2025 Higher Education Trends | Deloitte Insights

The concept of “systemness” focuses on reducing administrative redundancies by identifying opportunities for shared administrative and operational functions among campuses. Additionally, systemness expands student access to academic resources, courses, and programs across multiple campuses within a region, thereby increasing overall cost efficiency. This approach can not only streamline operations, but it can also enrich the educational experience for students, making higher education more sustainable and effective.

While the concept of systemness can apply across a variety of institutions, it is particularly germane for higher education’s many state systems in today’s environment. Traditionally, system offices have had a policy remit, functioning as a loose affiliation of highly independent institutions. The financial entanglements vary, with some systems comprising a single balance sheet (meaning that if one institution runs short on cash, the other institutions are responsible for shoring up their financial position), while others operating as independent fiscal entities hung together under a system policy umbrella. Across the board, all have traditionally been referred to as a collection of strong, independent institutions.

However, the role of the system is changing rapidly across higher education—with an emerging focus on the concept of systemness for boards and leadership alike. Boards are driving toward this from two different positions: 1) a position of dire necessity as costs outpace revenues for some intuitions; and 2) as an opportunity to exploit the scale of the collective system as a competitive advantage. In short, collaboration rather than competition can benefit leaders, boards, and—most importantly—students by tackling financial headwinds while offering expanded program offerings and building bridges for the future.

Beyond the benefits to the institution and to students, leveraging scale economies as a competitive advantage allows states that adopt systemness early to gain a head start in workforce development and talent attraction. Systems that move quickly in this direction can innovate, grow, and expand more effectively, positioning themselves as leaders in the higher education landscape.

However, a shift to systemness is not an easy path. To achieve the benefits of shared resources, institutions must have true commitment and buy-in from leaders who are capable of driving the change and must have effective plans in place to manage the change, revising processes, policies, data standards, roles and training to reach an effective collaborative operating model. Such collaboration requires strong leaders, with the institutional capital to sponsor the change, and hold their direct reports accountable for cascading sponsorship. Given the high turnover and limited succession planning across higher education, such leaders are in short supply.