- Planning Types
Planning Types
Focus Areas
-
A framework that helps you develop more effective planning processes.
- Challenges
Challenges
Discussions and resources around the unresolved pain points affecting planning in higher education—both emergent and ongoing.
Common Challenges
- Learning Resources
Learning Resources
Featured Formats
Popular Topics
- Conferences & Programs
Conferences & Programs
Upcoming Events
- Community
Community
The SCUP community opens a whole world of integrated planning resources, connections, and expertise.
Get Connected
Give Back
-
Access a world of integrated planning resources, connections, and expertise-become a member!
- Planning Types
Planning Types
Focus Areas
-
A framework that helps you develop more effective planning processes.
- Challenges
Challenges
Discussions and resources around the unresolved pain points affecting planning in higher education—both emergent and ongoing.
Common Challenges
- Learning Resources
Learning Resources
Featured Formats
Popular Topics
- Conferences & Programs
Conferences & Programs
Upcoming Events
- Community
Community
The SCUP community opens a whole world of integrated planning resources, connections, and expertise.
Get Connected
Give Back
-
Access a world of integrated planning resources, connections, and expertise-become a member!
Academic Planning
From adding a new major to changing degree requirements, decisions made regarding learning, teaching, and research reverberate throughout the college or university. Academic planning ensures these decisions work towards your college or university’s envisioned future.
What is academic planning?
Academic planning
glossary in higher education (also known as educational master planning or academic master planning) is planning that outlines a college’s or university’s overall academic goals and how those goals will be met. Academic planning identifies long-term and short-term objectives to match the mission of an institution with the needs of learners.
Academic planning usually answers four basic questions:
- Who is the intended student?
- What programs and services are needed to serve that student adequately and appropriately?
- What image or “brand” does the institution wish to project to the student?
- How will the institution know it is successful?
At some institutions, these decisions are documented in an academic plan. Even if an institution doesn’t have a formal academic plan, academic planning takes place when working on:
- Academic program planning
glossary (degrees, majors, certificates) for new and existing programs
- Research priorities
- Academic policy
- Assessment
- Academic structure
- Institution-wide learning outcomes or competencies
- Division or department goals
Why do academic planning?
Academic planning allows a higher education institution to:
- Match its academic offerings with the needs of learners
- Identify and commit to research priorities
- Position itself for sustainable success in the future
- Gain efficiencies in the short term
Why is integrated planning important for academic planning?
Integrated planning ensures that decisions made in other large planning initiatives, like the budget, IT planning, and campus planning, align with your academic plan.
Academic planning often has explicit links to other plans and initiatives in the institution, including:
- Student services
- Enrollment
- Career services
- Libraries
- Information technology
When viewed as a solely independent process, academic planning can be seen as the purview of only a few campus stakeholders. Integrated planning, with its emphasis on relationships, organizational alignment, and engagement of all stakeholders, helps to alleviate the problem of exclusivity in the planning process. By incorporating faculty, students, staff, alumni, and external partner points of view into the planning process, academic plans can be better aligned with the learning marketplace and responsive to the needs of learners.
Who does academic planning?
The work of academic planning often utilizes committees. Committees vary greatly in size and composition, but it is important that many different stakeholders are included in the process.
Typically:
Plan Development
- Faculty
- Provost
- Vice President for Academic Affairs
- Deans
- Department chairs
- Students
- External stakeholders
Approval
- President/Chancellor
- Governing board
When is academic planning done?
Typically, these plans are created/updated on a three-to-seven-year cycle. While a fixed schedule to review academic plans may be wise to have in place, there is a need for plans to be dynamic and able to respond to short-term environmental changes, including:
- Accreditation of new programs
- Re-accreditation of existing offerings
- Strategic planning
- Labor market needs
How is academic planning done?
Depending on the institution’s culture and history with planning, academic planning can take a top-down or bottom-up approach.
In the top-down approach, an institution’s top academic leadership develops a strategy and then works with the academic leadership of individual units/programs to create specific plans for specific disciplines.
In the bottom-up approach, individual unit/program plans are combined with other unit/program plans to create one unified plan for the institution.
Regardless of the approach, academic planning requires:
- Assembling a planning team or committee to guide the process
- Seeking broad stakeholder input
- Reviewing data about academic program performance
- Scanning the external environment to determine larger trends that will affect the institution’s research and teaching activities
- Determining goals and writing strategies to reach those goals
- Writing action plans
- Implementing, measuring, and modifying the plan
Learn how.
You’re invited to join the SCUP community toward learning and practicing integrated academic planning in higher education. Check out our related learning resources and upcoming events and courses below.
Interested in becoming a SCUP member? We have a place for you. Learn more and join us.
Join the conversation on the SCUP listserv.
Related Learning Resources
Planning for Higher Education Journal
Good Academic Planning Is What Happens . . .
The division of Academic Affairs at the University of West Georgia worked with SCUP to integrate academic planning with facilities, accreditation, budget, student affairs, and student success.Conference Recordings
Planning for Equity-Centered Transformation
We must abandon the traditional three- to five-year planning cycle in favor of combining a macro-planning approach with shorter-term sprints (quick-turnaround scenario planning flexibility) to meet the changing needs of our students and communities.Conference Recordings
Face to Face
We'll discuss how the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a public flagship university with a large residential population, changed instructional delivery across academics, educational, and residential spaces.Planning for Higher Education Journal
Streamlining the Process of Student Success and Persistence
A combination of course prerequisite simplification and focused efforts by academic advising and tutoring services, when and where needed most, can substantially improve student achievement and degree attainment.Tool
Academic Planning Assessment
From launching new degree programs to assessing learning outcomes, academic planning happens every day—even if it’s not in a documented academic plan. Use this assessment to determine how robust academic planning is at your institution . . . and identify areas for improvement.Conferences, Courses, and Workshops of Interest
Conference
Southern 2023 Regional Conference
October 1, 2023 - October 3, 2023
Houston, TXWhat's your biggest challenge?
Let us help you find the resources.
Accreditation PressuresStudent Success, Retention, and GraduationPlanning AlignmentCompeting PrioritiesWhy I’m a SCUP Member...
"I really enjoy SCUP and have learned an enormous amount from my involvement with the society. It creates the most organized, most well-thought-out and most well-planned events of any organization I have been involved in during my professional life. SCUP walks the talk!"Michael McGoffSenior Vice Provost and Chief Financial OfficerSUNY at Binghamton
Have content you’d like to share?Contact:Sadie WutkaDirector of Content Strategysadie.wutka@scup.org
734.669.3293