Leading an institution of higher education is no easy task, particularly if it is smaller and has a limited or nonexistent endowment.
You have to deal with students who are in some cases still navigating early adulthood. You have to work with faculty members who sometimes aren’t necessarily concerned about teaching a relevant class or understanding the viability of an institution’s financial balance sheet.
And for the past several years the enrollment cliff has opened up significantly resulting in fewer college students due to population changes thus further exacerbating financial challenges.
As an example, Western Illinois University enrollment on both campuses – Moline and Macomb – combined fell from 6,994 five years ago to 5,760 this year. That latter figure is just over half the 11,094 combined enrollment reported by WIU in Fall 2015.
So it might not have been completely surprising that not long after Kristi Mindrup was selected as interim president of WIU in 2024 she was faced with a daunting $22 million operating deficit.
But she quickly made tough decisions that included laying off 89 faculty and staff members and the university’s financial picture has become stable for the time being. But additional challenges remain.
The latest is an existential one that has surfaced over the last several years: the value of college.
“Our biggest competitor at this point is the narrative that there is no value in a college degree,” Ms. Mindrup told the QCBJ editorial board. “So students who choose not to pursue a four-year degree that would have previously, that’s a loss-area for higher education, too, that we need to work on.”
Fortunately for the Quad Cities and WIU, Ms. Mindrup. who was named permanent president in December 2024, is up to the challenge. She and the board are ready “to right-shape and right-size” the institution to meet the “needs of the student population that we have now versus the student population that we had 10 years ago,” Ms. Mindrup said.
She is leaning into the core of the institution while seeking to invest in majors that are needed in the region and state.
“Western Illinois University was founded to meet the needs of teacher education in the west central Illinois region so we continue to do that and we will continue to innovate with those programs both to continue their success and also to ensure that they’re shaped in a way that they continue to be competitive with other institutions,” said Ms. Mindrup.
Other major areas of investment include expanding health care opportunities, and supporting WIU’s engineering and manufacturing program at WIU-QC.
Ms. Mindrup is the right person for this challenging position. She’s a Moline native. She is able to make tough decisions as indicated with the layoffs. She is committed to the Quad Cities. And she is seeking partnerships and advice on how to ensure that their degree programs “are aligned with current trends in business and manufacturing. Let’s continue to innovate, for what we want to create together.’
She is doing everything that a business leader should appreciate and respect in a regional institution of higher education.
Let’s help her succeed.
