Integrated Planning and Assessment
Note that this essay is one of twenty (20) New Directions in Planning essays, which are an online part of and a companion to the SCUP book, A Guide to Planning for Change (Norris and Poulton, 2008). The essays will eventually be available in their own Web home, but we are sharing them here, now, because we want you to have access to them sooner and because this blog environment will let you post comments, if you wish. Please do!
Integrated Planning and Assessment has been written by Elizabeth Sibolski, Michael Middaugh, and David Hollowell, and is partly drawn from their experiences in the two years since they wrote SCUP's Integrated Higher Education Planning and Assessment: A Practical Guide (2006).
Either book, or both, can be ordered in SCUP's online bookstore or via the order form you can download here (PDF). Why don't you purchase both (for yourself or a colleague) and spend the down time over the holidays refreshing your perspective on higher education planning?
Copyright SCUP, 2008, all rights reserved.
What is Integrated Planning and Assessment?
Institutions of higher learning need to plan in order to establish priorities and directions for future development. However, it is not enough to produce a glossy brochure about hopes and dreams, and call it a strategic plan. Good planning practices must also encompass links to organized and sustained assessment in order to provide a means of judging progress toward the established goals and objectives of the plan.
The culture of higher education planning and assessment has roots that extend back for more than forty years. The Society for College and University Planning was established in 1965, and has served as a focal point and advocacy center for all types of higher education planning. Scholarship on assessment and on the outcomes of student learning emerged in earnest during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, the Association for Institutional Research, a professional home for those who engage in research on the institutions and activities of higher education, was incorporated in 1966.
The problem with many of the early efforts, however, was that they tended to exist in silos. Institutional planning was defined and good practices were described by planners for planners. Assessment methods and best practices were identified by the assessment experts and institutional researchers, and often focused on individual academic disciplines or on institutional profiling and effectiveness. Each of these separate communities clearly understood that there was a need for a “feedback loop,” but higher education planning and assessment remained largely unconnected activities.
Our view is that in order to be truly effective, planning and assessment activities must co-exist and should be appropriately linked, and we are not alone in this belief. One example will illustrate.
In the United States, regional accreditation is a principal method of insuring quality in higher education. Regional accreditors must be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and these agencies are responsible for evaluating individual institutions. Institutional accreditation by a recognized regional body provides the students of each college or university with the ability to access federal student financial aid, a source of funding that is essential to individual students and represents a revenue stream that has become crucial for overall institutional health. All of the regional accrediting agencies in the United States include within their standards for accreditation explicit reference to ongoing planning and evaluation/assessment. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is the regional accrediting agency with which the authors have worked most closely. One of the MSCHE accreditation standards reads as follows:
An institution conducts ongoing planning and resource allocation based on its mission and goals, develops objectives to achieve them, and utilizes the results of its assessment activities for institutional renewal. Implementation and subsequent evaluation of the success of the strategic plan and resource allocation support the development and change necessary to improve and to maintain institutional quality.
It is clear from these brief notes that linked planning and assessment has become an essential component in institutional management and decision making. The remaining sections of this chapter will provide details about the forces that are currently driving the importance and influence of integrated planning and assessment, as well as emerging directions in this subject area. Additional resources and references will also be identified.
Forces Driving the Integration of Planning and Assessment
Institutional Pressures Supporting Planning and Assessment: Good Business Practices
In an era of constrained resources – an era that is not likely to disappear any time soon – it is critical for colleges and universities to have a clear sense of purpose, both with respect to institutional mission and the deployment of human and fiscal resources in support of that mission. We have argued that there are four central questions that higher education institutions must answer in order to be effective:
1. Who are the institution’s markets? Which students is the institution trying to attract? One of the strengths of American higher education is the diversity of institutional missions, ranging from highly selective to open admission. However, a college or university has to have a clear sense as to whether it wishes to compete for the most academically prepared students or first generation students requiring special remedial assistance, or somewhere on the spectrum between these extremes. Similarly, institutions must determine if graduate instruction is core to the institutional mission. If yes, what is the desired balance between undergraduate and graduate instruction? Graduate instruction is generally accompanied by research and the generation of new knowledge. This poses central issue for faculty such as the appropriate balance between and among teaching, research, and service. What is the institution’s relationship with contractors and grantors? What is the institution’s relationship, if any, with local, regional, national, and international entities.
