Abstract:

The international health tragedy of 2020, the COVID pandemic, caused severe consequences in higher education institutions. The ethnographic study, conducted for one year at a midwestern bilingual college in the United States, explored the continuous use of the pandemic to rationalize the administrative deficiencies carried out for years by the institutional leadership. Although the pandemic forcedly imposed organizational changes, they were also confirmed as management excuses to protect academic leadership from systematic failures. Enrollment practices, for example, became the scapegoat nationally. Reframing admission strategies and academic advising were transformed into student attraction machinery. Thirdly, stackable certificates are returned, and online education incurs unthinkable technology expenses to save failing institutions. While acknowledging the disruptive impact of the pandemic, it is essential to examine how the administrators handled the situation. Administrators often overshadowed strategic organizational alterations using the pandemic as a pretext to cover up the structural shortcomings of management and leadership techniques. Opportunities to restore and regrow institutions emerged after the pandemic; however, administrators’ inability to see and take advantage of these prospects contributed to the downfall of these institutions. Instead of being forward thinkers, the administration shifted their efforts to internal organizational issues. The ethnographic research methodology used different ways to collect and analyze exploratory data. Each method used was designed to solicit a particular kind of information from participants. The data collection and analysis methods included participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and field notes. For example, live examples of school closures provided data to contrast with the unit of analysis investigated. As a result of the data analysis, the study showed evidence of a reduction in student enrollment, loss of the impact of educating the targeted population, missing opportunities from strategic vision, loss of the original name of the organization that the founders registered in the 70s, losing funding and student aid, decrease in talent and employee retention due to lack of trust in the leaders among others. In the final remarks, we found that if the leaders do not get out of this phase of the blame game and do not focus on the critical areas of improvement, the institution may end up closing its doors and dissolve its entity or merge with another institution and lose its name altogether. In either case, the college president must leave the organization. Amidst the pandemic, numerous opportunities for strategic growth continue to be overlooked as administrators become more absorbed in internal organizational matters. This study underscores the critical juncture when administrators could have formulated and implemented post-COVID strategies for revival, regaining momentum, regrouping resources, and fostering growth. The consequences of continued blame on external factors are explored and demonstrated, as well as how it resulted in the institution's closing, partial sell-off, or even complete merger with a larger institution, leading to a loss of the institutional identity. Administrators must adopt a proactive approach and focus on critical areas of improvement.

Keywords:

Post-Pandemic Strategies, Education Administrators' Failures, Institutional Sustainability, Organizational Resilience, Strategic Growth Opportunities