Industry insiders (and outsiders) have been sounding the alarm on higher education’s financial challenges for years. The pandemic seemed to accelerate troubling trends, from lower enrollment to higher expenses. If you’re following the higher education news cycle, many institutions have responded with deep program cuts, affecting dozens, and sometimes hundreds of employees, at a single institution. While each team handles these decisions differently, the “program review” process often leaves key constituencies reeling. It isn’t uncommon for faculty and staff to feel excluded from the conversation altogether, even if there was an attempt to take an inclusive approach.
There are several reasons why the standard “program review” has this effect. We’ll focus on two here:
- One-time program reviews are often reactive rather than part of the culture.
- Annual program reviews are often conducted in silos, with different stakeholder groups with (understandably) different motives for conducting the review and different goals for the outcomes.
Reactive One-Time Program Reviews
Let’s take a closer look at the first challenge noted above. When we say that one-time program reviews are “reactive,” we mean that they’re typically conducted as a remedy to a (sometimes rather large) budget deficit. To finance teams, having these processes seems like a necessary step to keep the institution afloat and sustainable. To many faculty and staff, they seem to come on fast and furious. They are often communicated as a service to the bottom line rather than a service to the mission. They feel rushed and chaotic. And, since most faculty and staff are not kept abreast of the institution’s financial position in the years leading up to a financial crisis, there’s very little technical or psychological preparation for the task at hand. We contend that program “reviews” should be part of the culture of every institution. Every program should be looked over continually and held to clear, published performance metrics. If a program doesn’t meet those criteria, financial or otherwise, the folks responsible for that program should have a multiyear runway to improve outcomes and make the case that the program serves the mission and its students. This combination of autonomy and accountability serves many industries quite well, and higher education need not be any different.
Annual Program Reviews Conducted in Silos
You may be thinking “Well, we already do an annual program review.” This brings us to the second challenge we listed earlier. The “annual program review” process tends to follow the organizational chart, rather than the institutional strategy. The office of academic affairs almost certainly looks at its program outcomes on a regular basis as a requirement to maintain accreditation. But, that review is limited to understanding what the program has done in the past and takes very little notice of the margin generated by that program. The business office is motivated differently. That review may focus only on the margins generated by individual programs but pays almost no attention to the mission-driven qualities of a program or the fact that its curriculum feeds other mission-driven programs. We might think of the finance review as focusing only on the present contributions of an academic program. Another kind of program review is led by the enrollment management office. They are focused almost exclusively on demand, which means their view is limited to the program’s future value. Each of these components is extremely important and must continue. The problem is that these groups don’t always share their results and sometimes don’t see the value in each other’s results. Such compartmentalization is a byproduct of having different goals rather than a shared vision.
Strategic Academic Planning
For higher education to course correct, there must be a realignment of perspective. When institutions evaluate academic programs, they should be focused on the past, present, and future. Programs cannot be considered only on their rigor, revenue, or ability to attract new students. The program review should be reimagined as Strategic Academic Planning, and it should be characterized by the same energetic leadership as is often seen with an institutionwide strategic planning process. Rather than signaling an ad-hoc attempt to fix a broken portfolio, the process should reflect an indefinite commitment to institutional health and strategy.
In the coming months, we’ll build on the message we started here. We’ll start with insights on metrics and tools to help you establish your Strategic Academic Planning process. Then, we’ll provide some best practices for leveraging your top assets—your faculty and staff—to launch a sustainable Strategic Academic Planning process.
If you want to learn more about Strategic Academic Planning, contact us for a complimentary consultation.