2. What programs and services are essential to serving those markets? Clearly, the academic support services required for a highly selective liberal arts college will be entirely different from those at an open admission community college. An urban university that services largely commuter and non-traditional students will have a vastly different student life program from the suburban university that caters primarily to traditional 18 to 22 year old students who live in residence halls. The more markets served, the more complex the array of administrative services.
3. What is the institutional “branding” required to attract the desired market(s)? How can a college or university most effectively represent itself to the external marketplace? The University of Delaware is a complex research university with a Land Grant mission. How does it distinguish itself from other Land Grant universities in the region? The University’s mission calls for “providing the highest quality education for its undergraduate students, while maintaining excellence in selected graduate programs.” Within the context of that mission, the University has focused all of its recruiting literature and other forms of communication on characterizing the institution as “A Teaching University,” where undergraduates – most particularly freshmen and sophomores – can expect to be taught by and to interact with even the most senior and distinguished faculty. At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Phoenix has effectively carved out its niche as “The University for the Working Adult,” All of its communications tout its ubiquitous access either in major metropolitan centers or 24/7 on line.
4. How will the institution know if it is effectively interacting with target markets? In a word – assessment: assessment of both student learning outcomes and institutional effectiveness. The effective college or university will have multiple measures or bodies of evidence that students are learning across the disciplines, but will also have multiple measures that it is making the most effective and efficient use of its human and fiscal resources in support of the teaching/learning process. And the truly effective college or university will have organizational communication loops that effectively funnel those assessments into strategic decisions related to planning and resource allocation.
The link between planning and assessment was clearly evidenced a few years ago in the following example at the University of Delaware. That institution had received a major grant from the Pew Foundation to examine the extent to which students learned in classes employing a “problem based learning” (PBL) teaching pedagogy compared with learning measures in traditional lecture courses. PBL encourages students to work collaboratively in groups on a defined research problem, with the faculty member acting as a facilitator and guide in the research, as opposed to simply a disseminator of information. Several disciplines across all of the undergraduate colleges at the University employed PBL and lecture pedagogies within different class sections of the same course, and used appropriate tools to measure student learning outcomes. The results were stunning: PBL trained students displayed demonstrably superior learning outcomes to those students who received traditional lecture-based instruction. When the University later had the opportunity to construct a new classroom building, that facility included instructional space specifically designed to foster problem based learning. Academic planning clearly drove facilities planning decisions.
Similarly, when the University of Delaware was designing its Freshman Year Experience (FYE), the decision was made to employ learning communities organized around acquisition of defined general education competencies. The Office of Student Life was brought into the planning to identify ways in which residence hall activities could be utilized to reinforce these general education competencies through both activity and learning outcomes assessment within the learning communities. Once again, planning was integrated to embrace both academic and student life components. These are but two examples from a single institution. Other examples of best practice can be found at the website of the Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org).
External Pressures for Integrated Planning and Assessment
There are many factors that account for the current and increasing demands for public accountability in higher education. Among these factors are: (1) a recognition that higher education is today an essential element in both global and local economies; (2) a belief that while the public is spending significant sums of money on higher education, there is a failure to produce an adequate supply of sufficiently educated students and graduates; and, (3) a sense that there are some “bad actors” that fail to deliver the education students want and need, but become rich on public funds in the process. There are many other factors that contribute to demands for accountability, but these will serve to illustrate the confluence of a number of issues that have brought us to the crossroads where we now stand.
First, with regard to education as an essential element in global and local economies, pause a moment to consider how much education contributes to the earnings potential of individuals. In addition, we know that exposure to higher education contributes to the quality of an individual’s life. What we may not consider, however, is the extent to which education may impact long-term public service spending and the extent to which educated individuals contribute to local tax bases.
