4 students wearing face masks walking down the stairs

Higher Education

Amidst extraordinary uncertainty, BCG is helping higher education leaders build resilience, seize opportunities for growth, and discover new ways to differentiate their institutions.

Colleges and universities are facing declining enrollment, financial instability, and prolonged educational disruptions. A recent BCG survey found that 72% of college presidents are concerned about the perceived decrease in value of higher education. In short, colleges and universities are facing an existential crisis.

The changing nature of the higher education industry demands a strategy that is inclusive, collaborative, and resilient. BCG helps today’s leaders stay competitive by navigating key trends in higher education, such as:


Our Approach to Higher Education Consulting

BCG's higher ed consulting teams have decades of experience helping public and private institutions around the world to become more sustainable and resilient. We work shoulder to shoulder with clients during all stages of planning, enablement, and growth:

  • Planning. We support leaders as they set a strategic direction, develop a roadmap for growth, ensure racial equity and economic access, and discover new ways to differentiate from competitors.
  • Enablement. We offer new strategies to ensure maximum cost efficiency, improve student outcomes, simplify administrative structures, streamline governance, and drive effective fundraising.
  • Growth. We ensure that institutions are leveraging cutting-edge technologies and innovative solutions, launching new initiatives, and scaling up the most successful programs.

Our Higher Education Tools and Frameworks

We leverage a wide array of proprietary tools and analytical frameworks to create transformative change in the higher education industry, including:

""

BCG's Future Skills Architect Tool

Helps colleges and universities gauge the skills mismatch in their country’s labor supply, understand its root causes, and identify the policies that can erase the mismatch by promoting reskilling and lifelong learning.

universities-are-key-640x640-tcm9-172240.jpg

BCG's Higher Education Strategy Development Process

Analyzes dynamic trends in higher education—including financial, technology, and competitive pressures—to help schools measure their performance across key dimensions, such as academic excellence, student outcomes, financial insights, brand or reputation, access, and economic impact.

Explore Our Insights on Higher Education

Education as a Catalyst for Climate Progress Hero Rectangle
Report

Education as a Catalyst for Climate Progress

Education is a powerful means of spurring behavioral change and collective action, cultivating green skills, ensuring a just transition to a sustainable economy, and building communities’ adaptive capacity.

Women with headphones on sitting at desk
Article

Higher Ed Must Go All In on Digital

By investing in the cloud, data, and analytics, institutions can improve student success, operational efficiency, and innovation in research and learning.

Meet BCG’s Experts in Higher Education Consulting

BCG’s higher education consultants provide expertise across regions and industries. They are led by a global team of premier thought leaders in higher ed.

Subscribe to our Education E-Alert.