Strategic Affiliation in Higher Education: What Colleges Can Learn from The Colleges of Law and TCS Education System:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 258 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Matt Nehmer

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 258 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Matt Nehmer

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Welcome

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

Today I welcome Dr. Matt Nehmer, President of the Colleges of Law, the largest independent law school in Santa Barbara, in the Ventura regions of California.

[00:00:31] Matt Nehmer’s Professional Journey

Drumm McNaughton: Matt’s professional journey began in Washington DC at the George Washington University. Before pivoting to the Midwest to work at the Chicago School, and obviously Chicago, he would later become one of the founding employees of TCS Education System, a nonprofit organization with a mission focused on preparing innovative, engaged, purposeful agents of change who serve our global community.

Matt joins us today to talk about mergers and partnerships. As the president and CEO of a school who went down this partnership path and joined a system, he’s uniquely positioned to discuss the process they went through and how it changed the trajectory of his college and the benefits that they realized.

Matt, welcome to the program.

Matt Nehmer: It’s great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Drumm McNaughton: My pleasure. I’m looking forward to a great conversation, talking about partnerships and the partnership that Colleges of Law formed with TCS Education System.

But before we get into that, give us a little bit about your background, how you got here, because you’ve got a real fascinating background.

Matt Nehmer: Yeah. When I was early in my career, so I’ve been in higher ed for 26 years now, and I’ve had a journey that’s taken me from the East coast, I got my start at George Washington University and found my way to the Midwest, is where I’m originally from, originally from Michigan, but spent a number of years in Chicago, and then to Los Angeles, and now here I am in Santa Barbara.

And if you would’ve asked me, 26 years ago where you would see myself. I would never have dreamed that I would be sitting here in Santa Barbara, the president of the College’s of Law, and doing the good work that we’re doing here. But it really is the power of education, and my educational journey was professional and personal as I, moved from, I went to Washington, DC for a master’s degree.

I got the job at the university, kept going, got my PhD, kept going, and here we are.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, Well, that’s fascinating for me because my career was very different from that. But I’ve been in higher ed now for, 20, 30 years and just like you say, it’s rewarding both professionally and personally.

Matt Nehmer: That’s what keeps me coming back is it never gets old, Drumm, and every year we bring in new students. Every year we say goodbye to students at commencement. In fact, our commencement is next week. It’s that constant cycle of renewal, of transformation, of seeing people come in with dreams and things that they wanna do, and then see them leave with the ability to make those dreams happen. And then to see them do it, and then for them to come back and to share, the, all the many contributions they’ve made to their communities in a new way because of the work that we do here at the school.

Drumm McNaughton: That is so incredible to hear. And I know how personally rewarding it is. We have the same thing when we come in and work with a client to be able to see the transformation that can take place is just incredible.

[00:03:35] The Colleges of Law: History and Evolution

Drumm McNaughton: Tell me a little bit about the Colleges of Law.

Matt Nehmer: Colleges of Law just celebrated its 55th anniversary. It started in Ventura in 1969 and it’s a really good story and if you wanted to go to law school in those days, in Ventura, you had no choice. You had to go to LA, you had to go up north, there was no opportunity for you.

And those law schools in those days were what we’ll call traditional law school experiences.

So they’re day programs, they’re full-time, they’re primarily for young people in their early to mid twenties. So coming right out of an undergraduate program into law school and for people that work, for people that wanna change careers, there was nothing for them until the college of the law was set up. It was called the Ventura College of Law. Then five years later, another group here in Santa Barbara set up the Santa Barbara College of Law. They merged in the late seventies and became accredited by the State Bar of California as one institution. And then, we joined the Community Solution Education System, which I think we’ll talk a little bit more about later, in 2010, and we rebranded as the Colleges of Law in 2022. So we’re still have that, that legacy of Ventura, Santa Barbara, but we are under a new brand, so to find us you have to kind of look for the Colleges of Law and you’ll find us.

