Grounded in the Powers Index™ of College and University Performance, a framework for identifying early signs of institutional strength and vulnerability before they show up in the numbers. Supported by the Institute for Effectiveness in Higher Education® and hosted by Kristina 'KP' Powers, PhD.

Prager Partners Managing Director AJ Prager has spent nearly a decade building one of the only dedicated M&A advisory practices in higher education, guiding colleges and universities through mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships at every point on the spectrum. In this conversation, he walks through the strategic transaction framework his firm uses to define mission before it ever identifies a potential partner, why confidentiality works completely differently in higher ed than in corporate M&A, and why the reception to partnership has shifted markedly among presidents and boards since 2023. It's a candid look at what actually happens before an institution ever announces a partnership, for any leader wondering whether their institution has the capacity to go it alone.

This series is designed for leaders, practitioners, and institutional partners committed to building learning systems that translate expertise into opportunity.

KEY INSIGHTS

• Partnership conversations should start by defining an institution's mission attributes (programmatic, geographic, demographic, financial) before a single potential partner is identified, not after.
• Confidentiality works structurally differently in higher ed M&A than in corporate M&A: shared governance and faculty voice mean institutions can rarely "hang a for sale sign," so outreach happens through targeted, one-to-one conversations instead of a public process.
• Partnership exists on a spectrum, from a full merger of two institutions down to a lightweight cost-sharing or articulation agreement between separate legal entities, not a binary merge-or-don't decision.
• Higher education is a fixed-cost business, and scale drives efficiency; presidents and boards who once viewed partnership as a last resort are increasingly viewing it as a proactive way to amplify mission.

Powers Index™ Signal(s) in Focus

• Partners — whether companies, providers, or institutional collaborators meaningfully extend an institution's capacity, or introduce complexity, cost, and fragmentation without value. This conversation applies that signal to the highest-stakes version of partnership: full institutional mergers and combinations.
• Executive Leadership — whether senior leaders provide sustained strategic direction and make disciplined decisions that persist over time, rather than reopening the same partnership question every budget cycle.

Key Resources

• KP on IE newsletter (on Substack)
• Kristina 'KP' Powers, PhD — EdUp Institutional Effectiveness podcast host
• Institute for Effectiveness in Higher Education®
• Powers Index of College & University Performance™