Cooperation Might Be
Your Best Bet for Funding
By Rob Minearo

Higher education is just beginning to fully understand the challenges that have been caused by the many disastrous and devastating events plaguing academia since the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. Tragic events, like 9/11, the Virginia Tech shootings, Hurricane Katrina, and the recent shootings at Northern Illinois University, have forced senior management at colleges and universities to reevaluate how they manage their campuses, and how they can find funds to make their schools safe.

Grants and scholarships are awarded to academic endeavors, but not necessarily to colleges and universities struggling to make their campuses safe with comprehensive emergency preparedness plans.

Since 9/11, and, more importantly, since Hurricane Katrina, the role of local, regional, and national government in funding emergency preparedness on campus has become more in focus. There are lines being drawn between funding emergency training and funding emergency implementation that are just now being realized, and there are gaps in what colleges and universities might expect from the government and from organizations that fund campus emergency preparedness.

After 9/11 higher education awakened to the urgent need to reevaluate its overall emergency preparedness, but the funds that colleges and universities need in order to pay for campus safety have not caught up to those needs. To understand how the funding model has been slow to adapt to the new needs of institutions, we need to take a look at how emergencies were considered pre-9/11, and how they might be considered now.

Before 9/11, emergencies on campus were mostly internal incidents. These individual incidents were mainly managed by campus police and fire departments, local police and fire departments, and/or contracted security services. After 9/11 campus safety expanded to encompass such a vast array of risks that a single law enforcement agency or fire department is now only part of the overall comprehensive emergency plan that colleges and universities may be required to draft.

The campus emergency funding model has not really caught up to the new needs of higher education because it still takes mostly a bit-by-bit approach to emergency preparedness. Most grants are awarded for individual products and/or services that are only part of the bigger emergency preparedness picture.

The present funding model separates even more when considering the emergency preparedness needs of a state institution versus a private college or university, because these two academic worlds within the world of higher education are not equals in regard to federal emergency preparedness funding.

During Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), formerly a very low profile government agency, was put in a very bright spotlight. Katrina revealed that our national emergency preparedness came up drastically short in reacting to the devastating effects of a huge natural disaster.

Due to the lack of comprehensive emergency funding, many of the small American towns that dot the coast of the Gulf of Mexico are still digging themselves out of the rubble. Despite the unfavorable publicity surrounding FEMA’s management of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it should be pointed out that the federal agency has an expansive and broad support system for emergencies at all levels.

Many persons may perceive FEMA to be a proactive disaster rescue agency, similar to the Coast Guard or the Red Cross, but this is a misconception. FEMA was set up to be a reactive federal agency, coming in after the disaster to reestablish normal local, state, and federal systems. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which now oversees FEMA, was set up after 9/11 to secure our nation from new and expanded international threats, but DHS is still a drastically under-funded mandate.

DHS has set up a funding model that allots funds to each DHS state office. Each state office is allocated funds depending on its national security risk. States are not allotted equal funds, but the grant funding model is generally similar in scope.

Colleges and universities are not recognized as independent organizations that need specific funding for comprehensive DHS emergency preparedness grants. State institutions are combined with other state government organizations for funding.

An important shortfall for DHS funding is the line between emergency preparedness plan implementation and emergency preparedness training. DHS does not grant funds to colleges and universities to implement comprehensive emergency preparedness plans on campuses. However, the department does grant funds to help colleges and universities establish educational extension programs to train our future emergency preparedness experts.

It is really hard to tell at this point if this “help colleges learn how to fish” policy is working, but the policy is creating a vacuum for comprehensive emergency preparedness programs. Colleges and universities, especially very small colleges, are under an enormous amount of pressure to create a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan without the funds to really do so.

Many schools might still be playing a game of Russian roulette with comprehensive emergency preparedness, hoping that whatever happens next on a campus happens somewhere else.

To further clarify how the funding models pre-9/11 and now are similar we should take a look at the Department of Criminal Justice (DCJ), which allots grants to state-only college or university police and security forces. The DCJ funding model takes into consideration training, products, and/or services for campus law enforcement, but does not address the larger emergency preparedness picture. Over the last few years the DCJ has gone under the knife with its own funding and is coming up short in properly addressing the needs of state campus law enforcement.

This bit-by-bit approach to funding emergency preparedness can be mirrored throughout the country with other private, local, state, and federal organizations that fund emergency preparedness needs. Organizations and companies that supply higher education with emergency products and/or services have, in some small part, begun to fill the vacuum that has been created by expanded threats to our nation’s colleges and universities.

After Virginia Tech the very large international world of emergency products and/or services took note of the now-imperative need colleges and universities have for comprehensive emergency preparedness. Previously most had focused primarily on government and private corporate emergency preparedness needs. The bulk of these companies are still adjusting to the rhythm of academia, and the higher level of service and support colleges and university require from their vendors.

There are many companies that have been supporting higher education with emergency products and/or services for years, and these companies stand out from the rest in very significant ways. The level of service, training, and implementation of an emergency product a company is providing a prospective institution can be a key indicator. This indicator can help senior management on campuses gauge the level of understanding and sensitivity a vendor might have for a college or university’s emergency needs.

Many of these companies have taken on the additional service of working with schools to find grants, private funding, product leasing, and other creative ways to pay for the products and/or services they are providing to institutions. The hundreds of companies that supply emergency products and/or services extend across a broad spectrum of campus emergency needs. A company might provide a single low cost product or line of products which cost only in the hundreds of dollars, where other companies may provide a comprehensive approach to emergency preparedness that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A company or organization that also provides funding solutions to colleges and universities for its products and/or services might provide a funding solution that is as broad as its product and/or service dictates.

The picture being painted on the national higher education emergency preparedness landscape might look bleak at first glance, but there are positive aspects rising on the horizon in the form of cooperation. It’s clear that a small college, particularly a small private college, might have a tough time finding the funds, expertise, products, and services that it needs to secure its campus with a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan. One important solution to its campus safety needs could be working together with other colleges and universities in a higher education consortium or a mutual emergency aid agreement, such as the one forged recently in Connecticut among five small private colleges.

Economy of scale is a business mantra that unfortunately dictates what campus will receive the emergency support, emergency products, or emergency services that are needed, and which campus will not. A small college that is struggling to meet its immediate academic needs most likely does not have the funds for the broader emergency preparedness picture. Participation in a cooperative emergency preparedness endeavor with other colleges and universities gives that college an improved opportunity to make its campus safe.

Of all the articles I have written during my twenty year career in publishing, I found this one to be among the hardest to write. When we started the process a year ago of creating this emergency preparedness issue of Higher Education Consortia magazine we wanted to supply a complete emergency preparedness funding solution for colleges and universities. What we found, after talking with many experts and senior managers across a broad spectrum of both public and private emergency industries and organizations, was that there are gaps that still need to be filled. We at Higher Education Consortia magazine hope that this article, and this issue, will add another voice to higher education’s urgent appeal for help with comprehensive emergency preparedness.

Rob Minearo is the publisher of Higher Education Consortia magazine. He can be reached at 860-429-0420, or at rob@collegebenefitspublishing.com.