Drumm McNaughton: And you’re private, but you’re independent, you’re a not-for-profit. So you’ve got those check marks, but you’re also part of a system now with TCS Education System. How’s that worked out?

[00:05:13] The Partnership Process: Joining TCS Education System

Drumm McNaughton: Because most institutions, when we start talking about mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, et cetera, most institutions are a go-it-alone. They don’t wanna become part of a system or they don’t know what to do with it. Tell us about the process. ’cause you were involved and you were part of TCS when the Colleges of Law came on. So tell us a little bit about that process, if you would.

Matt Nehmer: Sure, and I have to hand it to the board of trustees. I mean, this was 15, 16 years ago, and you hear a lot today about higher education evolving, how it’s getting harder and harder for small institutions to go it alone, and you, all of the conferences that talk about this, you’re seeing a lot of publications.

But 16 years ago, the board of this school, I think, saw a future that they weren’t sure how they were gonna navigate and there was some declines in enrollment. And legal education after the recession, 2008, 2009, there was drops in enrollment. So the conversation with the system started with just that a conversation and it evolved to the boards having conversation and the College’s of Law was the third school to affiliate with The Community Solution Education System. The Chicago School was the first, Pacific Oaks College, and then we came along. But we were part and I was there at the system at the time, the original vision set forth by Dr. Michael Horowitz was to create a five college system, each college representing a different discipline, and then those disciplines could connect and create academic programming together.

The original five disciplines were psychology, education, law, health, and business. And if you, kind of, watch the trajectory of the system over the last 15 years, that vision for the most part has been realized. And so we have a medical school with another one being, set up in Illinois. We have health programs and a variety of different areas. The one area that, not quite, we don’t have a business school or a standalone business school, but we definitely have business oriented programs.

But that was the vision and as you mentioned on the system side, of the integration project, I was working there in Chicago and was able to, again, 15 years ago, we would never have dreamed of be sitting here as the president of this school. But I think it’s another example of the opportunity of a system model as it creates opportunity for people that serve those missions to find new ways of putting their skills to work. So that just comes with being part of something bigger, and that’s another advantage of being part of something bigger.

[00:08:00] Conversations with the Boards, Due Dilligence, and Details

Drumm McNaughton: So with that, as you were going through the process, you talked about the conversations that happened, the board level and whatnot, what was the process like? Who was doing due diligence? Did you both do diligence? How did you get to the point where the boards were starting to talk? Take us through some of that detail work that most institutions don’t really know about unless they bring on a consultant to help them with some sort of partnership.

Matt Nehmer: It really needs to involve the board early. A lot of the conversations that I was part of with the system would involve administration. Administration would, see like the people that were running the college’s law 16 years ago, see some challenges, and then that conversation would start with the system and then you bring the boards in.

But I would say the earlier, and it was the case with this school, the earlier the better with the boards because there are some mechanical pieces with the governance model that just need to be understood early. But really, the system is not some kind of third party, vendor relationship by any means, it’s a true system model, in the sense of how the colleges connect to the system through fiduciary connections and the governance model. So yeah, getting the board very early and, our board at the time was all attorneys. Most of ’em were graduates of the school. And over on my bookshelf to my left here is a binder, which was the huge agreement, there’s many drafts of it, so they’d certainly put a lot of time and work into it.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, coming out of a bunch of attorneys, I would expect nothing less. But before the boards, how did the initial contact get made with TCS and the colleges?

Matt Nehmer: There was a story I’ve heard, it was through a trustee at another school here in Santa Barbara, another psychology school that knew about this school and made the connection to the leadership at the system. It was kind of more happenstance than anything intentional in the sense that, this school was targeted or, there was this exhaustive review of all the law schools and it found its way here. It was, people knowing each other, people making those connections, and then just having conversations.

[00:10:19] Catalysts for College Partnrships

Drumm McNaughton: Was there a particular reason that the colleges were thinking about this? Was there financial challenges going on at the time? That oftentimes is a big driver.