At the national level, it is becoming increasingly clear that higher education and the existence of a well qualified work force is a matter of great concern. Businesses are increasingly mobile, and are quite willing to locate operations abroad if they cannot find appropriate workers domestically. As more and more manufacturing and other entry-level jobs are lost to overseas concerns, an increasingly well qualified workforce will be required for the information-age jobs that remain. The Spellings Commission put it this way:
In an era when intellectual capital is increasingly prized, both for individuals and for the nation, postsecondary education has never been more important. Ninety percent of the fast-growing jobs in the new knowledge-driven economy will require some postsecondary education. Colleges and universities must continue to be the major route for new generations of Americans to achieve social mobility. And for the country as a whole, future economic growth will depend on our ability to sustain excellence, innovation, and leadership in higher education.
Next, consider the amount of public funding that is entrusted to higher education. At the national level, the federal government is responsible for some twenty-four percent of all monies spent on higher education. While it is not possible to provide an extended explanation of what, exactly, is included in that statistic and we might not all agree with its precision, what is not arguable is the fact that a lot of tax dollars are going to higher education at this level, at the state level, and even at the local level.
On the other side of the equation, the “drum-beat” of criticism is increasingly loud. Employers bemoan the lack of preparation and skills held by recent graduates entering the workforce. We hear that these newly-minted degree recipients cannot communicate well, don’t know how to work in teams, and don’t have basic math skills. Usually these criticisms are not directed at a specific institution, but are focused more generally on the failings of higher education in general.
Another focal point of criticisms against higher education is the public perception that graduation rates are too low. For example, an article published in U.S. News & World Report included the following headline: “Only 63 percent of entering freshmen will graduate from college within six years.” That this statistic pertains only to those who were first-time full-time freshmen in a particular year, and does not apply universally is entirely lost in the public debate.
Thirdly, consider the increasing numbers of news reports concerning institutions where scandal, conflicts-of-interest, and misuse of public funds have been uncovered or implied. None of these problems may touch an individual institution, and yet all seem to be found guilty.
With these and other factors in the mix, it really isn’t any wonder that the public is calling for greater accountability and transparency from higher education. And, higher education institutions, individually and collectively, will need to find ways to respond. An excellent place to start may be in finding better ways to describe and discuss the value of higher education and its outcomes. At the institutional level, attention to integrated planning and assessment can provide the background and foundation for this discussion by detailing what an institution sets out to accomplish and how well it succeeds.
And finally, it should be acknowledged that there are already in place some mechanisms that are intended to address quality assurance in U.S. higher education. These assurances come in the form of institutional licensure and institutional accreditation. Most often, licensure authority (to operate and to grant degrees and other educational credentials) is granted by states, although the administrative structure and rules may vary from one state to another. At its most basic meaning, licensure is an assurance that an institution has met basic requirements and demonstrates minimum levels of public acceptability.
As noted above, in the U.S., institutional accreditation also provides quality assurance. This is accomplished through non-governmental peer evaluation that is handled by regional, national, and disciplinary accreditors. Generally, the regional and national organizations handle institution-wide accreditation. Although each separate accrediting agency develops its own rules, standards and criteria for accreditation, increasingly there are significant similarities in those characteristics that institutions must be able to demonstrate in order to be accredited, including the expectation for integrated planning and assessment. This expectation, in turn, provides a measure of public accountability.
Emerging New Directions in Integrated Planning and Assessment
Looking toward the future, we can see the following:
The central argument in this chapter is not that institutions must plan or that they must engage in assessment; it is that the two processes must be inextricably linked. All too often, strategic planning is done in an atmosphere devoid of assessment. Similarly, too many institutions engage in assessment, only to have the information that has been gathered go unused. The most effective institutions systematically use assessment data to inform the strategic planning process.
This is not an abstract concept. As institutions systematically gather measures of student learning, those data can be used for improvement of teaching strategies, to inform the institution with respect to the effectiveness of various pedagogies, and as noted earlier, to drive other types of planning in areas such as facilities and student support services. Similarly, assessments on institutional effectiveness enable a college or university to more efficiently deploy its human and fiscal resources in support of its mission. Planning and assessment entail thoroughly answering the four central questions posed earlier in this chapter, and doing so in manner that allows for introspection with regard to institutional purposes and how best to achieve those purposes. Often, that introspection occurs in the form of institutional self-study related to accreditation or reaccreditation from one of the nation’s six regional accrediting bodies. Each of those six agencies is working with member institutions to ensure greater accountability and transparency in operations, largely by ensuring that planning and assessment are appropriately linked.
