Apprising a Tuition Rise at School

Communicating about Uncertainty, Ethics, Risk Communication 0 comments

Termi de Caracalla, Rome - Italy

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña (2019)

Apprising a Tuition Rise at School

Communicating increase risk brought about by the pandemic

The current state of affairs in language learning and higher education institutions cannot be compared to a bleak island where everything in a 360° panoramic view seems to be the same. The present pandemic has brought abrupt changes not only to the way classes are being taught but the investment needed by students to pay their tuition at colleges and language centers. In a speedy journey through local language schools and private universities, the organizations decided to subsidize tuition fees by providing students with juicy discounts that later seriously impacted the corporate finances and labor force being laid off. Then, how do education companies communicate their stakeholders that subsidies are not perennial and that they have to be adjusted or eliminated?

If there is a crash on the market, companies can cope with bad news straightforwardly, but what about students? How can schooling consortiums deliver potential bad news to employees and other stakeholders such as learners regarding adjustments in tuitions? It looks like the risk communication is the way to go; communicating every interested party about the current uncertainty on the market is the most honest, genuine, and ethical decision that needs to be made because, as stated by Cleaveland, Newman, J., & Weber, S. (2020), “risk communications are more important than ever during the current pandemic.” Institutions must leave their hearth and home to embrace risk communication and use it as their whetstone to sharpen their social media communication campaign and educate the public to read bad news positively despite the paradox this statement implies.

What are the side effects of not communicating about uncertainty in the education business especially when it comes to a tuition increment? The fallouts of an ineffecitive assessement of a corportation regarding risk management can directly impact stakeholders and employees, and this will be seen in terms of a trust deficit growth in the institution’s custormers and regulators. What is then expected to happen in social media outlets is a wrestling match in earnest where detractors will try to weaken the education corporations because it looks like they do not know what the short-term and long-term budgetary consequences in the educative consortiums are. The inaction in trying to use a risk communication approach to a tuition increase, -because of the direct and indirect pandemic effects-, can bring economic, labor, social, and cultural repercussions in the organizations’ credibility in the eyes of stakeholders.

Stakeholders can expect changes in tuition in the education companies they are stutying at, but they need to comprehend why these increases are happening by always bringing the bright side of the institution. “Communicating uncertainty requires identifying the facts relevant to recipients’ decisions, characterizing the relevant uncertainties, assessing their magnitude, drafting possible messages, and evaluating their success” (Fischhoff & Davis, 2014). To have everything in readiness, the education corporations can inform how the market ranks studying at them compared to other consortiums on the very same market (a fact relevant to recipients’ decisions to choose an institution). Despite the economic turmoils a country may be experiencing, the organization can strengthen the importance of getting an education or studying a given subject (like learning English) and how the area of study continues to be current even though the country’s economy is stagnated (characterizing the relevant uncertainties), and this has to be part of the message companies put out in the media. And what about the impact if stakeholders decide not to continue? In this case it is crucial to tell them how the lives of other citizens have been positively impacted in job hunting, job opportunities, niches in the market, and the employability scene that can be foreseen on the market in the months to come (assessing the magnitude of the current state of affairs in the country).

As stated by Cleaveland, Newman, J., & Weber, S. (2020), any corporation has to “stop improvising.” Based on their recommendation, “firms will never be able to reduce uncertainty to zero, but they can commit to engaging with customers around uncertainty in systematic, predicatable ways” (Cleaveland, Newman, J., & Weber, S., 2020). So if no longer does a education consortium stand on the prow of the success sun barge of yesteryear, the institution has to fight customers’ trust deficit by drafting possible messages on social media, radio and TV avoiding notification fatigue that will cause stakeholders to switch off from an open conversation with them (possible messages); this has to be worked around with social media and media communication specialits to have students continue to believe in the education idea behind the organizations’ missions and visions.

If these steps are not followed, the full potential to retain current learners or have new students will hot be harnessed! Companies need to “design for risk communication from the beginning” (Cleaveland, Newman, J., & Weber, S., 2020) to evaluate communications’ success. “Decision making involves uncertainty. Some of that uncertainty concerns facts” (Fischhoff & Davis, 2014). For this reason corporations need to ask themselves, what will happen if they increase tuiton feeds now or suspend subsidies? This can bring some good ideas to the work table from various departments in the consortiums to help draft how this can be communicated to all cohorts of students and stakeholders. But let us not forget what Fischhoff & Davis (2014) stated; some of the decisions made around uncertainty are related to “values.” Institutions must ask themselves, too, what they want when they cannot have everything they used to have before a crisis. The secret to success on the market lies in harnessing the power of risk communication to have a customer trust surplus and not to be perceived as efforts to shield economic problems the organizations are facing and the doubts the decision makers have.

References

Cleaveland, A., Newman, J., & Weber, S. (2020, September 24). The Art of Communicating Risk. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2020/09/the-art-of-communicating-risk

Fischhoff, B., & Davis, A. (2014, September 16). Communicating Scientific Uncertainty. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_4/13664#:~:text=Communicating%20uncertainty%20requires%20identifying%20the,messages%2C%20and%20evaluating%20their%20success.