Resilience rankings, a new lens?

Written by Anand Kulkarni

Diversification

One of the cornerstones of resilience is, in our view, the ability to diversify revenue sources as a prime vehicle for reducing and managing risk. A possible measure of this is a share of income that a university derives from a particular source (e.g. specific student cohort, specific market, specific research stream). The more specific the source, the less diverse and arguably less resilient. The amount of financial reserves that a university holds could be a complementary measure. Yet another approach could measure the degree of ‘bounce back’, or the extent to which Institutions are able to financially recover from a serious, large-scale external event(s). Naturally, this bounce-back would need to be considered over multiple time horizons.

Flexibility and innovation

The pandemic has demonstrated that there are new opportunities for growth, including reformed business models and organisational change. Possibilities here include the extent of shift from face-to-face learning to online, virtual student placements, and qualitative statements about new or improved organisational practices and growth options that an institution has implemented.

Risk

The ability to effectively manage risk is a cornerstone of managing change. The ability to compare the risk parameters of different organisations is naturally very context-specific, however, related in large measure to a university’s underlying competitive position. Some assessment of an institution’s risk profile on a traffic light basis, with relative weights and judgements attached to cover risk parameters, such as finance, reputation (drawing on existing academic reputation surveys, for example), could be possible as another guide to resilience.

Values

Values maintenance is an important component of a resilient institution. Values maintenance is the extent to which an institution holds firm to its underlying mission and vision, even in the face of disruption. This very subjective criteria can be measured qualitatively by (a) the presence of a mission/vision statement in the first instance, and (b) the progress against targets in the mission/vision.

Value maintenance

Value or value for money criteria from a student perspective, reflecting the ability of institutions to continue to provide quality education even in the face of disruption, could be addressed in a number of ways:

• continued strong student experience
• employability
• percentage of alumni who return/continue in the ‘home institution’.

There is now a treasure trove of social media data and analytics that can be mined to measure and assess student sentiment.

Continued community engagement and outreach

Most Institutions now embrace the ‘third mission’ to promote community engagement and local agency. Undoubtedly difficult to measure, one potential technique could be through a community-based survey instrument (naturally, what constitutes a community would need to be sorted out).