A Tale of Two Colleges.

Two Reputations. One Pattern.

Is it really a “communication” problem?

A new college president and marketing director I worked with kept hearing the same feedback from faculty and staff at every Board meeting:

“We have a communication problem.”

So they responded with more communication: more updates, a newsletter revamp, employee spotlights, etc., etc. And still, every month, the same complaint resurfaced.

When I asked, “What does communication mean to them?” the President and Communications Director gave me a knowing shrug. They weren’t sure either, so we dug in.

A few listening sessions and workshop later, it became clear: this wasn’t about communication at all. It was about trust. The bulked-up communications weren’t helping because years of leadership turnover and decisions hadn’t been addressed. They didn’t need more updates. They needed clarity, follow-through, and a sense that leadership actually heard them.

Skeptics to Sign-Ups

A four-year university and two community colleges on the East Coast decided to band together to promote their advanced manufacturing programs. On paper, everything checked out: strong workforce demand, good job placement, solid programs, and budget for advertising. Despite primed conditions, enrollment continued to lag while state and local employers expressed concern about the impact of unfilled jobs. 

A community perception survey revealed the deeper issue. Manufacturing had left the region decades ago. Layoffs disrupted entire families. And even to those not affected by the massive layoffs, “manufacturing” still meant oily, dirty, unstable jobs. Manufacturing as an industry in their region was in a bad way and the colleges had to turn it around. 

Once we identified and named the trust gap, we shifted their strategy. The collaborative created videos that showed what today’s manufacturing jobs actually look like with clean facilities, solid wages, real career paths, and paired them with specific program info right on their campaign landing page. Once the ads pointed to something tangible that directly addressed concerns, not just general promotion, enrollment went up across all three colleges.

These are two very different colleges, two different challenges. But they shared an unsuspecting blind spot: 

What looked like a communication issue was actually a breakdown in trust, and because no one named it, that trust gap quietly turned into a reputational risk.

Reputational risk grows quietly when trust is assumed and not examined. If you’re not paying attention to where trust is slipping, you’re not really managing your reputation. That’s why community colleges need to treat reputation as a strategic priority by first understanding where risk starts. 

Three Factors of Reputational Risk

Before we jump into the three core factors of reputational risk, it’s worth asking: who’s actually responsible for managing reputation at your college?

In most cases, no one owns it outright. Strategic planning happens every five years. Communications might lead the messaging, but not the operations. And many of the biggest forces shaping public perception like media narratives, policy shifts, or economic conditions are out of your direct control.

That’s exactly why recognizing reputational risk matters. You can’t manage what you’re not tracking. And you can’t be proactive about what you don’t see.

In a follow-up post, I’ll walk through how to actually track and manage these risks. But for now, it starts with knowing what to start monitoring.

1. The Reputation–Reality Gap

This is the disconnect between what an institution says about itself and what stakeholders actually experience. When a college’s messaging or promises aren’t matched by operations, service, or outcomes, credibility erodes. The bigger the gap, the greater the risk.

In this case, your college needs to improve its ability to meet expectations or reduce expectations by promising less. 

Here’s a quick exercise to check your messaging promises to start assessing the reputation-reality gap. 

2. Shifting Expectations

To really understand where your college stands, you have to evaluate both your reputation and your reality, side by side. That means looking at how you’re perceived and how you’re actually performing, using: 

• • • Context – how do we compare to others? (A quick reminder your competition is not just the university)
    • Objectivity – what would an outsider see?
    • Data – what does the evidence say?

What people expect from your college, whether it is students, staff, or the community, is constantly evolving. Yesterday’s definition of success will not cut it today.

One way I help colleges track these shifts is through the PROMISE Framework. It surfaces how external forces like policy, perception, and/or local industry changes shape public sentiment. If you’re looking for a real-world example, take a look at how Bismarck State College used this approach to stay ahead of reputational risk.

3. Weak Internal Coordination a.k.a. “Operating in Siloes”

Another major source of reputational risk is poor coordination of the decisions made by different college departments and functions. When different parts of the college aren’t aligned strategically or operationally, reputation suffers and trust breaks down. 

A common grumble from community college marketing teams is being left out of the decision to launch a new program, initiative, or college-wide change. They’re expected to build buy-in after the fact, but without context or coordination, that’s nearly impossible.

It’s a bit like being handed a half-baked casserole and told to go serve it. You didn’t pick the ingredients, you didn’t set the oven, and you definitely didn’t get time to cook it. But when it comes out underdone, you’re the one getting a chihuahua side-eye and trying to explain why it’s cold in the middle.

Setting up something as simple as a cross-functional marketing and/or enrollment committee gives you a place to spot risks, flag disconnects, and build real alignment. If your college already has a marketing and enrollment committee, review and discuss your college positioning pillars to get an understanding of what college-wide decisions could improve your positioning.

Tracking Reputation is Risk Management

When trust is the problem, communication alone isn’t the answer.
Your strategy has to start by rebuilding where trust was lost.

Reputation is how trust shows up at scale. And when we’re not tracking where trust is breaking down, we stay blind to reputational risks.

The factors that create those risks are clear:

• When reputation and reality don’t line up
• When expectations shift and you don’t shift with them
• When your teams aren’t aligned and you’re sending mixed signals

And since no one department owns reputation outright, it’s even more important to track where trust is breaking down, before it shows up in enrollment, funding, or credibility.

Start by asking:

• Where are we overpromising or underdelivering?
• What expectations have shifted that we haven’t acknowledged?
• Are our internal teams aligned with what we’re saying externally, and are we catching disconnects early?

If you want your reputation to hold and your strategy to actually work, you have to manage trust like the risk it really is.