Matt Nehmer: Financial challenges, enrollment challenges. What you can do with a law school program is it’s not hard to project enrollment. So based on what you do in the first year program you can easily project that through the next four years. And there was, in the fall of 2009, 2010, 2011, there was just down enrollment. And that wasn’t just here at the college as a law that was across all of legal education. There was a shift away from even the major schools, the Stanford’s, UCLAs of the world, were having to reach deeper into their applicant pool to make their classes. And we’re all part of this ecosystem, it’s a pecking order and the applications that we might have coming our way, they’d would be picked up by some higher profile schools. So it had an effect and, the future was a little gloomy. I think those were the conditions where these early conversations happened and the benefits of being part of a system, the benefits of a shared services model, they could see it and again, I can’t say it enough for the trustees that were here at the time, who could kinda see around the corner what was happening in higher education and legal education and just have the wherewithall to get ahead of things.

Drumm McNaughton: And that’s very helpful. Thank you. So with that, the connection was made, the colleges were having some challenges financially, everybody, not only law, but other schools coming out of the great recession. It was interesting because sometimes the enrollment, because of the recession, went up significantly and in other areas it would go down.

So the connection was made, conversations started happening between the presidents and the board. Then the boards got involved. Obviously, due diligence had to be done. Talk us through that process, if you would.

[00:12:17] Presidents, Boards, and Due Dillegence

Matt Nehmer: Exhaustive due diligence. Once you get the NDAs worked out and, all of that stuff done, there was a process of collecting materials that you would expect. What would you wanna see? You’d wanna see financial documents, you’d wanna see the leases for the space, you’d wanna see, if it’s an ownership, what deferred maintenance are we looking at here? Are there any outstanding legal matters that the school is working through and both sides, both parties should really know about. So all of that, and there’s a checklist and there’s a process, all of that was part of the due diligence. And the project wouldn’t advance if all parties weren’t comfortable with what they saw through the due diligence process. Which is by design, right? Okay, I’m not feeling this, let’s not waste any more time. Let’s call it here. But that’s not what happened here. That conversation moved beyond due diligence and then into more of a formal agreement phase.

 This was before the Colleges of Law was accredited by WASC. We were going through the accreditation process, which was another element, I think, why the board was really interested in the system, ’cause the system brought a lot of expertise in accreditation and resources around accreditation. A whole office of institutional research, all people do all day long is OIR (Office of Institutional Research) work. And that’s something that the school this size at the time would be challenged to do. So they really were compelled by how the system could help facilitate the WASC project, which, as takes time, takes a lot of people time, a lot of energy and a lot of cost.

Drumm McNaughton: You’re moving in. You’ve got the MOU (memoranda of understanding) pretty much in place. You’ve got the due diligence being done.

[00:14:01] Governance and Structural Changes

Drumm McNaughton: What kind of changes did you have to make to governance structures with this? I mean, when an institution goes through a partnership like this, or you know, it’s acquired or whatnot, governance structures change usually significantly.

Matt Nehmer: Well, I’ll get in the weeds with you a little bit, Drumm, on this.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, please do. I love weeds.

Matt Nehmer: You love the weeds. All right. I won’t get too, because it’s, there was a lot of working parts to this, but the board at the Colleges of Law did something, I would say, pretty savvy. So there were assets that the school owned, for instance, the Ventura campus and property. There were cash assets and the trustees at the time says, if for any reason this doesn’t work out, or it’s just not a fit for either party, we don’t wanna lose those assets. So they put those assets into a separate nonprofit. It was run by a separate board and then in the agreement there was this kind of stair step to having those assets turned back over to the Colleges. These benchmarks needed to be met, time needed to pass, and I have to say, again, that the board here I think was savvy in how they set that up.

So, go back in time, this is 2010, when this is coming together, and that’s how the original affiliation happened. So we had the Colleges of Law board here, you had the system board over here, and you had this other nonprofit board over here. And it kind of worked. It was complicated.

