Trends: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Patrick F. Bassett, NAIS President

1. Trends: The Good, the Bad, and the UglyPatrick F. Bassett, NAIS President

2. President’s Report: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly • 1966, Sergio Leone: Satire of a world at war (Southeast Asia) • Violent, unpredictable, and hostile landscape • World where villains prevailed, betrayals were common, and alliances were ephemeral and shifting • G, B & U = the “VUCA U” future. While not all of the trends will impact any single school, some of the trends will impact all of our schools

3. Trend #1: Challenges with Demand, Pricing, and Financial Sustainability • The Bad:Congressional hearings and threats on escalating college tuitions: canary in the mineshaft. • The Ugly: “Perfect storm” of four dangerous trends coalescing: 1.) a looming recession; 2.) a shrinking demographic; 3.) a continuing trend of high tuition increases; 4.) a disappearance of the middle class, not only in the country but also in our schools • The Good: School task forces re-thinking the entire financial model. New tools on the horizon.

6. Trend #1: New Tools for Financial Sustainability The Financing Sustainable Schools (FSS) Listserve, managed by NAIS’s CFO Corey McIntyre: the “wisdom of the crowd.”

7. Trend #2: Runaway Costs • The Bad: We are America: We have redefined luxuries as necessities, spent too much, saved too little, and borrowed breathlessly against the future. When it comes time to build a new building, the image we start with…

8. Trend #2: Runaway Costs • In Xanadu did Kubla Khan • A stately pleasure-domedecree: (the new student center) • Where Alph, the sacred river, ran • Through caverns measureless to man (the new gym) • Down to a sunless sea. (the new natatorium) • Belt-tightening and reassessment here or coming • Questions of what is really important to fund — and what’s not emerging. Building or Financial Aid? • Wrong question at budget time is, “How much more can we charge? Right question to ask is, “How can we offer excellence while moderating price increase?” Be the value(s)-leader?

9. Trend #2: Runaway Costs • The Ugly: The law of unintended consequences: losing the middle class and the upper middle class • We’re becoming like Porsche, indisputably “best of breed” but so highly priced that it’s not even worth the time for most to go to the dealership to take a test drive. • Mirror image of value proposition for college. • Serving the top 3 percent of families: >$200K • So what? Values and diversity mix important.

10. Trend #2: Runaway Costs • The Good: “Moving on up” families, the newly affluent, can be wooed. Great schools finding ways to keep the base of middle class kids. • financial aid policies expanding to specifically address the woes of the middle class. • NAIS’s packaging of Comp*Assist as a free additional tool with SSS • NAIS’s developing additional new tools for SSS and new features in the NAIS Demographics Center.

11. Trend #3: Giving Under Pressure • The Bad: College alumni giving down this year, and the percentage of alumni making a donation fell in each of the last 2 years. • The Ugly: Loss of control of your image and message via the new tools of the data aggregator websites and social networks: Charity Navigator, FaceBook, Wikipedia, even RateYourTeachers.com. Digital dirt on schools. • The Good: While participation rates are down (for alums and grandparents) or flat (for parents and trustees), average giving adjusted for inflation is up significantly over time.

13. Trend #4: The War for Talent: Demographic Sustainability • The Bad: Talent pool challenges on the horizon. • Boomer class leaking away as retirement beckons. • Fresh recruits from the bottom of the pool, from non-selective colleges and universities. • Price for the best rising. • The Ugly: Millennials hard to manage • Expect immediate rewards and gratification from the workplace, anticipate their next job after just landing their current job, show little patience with workplace conventions: • “What IS it with you people and 8:30 am?” • Sign of the times: Millennials moving home: Kippers: Kids in Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings

14. Trend #4: The War for Talent: Demographic Sustainability • The Good: Theory of generations promises Millenials as problem-solvers on a global stage. • 20-something Millennials exactly the kind of young people we need to hire. • Lots of the most gifted, inventive, and idealistic from the top of their class in America’s most prestigious colleges and universities apply for Teach for America • Lots of Millennials in the field now and their brothers and sisters in our schools are budding capitalists and future social entrepreneurs: Free Rice; Orphans Against AIDS, Unite for Sight just the beginning.

15. Trend #4: The War for Talent: • The Good: Millenials as problem-solvers on a global stage. • The good news: We’ll be attractive to smart, idealistic, entrepreneurial young people—if we get smart on how to recruit them: give them leadership, social justice, change agenda opportunities. • NAIS Career Center mailings to the top colleges and universities and ads in Ed Week and on the New York Times online Job Board -- and through that channel, to your school..

16. Trend #5: Global & Environmental Sustainability Gaining Traction • The Bad: Growing isolationist and nativist sentiments in the country. Exasperation that globalism is “just one more thing to teach our kids” in an already overcrowded curriculum. • The Ugly: The growing size of our carbon footprint as individual organizations and as an industry: We can’t lead the charge to environmental change until we model the change.

17. Trend #5: Global & Environmental Sustainability Gaining Traction • The Good: An emergent agreement on what it means to be a citizen of the world. • Kwame Anthony Appiah sees a compassionate realpolitik or “cosmopolitanism,” where we recognize the world’s total inter-connectivity and the impact we have on others, and take responsibility accordingly. • Cosmopolitanism at NAIS: Challenge 20/20: 450 partner schools world-wide. • Adding our students and schools to the list of Millennial social entrepreneurs.

18. Trend #5: Global & Environmental Sustainability Gaining Traction • Challenge 20/20 team of 8th graders from Fay School (MA) and their 9th grade counterparts from South Saigon International School (Vietnam): created Foveo, chocolate bars and bottled water, whose proceeds will go to disaster relief around the world. • Mandarin teachers & Gap Year Pilot

19. Trend #5: Global & Environmental Sustainability Gaining Traction The environmental revolution in independent schools, led by our own social entrepreneurs, by building green (LEED-certified building – www.usgbc.org ), by teaching green (www.NAIS.org/go/sustainability), and by living green (www.greenschoolsalliance.org).

20. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. • Hasn’t it always been so? • “Brutal facts” = the combination of the “bad” and “ugly.” • Counterbalanced by “unshakeable beliefs,” the “good. • The historical record: We prevail even in dire circumstances, since we have the freedom and capacity to sacrifice, to improvise, and to change course. • We have the leadership will to do what necessary and what’s right. • NAIS will be a reliable and trusted partner to accompany you on the journey.

21. The End! (See related slides in Appendix)

22. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=sloginhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin