Must-read: Get it while it's hot.

The Institute for Effective Governance of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has published a new, 20-page guide for trustees on how to strategically consider cost-cutting measures. Planners need to download and read this free PDF document so they know what it is their boards may be reading and learning from. This is a really a nice, compact overview of many planning issues which interrelate and should be integrated.

BE EMPOWERED. Remember that trustees are fiduciaries. Students, parents, stakeholders, and—for public universities—taxpayers depend on your vigi- lance and firmness. Trustees mustn’t be pressured by the invocation of “board discipline” or “board unity” into voting against their principles or conscience. It is not an act of courage to raise tuition. Trustees should be willing to close or consolidate programs, when appropriate. They should demand approval authority for significant expenditures, insisting on information in the planning stages and in time for rigorous review.

Beware of building and maintenance projects broken into multiple small units, masking large expenditures beneath seemingly routine activity. Think long and hard before entering into a contract—as some boards have—with a search firm that provides liberal expense allowances, and compensation that might approach the first-year salary of the CEO.

This piece is blurbed, "IT organizations at American colleges and universities are getting clever with cost cutting. Two IT leaders share some of the small, creative tactics they've used to save hundreds of thousands of dollars for their schools while actually managing to improve services for their constituents." Renegotiating phone rates, reducing printing, automating time-sucking routine tasks: There's not much new here, but it's a good resource to use to make sure your list is complete. We kind of liked the on-line "office supplies exchange" that lets departments which have too many red pens exchange them with another department which has too many black ones. Works for toner cartridges, too. Oh, and does any campus, anywhere in the US, still print a course catalogue?