Scott Jaschik once again covers an important topic in a useful way. His story of the institutional direction planning for Augustana College (IL) touches all the bases. It's a story that has its parallels in the major challenges faced by small private institutions which did not, pre-recession, have large, highly noticed brands:

Now, in the face of the economic downturn, the college is making some adjustments -- which Steven C. Bahls, its president, calls the "post-recession strategic plan" for a liberal arts college. That means several new majors focused on pre-professional interests. With new majors, Bahls says the college may need, over time, to move away from a tradition (rare among American colleges) of paying faculty members equivalent salaries across disciplines; the plan also means symbolic and real steps to be sure that the college can attract diverse students, beyond its historic (and shrinking) base of Swedish Lutheran families.

No one will mistake Augustana for a vocational institute. Even with the changes, this is a college that offers numerous modern foreign languages as well as the classics, a college that, true to its immigrant roots, has a Scandinavian major and instruction in Swedish, a college with majors in philosophy and art history and theater at a time when such programs are being threatened at much larger and wealthier institutions. But the changes are nonetheless significant and, to some, jarring.

The Darden School at the University of Virginia did it. Now, the Anderson School of Management at UCLA wants to do it? Are "ideals" at risk? Imagine the planning going on behind the scenes! Here are:

An Inside Higher Ed story by Scott Jaschik;

A report on the Darden School's change from The Public Interest; and

Hhere's the Anderson school's strategic plan, which may be of interest, although we have been unable to find a draft copy of the specific plan for changing funding methods ... yet.

"The driver here is the decline in state support," said Judy D. Olian, dean of the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. She stressed that she did not view the shift as changing the business school's mission or its connection to the rest of UCLA or the UC system. At this point, she said, state support makes up only about 18 percent of the business school's $96 million annual budget, and she said that percentage overstates the contribution because much of the state support is tuition revenue that must go to the state first now before it is returned to the school. In a new model, that revenue would never leave the business school. In the end, the business school would truly lose less than $6 million a year, Olian said. In the 1970s, she said, about 70 percent of the business school's budget came from the state. "The decline makes it easier to say that the gap is not going to be large and we could overcome it," Olian said. And there's more to it than the dollars. Olian noted that California does not have a state budget for 2010-11 so she doesn't know what her budget will be for the year. It would be much better, she said, to have that information and plan accordingly -- and to raise more money from private sources to offset whatever is lost.

The BPP University College of Professional Studies, just created this week, is the first privately run university college in Britain in 30+ years and only the second in its history. A for-profit provider has been given the name and the institution. More.

So in steps the private sector, which can at least take those who can afford its significantly higher prices. BPP focuses on providing bankable qualifications such as law, accounting and business (the name refers to the initials of the three accountants who set it up). Students studying accounting at its business school in London, as well as those engaged in distance learning, reckon that its pricey courses are generally regarded by employers as being of higher quality than those in many public-sector universities.

BPP also competes in the lucrative market for postgraduate education. This is unregulated, so state-funded universities charge hefty fees for masters degrees and then use the money to help subsidise their loss-making undergraduate provision. BPP has no need for such cross-subsidies, so it can spend almost all of what postgraduate students pay on teaching them.

Philip Altbach is noted in this Chronicle of Higher Education article for saying that Manipal's uniqueness is that its plans essentially make large-scale globalization of higher education into a different animal, broadening the current circumstances where the US and the UK rule basically everything. It is something new - an institution "born in a developing country and focusing on students in other developing nations."

Manipal studies potential markets carefully. Places with a large South Asian population get close consideration since families are likely to have heard of the university. The company also wants to enter markets with a growing, aspirational middle class. Mr. Sudarshan says he is focusing now on emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.

Finally, Manipal's officials look for places where there is a demand for Manipal's core expertise: medicine and engineering.

"It is not risky for us; it is taking advantage of our capability," says Mr. Sudarshan of the company's expansionist strategy.

 Click on the title, A New Kind of Global University, to access the resource described above.