Learning Resources

Abstract: One of the major issues in strategic planning is moving the academic strategic plan from planning to implementation. This article suggests that there are several effective implementation methods: using the budget, using participation, using force, establishing goals and key performance indicators, working within the human resource management system, using the reward system, using faculty and staff development, working with institutional culture, working with or around tradition, developing and using change champions, and building on systems that are ready for or are easily adaptable to strategic change.

Abstract: This article reports on a methodology long used by The Texas A&M University System—notably the campuses of Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University-College Station—to monitor the efficiency with which their resources are employed in the enterprise. Others can now use these concepts to respond to and prepare for these new fiscal realities, to react before institutional weakness becomes too enervating, and to help constructively shape the changes that are coming, rather than simply react to them. Concomitant with that methodology is a proposed model to apply these findings to examine complex financial issues that currently influence higher education and will continue to do so during the next decade.