Additional Information and Resources
Primary Resource for the Chapter
Hollowell, David, Michael F. Middaugh, and Elizabeth Sibolski. Integrating Higher Education Planning and Assessment: A Practical Guide. Ann Arbor: Society for College and University Planning, 2006. This volume is about effective planning and assessment and its integration into the fabric of institutional processes, the audiences that play important roles in developing and sustaining integrated processes, and outcomes that might be expected from good planning and assessment practices. In his forward, George Keller noted that “…given the recent and swelling demands for better accountability for results of the nation’s huge investment in higher education, this book neatly fuses educational planning with assessment of the plan’s success or shortcomings…”
Other References
Keller, George. Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in American Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
Selected Higher Education Associations
The Association for Institutional Research (www.airweb.org) is the professional association representing institutional research personnel at colleges and universities. The focus of many of this organization’s publications is on practical approaches for research, data collection, and analysis.
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (www.chea.org) is a private, nonprofit national organization that coordinates and serves as a voice for accreditation activities in the United States.
The Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org) is an association focused on the promotion, advancement, and application of effective planning in all functional areas of higher education. Of particular interest to SCUP members is the library of Web site links to several hundred plans that have been developed by various colleges and universities.
Other associations can provide information and resources on topics that are specific to their individual missions. The Association of Governing Boards is an excellent source for information about trusteeship and governance. The National Association of College and University Business Officers is the professional group representing administrative/financial officers of colleges and universities as well as education service providers.
U.S. Regional Accrediting Associations
Middle States Commission on Higher Education (www.msche.org)
New England Association of Schools and Colleges (www.neasc.org)
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org)
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (www.nwccu.org)
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (www.sacs.org)
Western Association of Colleges and Schools (www.wascweb.org)
Integrated Planning and Assessment has been written by Elizabeth Sibolski, Michael Middaugh, and David Hollowell, and is partly drawn from their experiences in the two years since they wrote SCUP's Integrated Higher Education Planning and Assessment: A Practical Guide (2006).
Either book, or both, can be ordered in SCUP's online bookstore or via the order form you can download here (PDF). Why don't you purchase both (for yourself or a colleague) and spend the down time over the holidays refreshing your perspective on higher education planning?
Copyright SCUP, 2008, all rights reserved.
Integrated Planning and Assessment
What is Integrated Planning and Assessment?
Institutions of higher learning need to plan in order to establish priorities and directions for future development. However, it is not enough to produce a glossy brochure about hopes and dreams, and call it a strategic plan. Good planning practices must also encompass links to organized and sustained assessment in order to provide a means of judging progress toward the established goals and objectives of the plan.
The culture of higher education planning and assessment has roots that extend back for more than forty years. The Society for College and University Planning was established in 1965, and has served as a focal point and advocacy center for all types of higher education planning. Scholarship on assessment and on the outcomes of student learning emerged in earnest during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, the Association for Institutional Research, a professional home for those who engage in research on the institutions and activities of higher education, was incorporated in 1966.
The problem with many of the early efforts, however, was that they tended to exist in silos. Institutional planning was defined and good practices were described by planners for planners. Assessment methods and best practices were identified by the assessment experts and institutional researchers, and often focused on individual academic disciplines or on institutional profiling and effectiveness. Each of these separate communities clearly understood that there was a need for a “feedback loop,” but higher education planning and assessment remained largely unconnected activities.
Our view is that in order to be truly effective, planning and assessment activities must co-exist and should be appropriately linked, and we are not alone in this belief. One example will illustrate.
In the United States, regional accreditation is a principal method of insuring quality in higher education. Regional accreditors must be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and these agencies are responsible for evaluating individual institutions. Institutional accreditation by a recognized regional body provides the students of each college or university with the ability to access federal student financial aid, a source of funding that is essential to individual students and represents a revenue stream that has become crucial for overall institutional health. All of the regional accrediting agencies in the United States include within their standards for accreditation explicit reference to ongoing planning and evaluation/assessment. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is the regional accrediting agency with which the authors have worked most closely. One of the MSCHE accreditation standards reads as follows:
An institution conducts ongoing planning and resource allocation based on its mission and goals, develops objectives to achieve them, and utilizes the results of its assessment activities for institutional renewal. Implementation and subsequent evaluation of the success of the strategic plan and resource allocation support the development and change necessary to improve and to maintain institutional quality.