And then in 2018, the other, it was called the Legacy Board, they decided that the time all the benchmarks have been met, the milestones reached, and then went through a process of turning the assets back over to the colleges, and then they put themselves out of business, the nonprofit is defunct.

So that turned it into more of a model that it is today. So we have our Board of Trustees, the system board. Our board of trustees has certain powers that it has oversight of. The system board has certain powers that is oversight of. For instance, what are they, just real quick? ,

Our board will hire the chief executive officer president. They do the evaluation. They approve the budget, which includes all the enrollment goals and academic programming. Anything around the mission or the strategic plan is under the purview of our board, although it has some connection to the system board as well.

So that’s been how it’s been working, and I have to say I’ve been here since the beginning and I’ve seen it evolve over the last 15 years, and it works. It was complicated at first. There were more working parts to it, but we found our way through that, and we have our board meetings even next week, so we’re gonna approve our budget and then it goes to the system board for review.

And we’ve gotten pretty good at this, ’cause we’ve been at it for a number of years. We’ve kind of smoothed out some of the, some of the challenges and it all feels like it’s more integrated.

[00:17:06] System Boards: Integration of Different Models

Drumm McNaughton: And that’s important, especially being part of a system, is to have it integrated. And for listeners who may not be aware of it, you’ve got two different models when it comes to a system. You’ve got some models, the system board is the board for all the institutions in there. California, the UC System, you’ve got a Board of Regents and that is the single board for all of the UC schools. You’ve got the Cal State, which is a different, they have their own system board, and this is not unlike what you have there at TCS Education System. They have their system board, and then each college and university within the system has its own board.

Matt Nehmer: Correct. And by having your own board, it’s from, just from a fiduciary standpoint, you have some more attention on matters. You’re able to go deeper into the governance process and just has a lot of advantage. And also keeps people engaged in the board. We have a great board, very proud of it, of terrific people that are also kind of connected to the system mission as well, so it just brings more people to the work.

[00:18:11] System Services and Benefits of the Partnership

Drumm McNaughton: What services do you get out of a system? And again, all systems are set up a little bit differently, but in your particular case, you already talked about hiring, evaluating the CEO, you talked about academics, you talked about your strategic plan and budgeting, but I didn’t hear things around marketing. I didn’t hear things around it, et cetera. Are those things that you get from the system?

Matt Nehmer: Indeed. Yeah. Lemme take you quickly through them. So IT, so we have IT people on campus. From the student vantage point, they look like they work for the Colleges of Law, although they’re system employees. We have marketing, as you mentioned. The whole marketing operation largely is in-house. The office of institutional research that I mentioned before is managed at the system level, and so is instructional design, and financial aid and enrollment management, far as the systems that run enrollment are supported by the system. Legal affairs, makes sense, instead of having six legal affairs teams, you have one legal affair team that help all of the colleges.

Those are the largest ones, and then like board support, we get through the system and even the mechanics of being able to run all these boards and committees, we get help with that. And on, you know, with financial planning and analysis, the treasury functions largely run out of the system office. We don’t do analysis of cash flow here or, those kind of mechanical financial pieces. And then lastly, HR. The HR benefit programs and the HR systems, Workday, for instance, is all managed up the system office.

[00:19:51] Cost Savings and Professional Expertise

Drumm McNaughton: So going back to the initial premise of why colleges became part of TCS Education System, it saves you a ton of money because you’re not having to do standalone systems, standalone functions that you would if you were just an independent college. You leverage, as do all the other schools in the TCS Education System.

