Learning Resources

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Telling the Untold Stories

George Mason University Frames the Conversation Around Its Institutional Namesake and His Legacy

Through historical study, outreach, and education, undergraduate students at George Mason University began research that developed into the Enslaved Children of George Mason Project. The goal was to broaden the university narrative, encourage discussion about American ideals of equality and freedom, and transform a complex historical legacy and memorial into an inclusive campus place for reflection and dialogue.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

‘Smart Change’ for Turbulent Times

Planning for Survival Requires Speed, Flexibility, and Committed Leadership

Higher education faces a very real threat today. In confronting the fallout from COVID-19, colleges and universities are pushed toward making a transformative change. What will that require? A commitment to adaptation, innovation, change management, meeting the most critical student needs, and leaders who stand up to the challenges.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Strategic Mergers in Higher Education

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Is Higher Education Ready for Its Learners?

Impact Student Success Using the Three-Box Solution

With sweeping shifts in recruitment and retention of students throughout higher education, Northern Kentucky University committed to a pivot. Its new student framework emphasizes student support and academic delivery driven by strategic decisions and data rather than by impulsivity. Their Success by Design framework encouraged innovations that focused the university on meeting learners where they were.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Promoting Engagement in Strategic Planning

Southeast Community College Used FAST Goals to Capture Stakeholder Interest

Creating a positive, reflective, inclusive, and transparent institutional climate facilitated improved engagement in and ownership of strategic and departmental planning. The process of using FAST goals (frequently discussed, ambitious, specifically measured, and transparent) produced constructive outcomes.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Rebooting a COVID-19-Stalled Strategic Planning Process

Try Reframing Traditional Assumptions with These Four Steps

The current pandemic presents an opportunity to pivot from planning for an unknown future to designing solutions for our “wicked” problems. Results-based strategic design offers tools for an alternative planning process that addresses constraints, constituent needs, experimental solutions, behavior change, and the energy of early adopters.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Reduce Curriculum Costs While Increasing Student Enrollment

Optimizing Academic Balance Analyses Let Kentucky Institutions Stay Competitive

Results of the study supplied evidence needed to support tough institutional decisions. The 13 Kentucky colleges and universities that participated in the research now have critically important data to use in making choices about how they best serve their students, maximize scarce resources, and sustain financial stability.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Totally Virtual

Northcentral University’s School of Business Succeeded in Integrated Strategic Planning in an All-Distance Environment

In the context of a fully online institution, how do you collaborate to strategically plan? You leverage online tools and techniques to keep widely distributed and separated-by-a-distance team members engaged in the process.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

The Convergence of Gaming and Learning

Higher Education Should Pivot to a Game-Based Instruction Model

It’s time for the virtual gaming principles of enjoyment, autonomy, leadership, and curiosity to be designed into the higher education classroom experience. That’s because students, with their technological nativism, will soon be demanding the enhancement in order to be workforce and life ready.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Can You Trust Your Eyes?

Learn How to Minimize Misinterpretation of Data Reports and Visualizations

Volumes of data are available to administrators to support decision-making. But that doesn’t mean that what’s been presented is accurate. When data are misused or misconstrued, senior leaders at higher education institutions may make the wrong conclusions, ineffective policies may be enacted, and students may not be successful in completing their academic goals.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Business Practices in Higher Education

A Guide for Today’s Administrators

Although the authors seem to write primarily for student affairs administrators, the book represents an important effort to meet the need for solid analysis for new generations of higher education leadership in all areas.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Guide for Optimizing Resource Allocation

Link Assessment, Strategic Planning, and Budgeting to Achieve Institutional Effectiveness

By connecting assessment, strategic planning, and budgeting processes, the real needs and priorities of an institution are revealed. Colleges and universities can adapt the provided, step-by-step framework to their own institutional structure and methods.