It\u2019s hard to look anywhere on the campus of Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵAPP without seeing a bright red \u201cM.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pointy, sans serif logo is omnipresent \u2014 plastered on walls, printed on floor mats, emblazoned on students\u2019 sweaters. At this private university in Town and Country, the M is more pervasive than the Starbucks logo on students\u2019 cups or the Nike swoosh on sneakers.<\/p>\n
If the M resembles a corporate logo more than a traditional university symbol, that\u2019s because Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵAPPis anything but a traditional university.<\/p>\n
At a time when small private colleges across the country are bleeding students, Maryville\u2019s total enrollment has grown by 82% from 2013 to 2018. Over the 10-year period between 2007 and 2017, it had the fourth-highest growth rate among all private, nonprofit universities in the nation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. And it\u2019s not slowing down: The university expects enrollment to double over the next five years to hit 20,000 students, fueled primarily by students enrolled in online courses, who now account for nearly 60% of total enrollment.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, amid that high demand, Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵAPPPresident Mark Lombardi is taking the unorthodox step of freezing the cost of tuition in perpetuity.<\/p>\n
Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵAPPhas achieved this by thinking and acting less like a university and more like a startup. It\u2019s using technology to cut bureaucratic costs, making it leaner and more nimble, allowing it to be more reactive to the market with degree programs designed to meet current workforce demand.<\/p>\n
And, like an effective startup, it\u2019s a disrupter, defying the notion that higher education should be more about the pursuit of knowledge than jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is, those days are over now,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cCan universities remake ourselves in this new age? Sure we can, but we have to be open to it. We can\u2019t just hang onto the past as if somehow it\u2019s perfect. Education is first and foremost about preparing people for the future, not preparing them for the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet in drafting what it believes is the blueprint for how to make higher education more profitable, it\u2019s presented itself with a new kind of challenge, one that\u2019s also befitting of a successful startup.<\/p>\n
It has to be wary of growing too fast.<\/p>\n
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY<\/a>.<\/p>\n This story was originally published in the St. Louis Business Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n