Learning Resources

Abstract: Critics of strategic planning question whether it is a useful tool or a counterproductive management fad. This article reviews the experience of a university that has one of higher education’s longest continuous experiences with a strategic planning process and places it in the context of the literature on higher education planning. The article concludes that a long-term commitment to strategic planning—clearly defined in its broad parameters but flexible and adaptive in its details—can be productive.

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: The quality of campus life in large universities has declined over the years as faculty have given up responsibility for student life outside the classroom and institutions have become ever more bureaucratized. To solve this problem, universities should establish systems of small, decentralized academic communities modeled ultimately on the residential colleges of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the United States, Harvard and Yale Universities first adopted this residential college model in the 1930s, and it is now spreading to many institutions, public and private, large and small.

Abstract: Increasingly, historic or merely old houses near campuses are being absorbed by universities to fulfill their educational mission and round out the facilities inventory. But are they worth converting? Experts in assessing and adapting these residential structures discuss the pro's and con's.

Abstract: Asserts that planning is a tool, not a replacement for sound campus management. Using three case studies, two at Tufts University and one at Dean College, the author provides commentary on the usefulness of formal participatory planning in effecting change. In one instance, formal participatory planning was used, in the second it was avoided, and in the third, it was partially employed. Concludes with a reflection on the lessons that may be drawn from each of these examples.