Matt Nehmer: Indeed, and I’ll go beyond any cost savings. So that’s a lot of what people are interested in. How much money is it gonna save me? That’s often the question. And sometimes it won’t save you a lot of money, because you do have to, through an affiliation process, if you’ll get those services at the system level, depending on how your budget is set up. But I would say beyond the money, it’s the expertise, it’s the management systems. A smaller school, I’ve worked for ’em, maybe you have, financial aid is managed, it’s a multiple hat model. One person does financial aid and this and this. Whereas the system, the financial aid offices are managed by professional financial aid people who are up on the latest and there’s a lot of changes that happen in that area. And so that’s a good example because it’s a such a high stake area of the enterprise being able to be always in compliance with the Department of Ed rules and financial aid, and therefore having experts who really know those rules and put the systems in place for them to be managed is a great advantage in the system model. And that’s just one example. IT is another one, cybersecurity within IT, another one, all managed by the system. And people, we have a cybersecurity expert that’s on the system team. It’s all he’s doing all day is thinking about that and putting the systems in place to support that versus having a small school with an IT team of two or three people, maybe they’re thinking about it, but they have other, they have to get the, the printers working and the wifi going for people.

Drumm McNaughton: Having the budget and the people to be a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is incredibly important.

Matt Nehmer: Indeed and I think there’s a lot of other small organizations can get into trouble. It’s the keeping your hand on all of those areas and with that come to all the people that you have to kind of manage and with people come more complications.

So it just works, it just works. And as we ge keep going with this model, it keeps working better and better.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. What else can you tell us about the model and how it works?

Matt Nehmer: One area where I think we could do more with is more collaboration around planning and strategic planning across the colleges. That to me is the next level up in the development of the system. Whereas largely the college I work with my board, I’ll come up with a strategic plan. The Chicago School, the other schools will do their own, and then there’s this reconciliation process of trying for the system side to be able to support all of that and put the pieces in place to be able to drive that agenda forward. We need to do some reform in that area where we’re doing planning in a consistent way so we can start to plan what kind of resources, what kind of projects, and the priorities of those projects, we need to put in place to advance that more collective agenda versus six colleges with their own kind of directions they wanna go in.

So that’s a development in a really good direction that we’re going next, just doing more work around that. But it’s that collaborative, I know we didn’t talk about academic collaboration yet, but finding ways for the colleges to build joint programs together, share courses. We run a couple of courses, one in family law, that is crosslisted by some of the other colleges. Especially if you have, an you run an MFT program, knowing family law or a social work program might not have a family law course taught by us, that’s crosslisted and part of their catalog. Versus them hiring their own faculty to do that and running the same course. So those are advantages, again, of the system model. And those are already in place, but we’re thinking of ways of advancing those even more.

[00:24:01] Accreditation and System Model

Drumm McNaughton: You bring up a really interesting point when it comes to course sharing, which takes my mind to accreditation. Each school’s accredited separately, you have different accreditors, but you also have to be able to leverage the system arm for your accreditation because certain functions are offered through the system.

How does that work? Specifically with WASC, which you know, we’re both very familiar with.

Matt Nehmer: So WASC if you wanna be part of the system, you obviously will need to go through a sub change, what’s called a substantive change process with WASC. The good news is that they know us and they know the system very well, so they know the vice presidents at WASC, we’ve been working with them for many years. Of all the formerly, we used to call ’em regional accreditors, of all of them WASC is the one that we have, I think, the most longest standing connection with. So there’s an affiliation process obviously that would need to go through an accreditor, WASC or otherwise, and that can be very comprehensive as you can imagine. But once affiliation is underway it is part of your WASC reaffirmation process. So we went through one a few years ago. We had people from the system participate in that. You schedule that, it’s just part of how they, the site visit team will experience the school when they come.

One of the challenges, though, I think you’ll appreciate this, Drumm, is constantly explaining to peer evaluators what this is all about and how this works. Because you can come in from. A CSU or an independent or your own school and have your own kind of thinking about what a system means and it might look different than how ours runs.

And it’s not just with the WASC leadership team, it’s largely with those WASC peer evaluators. Anytime we do a reaffirmation or a special visit of helping educating them on how this model works.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, pretty much every accreditation team that comes in, every school needs to explain what’s going on. But with yours, it’s so different than a typical systems model. Frankly, I think I like yours far better than I do most systems, that’s just a personal opinion.

