Learning Resources

Abstract: This article surveys the impact of state oversight and fiscal policy on universities’ revenue structures with special attention to tuition and state appropriations. It highlights the difficulties that arise for financial planners who face increasing state oversight, diminishing state support, and significant reliance on increases in tuition and fees. It also considers the impacts of restrictive state fiscal policies on financial planning. The author suggests that as institutional planners seek out the factors affecting revenues, it is sensible for them to consider the consequences of state oversight and state fiscal policy in their assessment of the internal and external fiscal environments.

Abstract: In this article we discuss the organizational impact of an academic unit’s move from an old adapted structure to a new building constructed specifically to meet its needs. We emphasize the interaction of user agency and building influence as the faculty sought ways to enact group values and goals in a new space that promoted some and frustrated others. In conclusion we discuss specific examples of the interaction between agency and influence and propose steps that planners and users might take prior to and following a building transition to better promote congruence between the purposes of academic units and the spaces that support them.

Abstract: The study presented in this article investigated the state of the diversity budget at the nation’s flagship institutions during an economic recession. The sample included higher education administrators who oversaw a diversity budget at their respective institution and who were familiar with the state of budget cuts. Results indicate that 53 percent (17) of diversity units have experienced some type of cut in their operating budget. While many experienced some form of budget cut, when compared with other areas within the institution, the amount of the cut in diversity areas was not as significant as that in other areas.

Abstract: The issue of better measurement of faculty productivity is securing increasing attention from national and state sources. Most discussion of this important topic focuses solely on the instructional component of how faculty spend their time. Productivity, to be assessed more completely, needs to be unbundled into its three component parts: instruction, research, and service. In addition, productivity alone is inadequate as a measure of faculty outcomes; what is required is a coupling of output with quality indicators. This article disaggregates productivity into its three parts and suggests quality measures to provide a fuller explanation of institutional behavior.

Abstract: Management author and professor Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” Given the extraordinary demands on higher education to adopt strategies that deliver better results with fewer resources and the common resistance of our institutions to strategic change, leaders and planners would do well to actively engage in processes of cultural change. This requires three things: a genuine understanding of the origins of institutional culture as expressed in the “deep architecture” of our colleges and universities; a systematic approach to initiating “courageous conversations” throughout the institution, leveraged by evidence that creates both hope and despair; and a willingness to reengineer the deep architecture around a new set of design principles, displacing the old culture with a new, intentional, emerging culture built on new working theories.