A Conversation with Dr. Claude Lilly, President of Presbyterian College
February 16, 2015
By Alan Cooper
MidlandsBiz:
Where have you worked prior to becoming President of Presbyterian College?
Claude Lilly:
Most of my professional experience has been at large educational institutions. I have extensive administrative and teaching experience at Texas Tech University, the University of Southern California, Florida State University and at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I was dean of the Belk College of Business Administration. Immediately prior to joining the team at Presbyterian College (PC), I was the dean at the College of Business and Behavioral Sciences at Clemson University.
When the Presbyterian College opportunity came up, we agreed this was a wonderful opportunity for us. We love it here.
MidlandsBiz:
What is unique about PC?
Claude Lilly:
PC is like a family. We have a 13:1 student-to-faculty ratio. I have never seen such a dedicated faculty as the one here at PC. Their number one priority is helping the students. They make themselves available to the students when they need extra help. They often have students over for dinner. Those are not things that you typically see at larger universities.
Dr. Lilly talks about what makes Presbyterian College unique
Claude Lilly from MidlandsBiz on Vimeo.
MidlandsBiz:
Not many colleges in the United States have a religious affiliation in their name.
Claude Lilly:
Among our grouping of schools in the United States, I believe that we are the only one that still has the word “Presbyterian” in its name. We view this as a positive, and we have no intention of changing our name. We do not require our students or faculty to be Presbyterian, but we are proud of being a Presbyterian college.
MidlandsBiz:
There is enormous pressure today to link education with a future career. How does a liberal arts college like PC respond to that challenge?
Claude Lilly:
The average student who graduated last May will have eleven jobs in his or her career. Nobody knows what that eleventh job is going to look like. Our task is not to train students for their first job, but to prepare them for a lifetime of critical thinking in a series of jobs.
We also focus on preparing our students for their next degree—for success at the graduate level. A significant portion of our students go on to advanced degrees, such as pharmacy, law, medicine, and MBA programs. PC also has an amazing three-year program in physics that is a tremendous springboard into an engineering program.
MidlandsBiz:
A recent Business Week article estimated that within fifteen years half of the liberal arts schools in the country will be gone. What is PC’s strategy for survival?
Claude Lilly:
At the moment, demographics are working against all universities. Between now and 2018, the number of students who are eligible for college will drop. The next several years will be challenging, but after 2018, we see plenty of opportunity for growth.
Liberal arts schools need to clearly define their mission, develop a strategic plan, and execute that plan. That is how you assure your survival and why I think Presbyterian College will be here 100 years from now.
There are two key components to our strategic plan. The first is health care. We strongly believe that a whole range of new opportunities will open up for students in the health care arena over the next decade. Going back to our Presbyterian roots, the expansion of the health care programs is a perfect fit for our tradition of service to society. We started a Pharmacy School (that recently was accredited) that has now graduated its first class. We are looking to start a physician’s assistant program, and we will add other health care related programs further down the road.
The other key component of our strategy is improving and expanding our facilities. If you do not have good facilities, students are not going to come to your school. We are in the process right now of redoing some of our major dormitories and our major classroom facilities. We are very fortunate to have a lot of land here, 240 acres, that will allow us to grow if necessary.
Dr. Lilly talks about the key components to the strategic plan.
Claude Lilly 2 from MidlandsBiz on Vimeo.
MidlandsBiz:
How do you measure success? Is it rankings?
Claude Lilly:
There is a ranking for just about everything these days, so you have to take them with a grain of salt. That said, we are proud that our Pharmacy School ranks number 65 in the country in terms of National Institutes of Health research grants. That’s a very quick move for a school that was accredited just this past summer.
I am more concerned about the quality of the programs at PC, than rankings. The best measure of success is seeing how well our students do in life.
MidlandsBiz:
What are the main financial drivers of private schools such as Presbyterian College?
Claude Lilly:
Private schools are driven by two main components: tuition and fundraising.
A big concern for liberal arts schools today is the discount rate on tuition that many schools offer in order to attract students. One of the misconceptions, on the part of the public, revolves around the true cost of going to college. The listed tuition might be $44,000 a year, but when you look a little deeper, the student only pays $20,000 because the discount is so deep. This is good for a student, but it is a challenge for a college or university because it has a significant impact on revenue. Every school has to find a tuition level where it can attract quality students, but that generates enough revenue to offer a quality product.
In order to improve our facilities, we will need to have a successful capital campaign. I am confident we can do that. We are in the midst of working with a consultant to ascertain out how much we can raise, what the timeframe will be and how we will go about approaching donors. Once that report is done, we will pick a start date for the campaign.
In today’s environment, most presidents are spending a significant amount of their time fundraising.