Matt Nehmer: Well, thank you. I’ll give you an example and you can find it in our, action letter, so it’s public, is in our last reaffirmation. One of the recommendations in the action letter was that we had to come up with a contingency plan in the event that the system went away. And that was a challenge for us. We actually wrote up something. That “what we would do if something happened to the system”, but in our response it did say, “we don’t think you would ask this of UC Santa Barbara. You wouldn’t ask this of, CSU Channel Islands. Why would you?” Because we’re in the context of a system, we’re in that kind of conversation. But again, it’s constantly explaining what we’re all about.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, the converse of that same thing is a UC Santa Barbara or Cal State Channel Islands isn’t sharing IT with other colleges. They’re standalone. So in fact, I can see why an accreditor would ask that question.

Matt Nehmer: Yeah. And we answered it. And you know what, that’s what accreditation recommendations are for is, “are you’re thinking about this?”

Honestly, we hadn’t thought about that, and so we did. And we thought about it and we put some ideas in place and so that’s part of the process.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, I would say that was a pretty sharp accreditation team that you had.

Matt Nehmer: They were great. Yeah. And that’s what’s so wonderful is you learn a lot about other institutions and you learn things that you can bring back to your own, like, hadn’t even thought about doing that. And you could help ’em get better and that’s the whole process.

Drumm McNaughton: That is the whole process, so.

[00:27:44] Three Takeaways for Presidents and Boards Considering Partnerships

Drumm McNaughton: Matt, this has been a fascinating conversation for me, thank you. We are just about at the end so as we always do three takeaways for your fellow presidents and boards about being on the receiving end of a system.

Matt Nehmer: Well with the board is, and I just said it a couple of times, it’s always about being able to explain how it works, especially with new trustees. Trying to get them to understand it and to get it. So as a president, you’re a storyteller, and that’s one. And they need to be an engaging storytelling that keeps their attention, and that’s number two. And you just need to have a lot of energy for this and really believe in it. You really need to believe in this model, and you wouldn’t make it into my position if you didn’t, you can see it, you can see my enthusiasm, if you didn’t really buy into that, and then the model itself and the benefits of the model.

Drumm McNaughton: And that same question, three takeaways for presidents and boards for someone who is considering joining a partnership similar to what you’ve done or any kind of partnership.

Matt Nehmer: Number one, this idea of independence, I know is a value, and there’s a lot of schools doing in that direction. Nothing against it. But again, as we said earlier, it’s gonna be harder and harder for smaller institutions to go it alone. And have an open mind to what a world might look like beyond just independence, ’cause this sense of autonomy and being able to control your own destiny, I see why you would want that. And that still can be in place. We have that here, but as part of the system. But there’s a lot of benefits through having other colleagues and just being able to collaborate with others, learning from each other, and sharing in the resources, sharing in the strategy, in a way that I just think, smaller schools would be challenged to do. I think I would say having an open mind to the strengths of a partnership and being okay, this is the hardest piece of it, being okay that autonomy isn’t maybe the way it’s gonna work in the future, the way it worked in the past. If you wanna go it alone then go it alone.

[00:29:55] Future Plans and What’s Next for the Colleges

Drumm McNaughton: There you have it. What’s next for you? What’s next for The Colleges?

Matt Nehmer: Well, next for me is I have a five month old, little one at home and so we having a lot of fun with him and so he’s keeping me busy. And the Colleges, we wanna open a third campus. We’re here in Ventura, in Santa Barbara, and we are exploring opening a third campus in partnership with another system, a partner in Pasadena. So that’s exciting and we’re on our way.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Matt. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I’ve learned a tremendous amount and I want to thank you for that. It’s always fun when I get to.

Matt Nehmer: Likewise, a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, sir.

Thanks for listening today and a special thanks to my guest, Dr. Matt Nehmer, president of the Colleges of Law. Matt, thanks for being on the program. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to the next time we get a chance to talk.

To my listeners, thanks again for listening. See you next week.