This working paper is attracting interest for its examination of an area seen by many as difficult to examine: productivity (or not) and its causes. With the need for more productivity that is currently highlighted by federal and state governments, and by large philanthropies affiliated with higher education, this is a topic that promises to be in our top ten for the next few years.

The entire 50-page document can be downloaded here (PDF). A discussion of it, titled "Unconventional Wisdom," can be found here. And a very nice blog post, titled "Cst-Effectiveness, or Cost?," examining the discussion of it can be found here. Its abstract reads:

Productivity in academic degrees granted by American colleges and universities is declining. While there is some evidence this is caused by an uncontrollable cost disease, we examine two additional explanations. First, few popular programs and strategies in higher education are cost-effective, and those that are may be underutilized. Second, a lack of rigorous evidence about both the costs and effects of higher education practices intersects with a lack of incentive to use cost-effectiveness as a way to guide decision-making. Rather than simply a cost disease, we argue that the problem is more a system disease—one that is partly curable.

Sheila Croucher studies nations and nationalism. She sees strong parallels between "academic disciplines and departments in universities, on the one hand, and modern nation-states in the international system, on the other," and writes in this essay about how consideration of those parallels might be helpful in making institutional change happen. This thought-provoking piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education is a must-read. Unfortunately, you may find that you need either a subscription or to purchase a day pass to get at the entirety of it.

No blood has been or, one hopes, will be shed over questions of university restructuring. Still, some of the discourse about disciplinary identity and departmental belonging—how they might be threatened by possible institutional change, and why both must be preserved at all costs—can sound primordial. We know, even more clearly than we do with nations, that academic disciplines and departments are inventions. They have been constructed in specific historical contexts and shaped by specific sociopolitical, economic, and institutional circumstances.

But we also know, as with nation-states, that many people care deeply about their disciplinary identities and departmental belonging, and that many of the leaders of what we might call "academic nation-states" will endeavor to protect and promote their constituencies—often appropriately so. At my institution, the College of Arts and Science is engaging in a process of restructuring, and in the early weeks of our discussions, fear seemed rampant. Smaller departments hunkered down, anticipating annexation by larger ones with allegedly imperial ambitions, and some chairs heroically proclaimed their commitment to defend the borders of the department of X. Even departments with histories of dysfunction were loath to explore the possibility of reorganization. Some chairs and faculty members assumed that departmental reorganization would lead to the dissolution of disciplines. Others offered ideas for innovative curricular or pedagogical change, but those ideas typically resided within the departmental boundaries.

Dickeson insists that this type of honest communication and streamlined process takes a strong alliance of leadership and buy-in from the campus community. “As I’ve indicated, the CAO, CBO, and CEO have to be aligned for this process to work—each is a principal stakeholder in both the process and the outcome. … By reallocating resources from weaker to stronger programs, the CAO can see the possibilities for strengthening the overall institution, a concept that should motivate us all.”

Read about three institutions that have undertaken academic program review. These case studies detail how one campus initiated ongoing academic review and has reaped the collaborative benefits for a decade, how another handled inevitable personnel issues, and how a third found that following a community’s vision can serve as a navigation tool through state budget shortfalls.