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Sustaining Change in Higher Education

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Title: Sustaining Change in Higher Education


1
Sustaining Change in Higher Education
  • J. Douglas Toma
  • Associate Professor
  • Institute of Higher Education
  • University of Georgia
  • May 28, 2004

2
Challenges to Higher Education
  • In both Europe and the U.S., higher education
    faces ferocious cost pressures vigorous
    competition for the best faculty, staff, and
    students more diverse and demanding students
    and new, disruptive technologies.
  • An increasing number of strong for-profit,
    accredited institutions are growing rapidly,
    taking away part the most lucrative student
    markets and expanding into the student base of
    some established colleges and universities.
  • Furthermore, there are growing demands for
    greater accountability, improved governance, and
    increased efficiencies.

3
Responses by Higher Education
  • The challenges of the contemporary economic and
    political environment require colleges and
    universities worldwide to be more effective as
    organizations by adapting more rapidly to change
    and using resources more efficiently.
  • Institutions have reacted by attempting to be
    more efficient, responsive, and market-sensitive.
    But the challenges remain formidable.

4
Building Organizational Capacity
  • In response to these conditions, Building
    Organizational Capacity (BOC) seeks to help
    colleges and universities realize institutional
    effectiveness over the long term, even through
    changes in leadership and personnel.
  • Initiated by the National Association of College
    and University Business Officers (NACUBO), BOC
    provides conceptual and practical tools for every
    type of college and university to anticipate and
    respond systematically and effectively to
    institutional challenges in ways that have
    continuing impact beyond changes in leadership
    and emergence of new conditions.
  • In particular, BOC aims to promote a disciplined
    way of thinking and action at once a conceptual
    framework, a vocabulary, a toolkit and an
    approach to enable individual institutions
    design and achieve significant long-term
    improvements.

5
Building Organizational Capacity
  • Using case studies of a variety of initiatives
    across the full range of American higher
    education institutions (and some in Europe), BOC
    seeks to illustrate the application of eight
    interrelated elements in different contexts by
    leaders using different approaches and styles,
    confronting disparate strategic challenges, and
    having different levels of resources and
    capabilities at their disposal.
  • The eight elements central to strengthening
    colleges and universities on a sustained basis
    are (1) mission, vision, and goals (2)
    governance (3) structure (4) policies and
    practices (5) processes (6) systems (7)
    infrastructure and (8) culture.

6
Building Organizational Capacity
  • The project will bring together both campus
    academic and administrative executive leadership,
    a bridge too rarely built in American higher
    education. It has an ambitious program of
    outreach intended to engage all types of
    institutions throughout the country. The major
    higher education presidential and professional
    associations are supporting BOC and including it
    in their programs. There will be continuous and
    rigorous evaluation of the initiative.

7
Mission, Vision, Goals
  • The fundamental purpose and significant
    aspirations of an institution or activity within
    it.
  • Everything begins with articulating the mission,
    vision, and goals of the organization. Starting
    an effort without fully articulating its central
    purposes and objectives too often results in
    unintended consequences, less than complete
    success, or even outright failure. The more
    important and costly the undertaking, the more
    clarity about core principles is requisite.

8
Governance
  • The exercise of authority, responsibility, and
    control over goals, activities, and results.
  • In the highly decentralized culture of higher
    education, effective governance is critical for
    success both across institutions and within
    units (faculties, departments, projects, etc.).
    Those in authority must be included and involved
    in decisions that affect their spheres of
    influence.

9
Structure
  • Aligning people and activities to realize the
    mission, vision, and goals and accomplish the
    core processes of an organization.
  • Identifying and implementing effective
    structures serves fiduciary, legal, financial,
    and cultural ends. Success in any organization
    depends upon leaders crafting and nurturing the
    arrangement and alignment of its components.

10
Policies and Practices
  • The core principles and practices guiding all
    aspects of the realization of the mission,
    vision, and goals of an activity.
  • Policies are formally articulated, while
    practices are understood within organizations on
    the basis of culture and established action.
    Successful outcomes require decisions shaped by
    the right policies and practices -- how clear,
    appropriate, and comprehensive they are and how
    effectively leaders apply them.

11
Processes
  • The means by which organizations realize their
    mission, vision, and goals.
  • Processes follow from goals and policies -- and
    every organizational action and outcome is a
    result of a process. These processes are
    typically in a hierarchy of importance to which
    resources should be allocated appropriately.
    Processes tend to be intertwined with (1)
    policies and practices and (2) systems, with the
    most important of them having extensive
    connections.

12
Systems
  • The supporting information and other actions
    which promote effective communication,
    management, and oversight.
  • Systems of the right scope and operability are
    central to successful operations. They are
    rapidly evolving in their sophistication, range,
    importance, and cost. Systems are critical to
    the realization of policies and implementation of
    processes, define aspects of institutional
    culture, and affect structure and infrastructure.

13
Infrastructure
  • The human, physical, and financial support
    assets in place to create and sustain the entire
    organizational effort as defined its the mission,
    vision, and goals.
  • Infrastructure refers to a broad range of
    organizational assets, rather than the more
    typical consideration of buildings and people.
    An often neglected aspect of institutional
    planning and implementation, infrastructure
    always equates to financial and human resources.
    Leaders must take account of money, time, and
    human capabilities to shape an action
    successfully.

14
Culture
  • The overall character, values, and beliefs of
    the organization its essential personality.
  • The sum total of the behavioral aspects of the
    interactions and interrelationships of an
    institution, culture is complex and dynamic.
    Many otherwise admirable initiatives have come to
    naught because of leaders a failure to appreciate
    and account for culture. Culture can evolve, but
    changing the norms, values, and beliefs of an
    organization is not easy.

15
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