It is clear from these brief notes that linked planning and assessment has become an essential component in institutional management and decision making. The remaining sections of this chapter will provide details about the forces that are currently driving the importance and influence of integrated planning and assessment, as well as emerging directions in this subject area. Additional resources and references will also be identified.
Forces Driving the Integration of Planning and Assessment
Institutional Pressures Supporting Planning and Assessment: Good Business Practices
In an era of constrained resources – an era that is not likely to disappear any time soon – it is critical for colleges and universities to have a clear sense of purpose, both with respect to institutional mission and the deployment of human and fiscal resources in support of that mission. We have argued that there are four central questions that higher education institutions must answer in order to be effective:
1. Who are the institution’s markets? Which students is the institution trying to attract? One of the strengths of American higher education is the diversity of institutional missions, ranging from highly selective to open admission. However, a college or university has to have a clear sense as to whether it wishes to compete for the most academically prepared students or first generation students requiring special remedial assistance, or somewhere on the spectrum between these extremes. Similarly, institutions must determine if graduate instruction is core to the institutional mission. If yes, what is the desired balance between undergraduate and graduate instruction? Graduate instruction is generally accompanied by research and the generation of new knowledge. This poses central issue for faculty such as the appropriate balance between and among teaching, research, and service. What is the institution’s relationship with contractors and grantors? What is the institution’s relationship, if any, with local, regional, national, and international entities.
2. What programs and services are essential to serving those markets? Clearly, the academic support services required for a highly selective liberal arts college will be entirely different from those at an open admission community college. An urban university that services largely commuter and non-traditional students will have a vastly different student life program from the suburban university that caters primarily to traditional 18 to 22 year old students who live in residence halls. The more markets served, the more complex the array of administrative services.
3. What is the institutional “branding” required to attract the desired market(s)? How can a college or university most effectively represent itself to the external marketplace? The University of Delaware is a complex research university with a Land Grant mission. How does it distinguish itself from other Land Grant universities in the region? The University’s mission calls for “providing the highest quality education for its undergraduate students, while maintaining excellence in selected graduate programs.” Within the context of that mission, the University has focused all of its recruiting literature and other forms of communication on characterizing the institution as “A Teaching University,” where undergraduates – most particularly freshmen and sophomores – can expect to be taught by and to interact with even the most senior and distinguished faculty. At the other end of the spectrum, the University of Phoenix has effectively carved out its niche as “The University for the Working Adult,” All of its communications tout its ubiquitous access either in major metropolitan centers or 24/7 on line.
4. How will the institution know if it is effectively interacting with target markets? In a word – assessment: assessment of both student learning outcomes and institutional effectiveness. The effective college or university will have multiple measures or bodies of evidence that students are learning across the disciplines, but will also have multiple measures that it is making the most effective and efficient use of its human and fiscal resources in support of the teaching/learning process. And the truly effective college or university will have organizational communication loops that effectively funnel those assessments into strategic decisions related to planning and resource allocation.
The link between planning and assessment was clearly evidenced a few years ago in the following example at the University of Delaware. That institution had received a major grant from the Pew Foundation to examine the extent to which students learned in classes employing a “problem based learning” (PBL) teaching pedagogy compared with learning measures in traditional lecture courses. PBL encourages students to work collaboratively in groups on a defined research problem, with the faculty member acting as a facilitator and guide in the research, as opposed to simply a disseminator of information. Several disciplines across all of the undergraduate colleges at the University employed PBL and lecture pedagogies within different class sections of the same course, and used appropriate tools to measure student learning outcomes. The results were stunning: PBL trained students displayed demonstrably superior learning outcomes to those students who received traditional lecture-based instruction. When the University later had the opportunity to construct a new classroom building, that facility included instructional space specifically designed to foster problem based learning. Academic planning clearly drove facilities planning decisions.
