ProResponse: Help when you need it most - Fine Point Communications

When Fine Point teamed with the RW Jones Agency this spring, we saw that combining our strengths would help independent schools in new and important ways.

At the start of a new school year, here is one such capacity for your tickler file: Through United Educators’ ProResponse program, Fine Point now provides crisis communications services that are covered by insurance, generally at no additional cost to the school.

When your institution faces a risk to reputation or standing in the community, you need all the help you can muster. Fine Point and RW Jones’ crisis communications experts provide experienced and sensitive counsel quickly that helps clients form and advance messages.

The ProResponse program exists because timing is often a critical component when it comes to managing complex and potentially damaging crises. United Educators has pre-registered and pre-approved a handful of firms with a proven track record at assisting institutions for up to $75,000 in expenses, helping provide peace of mind to independent school leaders.

RW Jones — and, therefore, Fine Point — is one of UE’s pre-approved crisis communications providers. (In fact, we are the only firm on UE’s list that focuses on independent schools.)

Since Fine Point and RW Jones merged, we have already helped two independent schools through ProResponse.

From those experiences, I can say confidently that this is a program that many schools could utilize in a jam. The only holdup is that not many heads, CFOs or communications directors know about it.

This one-sheet tells more about ProResponse and how to tap into the program. (The crisis need not be public, for instance, or lead to an insurance claim.)

Reach out to learn more and to discuss Fine Point’s crisis communications services.

Is education becoming less valuable?

Did you see this story over the summer? According to Gallup, confidence in higher education has plummeted among Americans, a trend reaching all ages, genders, education level and political identity.

While one news outlet reported the finding as “American Confidence in Higher Ed Hits Historic Low,” this alternatively could represent Gallup asking its question inconsistently. The organization polls Americans annually about their confidence in various institutions, but it has asked about higher education only three times in 50 years. The data are not as robust as we might like.

Still, the headline *seems* true, given a growing partisan disdain for higher education — fewer than 1 in 5 Republicans expressed to Gallup their high confidence, a contempt encouraged by some political voices — and a generational loss of trust by Americans in the powers that be. None of the 17 institutions named by Gallup got the same or greater level of high-confidence responses this year as was the case in 1995.

So, add this to the well-known issues already before higher ed, such as:

A bachelor’s degree seems to carry less weight today as it did a generation ago;
The soaring cost of tuition and the resulting weight of college debt on families are causing some to rethink a college education;
What one observer calls “a growing divide between the haves and have-nots … to attract high-income and high-ability students.”

The portents for independent schools

Since higher ed is often a harbinger of issues that independent schools will soon face, it is worth thinking seriously about what Gallup’s finding means for the K-12 level.

Independent schools commonly promote college preparedness as a key distinction against other educational options. And a significant cohort of families put great stock in a school’s “college list.” (A 2020 NAIS survey put this proportion of parents at 20 percent.)

But if the value of a college education is waning, what does that suggest about the value of a college-prep school? Will this brand promise now be received differently, even negatively?

Independent school leaders were already thinking strategically about such factors as student-age population, tuition affordability, the makeup of the student body and broadening the business model.

Now a new concern: Are we offering what parents actually want for their children? If not, what should our schools do in response?

Higher ed’s unsettled path forward

To circle back where we began, higher ed has been chewing on these two questions for many years.

More than a few institutions have decided that the traditional liberal-education model no longer works. Several private universities have proposed cutting humanities from their catalog to refocus limited resources on more popular programs. Even a state flagship, West Virginia University, has done the same, and its president, E. Gordon Gee, warns that other public schools will have no choice but to follow suit. “We simply have lost the support of the American public,” Gee said.

Leaders of other colleges push back hard against this glum view. They advocate riding out the storm: “The liberal arts and the humanities are a way of future-proofing yourself and giving yourself the tools and the flexibility to be able to learn again and again as the world of work gets reinvented,” said Amherst College President Michael Elliott.

Still others suggest the real problem is that colleges are losing sight of their mission as they pursue new and shiny projects. “Universities need to focus on what their true priorities are and what they were created to do,” said Holden Thorp, the former chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Independent schools have watched this debate from the sidelines. But not for much longer, I suspect. The changing perception of higher ed may push our schools into some hard decisions about mission and curriculum, then into explaining them effectively to families, alumni and donors.

This school year is a good time for communications leaders to raise the situation with the head, both to hear thoughts on the matter and to learn what options may come to the table.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this debate, too. Drop me a line and share what you think of the Gallup finding and its implications for independent schools.

Don’t-miss clicks

An interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education examines factors that tend to drive out college presidents. One statistic seems especially relevant for independent schools: Presidents new to their schools (with less than five years of tenure) are more likely to be ousted amid a controversy than are those with longer tenures. My takeaway: In the absence of a long-standing relationship with a head, boards will put great weight on how that leader manages — and communicates — a crisis. Those who are ineffective are unlikely to last long in the job.
Your list of crisis-communications scenarios probably includes many examples of adults behaving badly. But does it have embezzlement? Honestly, that one hadn’t occurred to me until seeing this story. It’s on my list now, though.