From Good to Consequence: Redefining the Purpose of a College
Connecting colleges and their communities
Two weeks before I took office as a college president, I had a problem. I lacked a specific vision for the future of the institution. I knew we needed direction, but the exact roadmap remained unclear.
That uncertainty changed over breakfast with a close friend. He handed me a copy of Good to Great by Jim Collins. That night, I read it cover to cover and took a lot of notes. The book provided the spark I needed. It gave me a clear, ambitious goal. I wanted to lead our institution from a good college to a great university.
Collins introduced several powerful ideas in that book. The most impactful for me was the Hedgehog Concept. This principle encourages organizations to identify the one thing they can do better than anyone else. It requires finding the intersection of your passion, your economic engine and your genuine expertise. Successful companies focus on that single point of excellence. I became convinced that a successful college could do the exact same thing.
I framed my entire eight-year tenure around that concept. We chased greatness by focusing our energy on health sciences. We established a physician’s assistant program that gave us the distinction of becoming the first regional college to offer a terminal degree. We build a $25 million, state-of-the-art, health science building. Our undergraduate enrollment in the sciences tripled.
As a result, I began to see a concept beyond “good” and “great.”
The Relational Trap of “Good” and “Great”
The trouble with words such as “good” and “great” is that they are entirely relative terms. They inherently require a comparison to others. To be a great college, you must constantly measure yourself against neighboring institutions. You constantly look at national rankings, enrollment, endowment sizes, graduation and retention rates.
This comparative mindset leads to institutional arrogance. Colleges begin chasing metrics that matter to the academic establishment rather than metrics that matter to the real world. We spent years trying to be bigger and better than the competition. Eventually, I realized that being better than another struggling institution did not mean we were actually serving our community.
I started searching for better frameworks. First, I looked at the idea of becoming a college of significance. Significance implies doing something incredibly well. Next, I explored distinctiveness and distinction. Distinctiveness means doing something different and special. Distinction means achieving a rare level of excellence.
These concepts were useful steps forward. They pushed us to stop copying other schools and to find our own unique identity. Yet, even these terms felt incomplete. They still focused too much on the institution itself. A college can be distinct, significant, and full of distinction while still failing to move the needle on the largest crises facing our society.
The National Higher Education Crisis
Today, higher education faces a massive disconnect. On one side of the ledger, our nation faces severe labor shortages in critical fields. We are simply not producing enough engineers to drive innovation. Our healthcare systems are starved for nurses and medical professionals. K-12 schools face a desperate shortage of qualified teachers. Specialized business sectors lack skilled financial analysts.
On the other side of the ledger, higher education is facing an existential crisis. Budgets are shrinking. The demographic enrollment cliff is real. Colleges across the country are closing their doors for good. A recent study by the Huron Consulting Group indicated that as many as 442 or 1,700 private, nonprofit colleges “. . . will arrive at the cusp of financial exigency” in the next decade affecting 671,000 students and $23 billion in endowments.
How can both of these realities exist at the same time? How can colleges go bankrupt while the workforce screams for their product?
The answer lies in our current academic model. For decades, institutions have allowed students to wander aimlessly through the curriculum. We invite young people to campus, collect their tuition, and let them choose paths based on factors other than reality. As a result, higher education produces four times as many psychology majors as the job market can possibly absorb. We graduate thousands of students with massive debt and zero market demand for their degrees.
Institutions are failing to align their supply with the nation’s demand. We have prioritized student exploration over institutional responsibility. By failing to guide students toward fields of consequence, colleges are rendering themselves obsolete.
The Birth of the Consequential College
To survive and matter, we must move beyond the pursuit of greatness. We need to introduce a new standard. We must strive to become a College of Consequence.
A consequential college as an institution that intentionally links its existence to the prosperity of its community. A consequential college does not care about national rankings or peer comparisons. It cares about impact. It measures success by its ability to meet the job demands of the community.
Becoming a college of consequence requires a complete structural shift. It means abandoning the passive, buffet-style approach to higher education. The institution must take an active role in recruiting, training and producing graduates specifically for high-demand fields.
This is not about eliminating the intellectual value of a college education. It is about restoring accountability. When a college focuses its resources on filling the gaps in healthcare, engineering, business, and education, it creates a massive positive consequence for the region. The community thrives because it receives a pipeline of skilled talent. The college thrives because its value proposition becomes undeniable.
A Vision for Leadership
Looking back, the Hedgehog Concept from Good to Great was a vital starting point. It taught me the discipline of focus. But focus alone is no longer enough if it is directed inward.
The modern college president cannot afford to waste time chasing relative greatness. Institutional survival depends on societal relevance. We must ask ourselves a different set of questions:
· If our institution closed tomorrow, what specific wound would our community suffer?
· What is our responsibility in meeting the critical job needs of our community?
· Are we producing graduates the world actually needs?
The future belongs to institutions that stop looking at their competitors and start looking at their communities. By anchoring our academic focus to the critical needs of our workforce, we can rescue higher education from its self-inflicted decline. We can build colleges of consequence.
Robin Capehart is the Principal Fellow of The Carnegie Academy and a certified speaker and coach with the Maxwell Certified Leadership Team. In October 2026, Maxwell Publishing will publish his book “Leading a College of Consequence.” He may be contacted for speaking opportunities at rcapehart@carnegieacademy.org.