleges and universities and presidents and boards say, ‘It's better for us to try to maintain the key programs, to try to have a home that's gonna make this the elements of this institution — maybe the name doesn't survive, I get that, and that's important to a lot of alums — but maybe all these other things that we cherish so much get to survive or a big chunk of them.'
And that should be good enough at some point.
Michael Horn
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right.
And it occurs to me, Jeff, knowing the headwinds that higher ed is sailing into right now with the demographic pressures independent of all the other stuff that we've talked about at this moment in time. You know, most boards probably should be setting up structures to have these conversations in sober ways right now and making it clear that there should at least be a process that's creating options so that they can make real decisions as opposed to be forced into something or just hope and pray and close by accident suddenly. And that's the worst of all outcomes.
So I think intentionality is important right now.
So before we go, I wanna bring Abby, though, back for our favorite segment right now, this year in Future U where we get to ask some lightning-round questions of her. So, Abby, welcome back as we take you through the paces here.
Jeff Selingo
Okay. So we're back with Abby on Future U for this new segment that we have this year on the podcast where we just ask our guests some fun questions about the college experience for them.
So, Abby, let me get started here. This is a quick lightning round. Michael and I answered these questions earlier in the season ourselves.
So what's the worst grade you ever got in college?
Abby Fiorella
This is gonna sound horrible because I didn't get a bad grade in college.
But let me explain myself.
I talked about Marymount and the performing arts. I was a performing arts major, and I was a scholarship kid. So I didn't have the luxury of getting a bad grade.
If you wanna ask, did I get a bad grade in law school? I certainly did. And in high school I did as well. In math.
Jeff Selingo
Great.
What was your favorite college class and why?
Abby Fiorella
And it was, in fact, musical theater.
And why? Because it was a way to find my voice and be expressive.
Michael Horn
I'm jealous of that.
What's a higher ed buzzword — you've been sitting in the milieu of this during the merger process — what's a higher ed buzzword that you never wanna hear again?
Abby Fiorella
I never wanna hear the word “pivot” again.
And the reason I don't wanna hear pivot again is it suggests that you're doing an about face and you're abandoning something. And everything we've talked about is this is a continuation, a transformation, a growth process. And so the word itself seems to symbolize and shut down the dialogue before it opens it up.
Michael Horn
Alright. Last question here.
How are college students different today from when you were a student?
Abby Fiorell
And I just had a graduating college student.
Michael Horn
Oh. Congrats.
Abby Fiorella
You know what? I think it's a lot harder today. You know? One is that they are so much more aware and exposed than I or we ever were when we went to college, and that is a gift and a curse in a lot of ways because they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.
For me, I was a Brooklyn kid. I went to school in Manhattan. I thought I was going to school in the city because who would have even thought Brooklyn was the city? And I hadn't been on a plane till I was 17. So, you know, I had a very sort of, you know, narrow view.
These kids with social media and, you know, all that's happening carry that weight with them. And I think then it's harder when they come out. The world is unwieldy, and it's chaotic. And I think it's harder for them to find their way.
Although I do think that they are sensitized in a way that we had not been when. So I am hopeful.
I think they have more challenges to face, but I am hopeful that their hearts are in the right place, and they are out and prepared to do good in the world.
Michael Horn
Abby, thank you so much for this illuminating conversation. I'm taking away from it trade-offs on every level, but let's view it in the positive light and go forward from there. Thank you so much.
Abby Fiorella
Thank you so much.
Jeff Selingo
Loving that segment, Michael, and I hope our listeners do as well.
And that wraps us up for another episode of Future U. And we'll see you next time right here on your favorite podcast player.