Similarly, when the University of Delaware was designing its Freshman Year Experience (FYE), the decision was made to employ learning communities organized around acquisition of defined general education competencies. The Office of Student Life was brought into the planning to identify ways in which residence hall activities could be utilized to reinforce these general education competencies through both activity and learning outcomes assessment within the learning communities. Once again, planning was integrated to embrace both academic and student life components. These are but two examples from a single institution. Other examples of best practice can be found at the website of the Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org).
External Pressures for Integrated Planning and Assessment
There are many factors that account for the current and increasing demands for public accountability in higher education. Among these factors are: (1) a recognition that higher education is today an essential element in both global and local economies; (2) a belief that while the public is spending significant sums of money on higher education, there is a failure to produce an adequate supply of sufficiently educated students and graduates; and, (3) a sense that there are some “bad actors” that fail to deliver the education students want and need, but become rich on public funds in the process. There are many other factors that contribute to demands for accountability, but these will serve to illustrate the confluence of a number of issues that have brought us to the crossroads where we now stand.
First, with regard to education as an essential element in global and local economies, pause a moment to consider how much education contributes to the earnings potential of individuals. In addition, we know that exposure to higher education contributes to the quality of an individual’s life. What we may not consider, however, is the extent to which education may impact long-term public service spending and the extent to which educated individuals contribute to local tax bases.
At the national level, it is becoming increasingly clear that higher education and the existence of a well qualified work force is a matter of great concern. Businesses are increasingly mobile, and are quite willing to locate operations abroad if they cannot find appropriate workers domestically. As more and more manufacturing and other entry-level jobs are lost to overseas concerns, an increasingly well qualified workforce will be required for the information-age jobs that remain. The Spellings Commission put it this way:
In an era when intellectual capital is increasingly prized, both for individuals and for the nation, postsecondary education has never been more important. Ninety percent of the fast-growing jobs in the new knowledge-driven economy will require some postsecondary education. Colleges and universities must continue to be the major route for new generations of Americans to achieve social mobility. And for the country as a whole, future economic growth will depend on our ability to sustain excellence, innovation, and leadership in higher education.
Next, consider the amount of public funding that is entrusted to higher education. At the national level, the federal government is responsible for some twenty-four percent of all monies spent on higher education. While it is not possible to provide an extended explanation of what, exactly, is included in that statistic and we might not all agree with its precision, what is not arguable is the fact that a lot of tax dollars are going to higher education at this level, at the state level, and even at the local level.
On the other side of the equation, the “drum-beat” of criticism is increasingly loud. Employers bemoan the lack of preparation and skills held by recent graduates entering the workforce. We hear that these newly-minted degree recipients cannot communicate well, don’t know how to work in teams, and don’t have basic math skills. Usually these criticisms are not directed at a specific institution, but are focused more generally on the failings of higher education in general.
Another focal point of criticisms against higher education is the public perception that graduation rates are too low. For example, an article published in U.S. News & World Report included the following headline: “Only 63 percent of entering freshmen will graduate from college within six years.” That this statistic pertains only to those who were first-time full-time freshmen in a particular year, and does not apply universally is entirely lost in the public debate.
Thirdly, consider the increasing numbers of news reports concerning institutions where scandal, conflicts-of-interest, and misuse of public funds have been uncovered or implied. None of these problems may touch an individual institution, and yet all seem to be found guilty.
With these and other factors in the mix, it really isn’t any wonder that the public is calling for greater accountability and transparency from higher education. And, higher education institutions, individually and collectively, will need to find ways to respond. An excellent place to start may be in finding better ways to describe and discuss the value of higher education and its outcomes. At the institutional level, attention to integrated planning and assessment can provide the background and foundation for this discussion by detailing what an institution sets out to accomplish and how well it succeeds.
And finally, it should be acknowledged that there are already in place some mechanisms that are intended to address quality assurance in U.S. higher education. These assurances come in the form of institutional licensure and institutional accreditation. Most often, licensure authority (to operate and to grant degrees and other educational credentials) is granted by states, although the administrative structure and rules may vary from one state to another. At its most basic meaning, licensure is an assurance that an institution has met basic requirements and demonstrates minimum levels of public acceptability.
As noted above, in the U.S., institutional accreditation also provides quality assurance. This is accomplished through non-governmental peer evaluation that is handled by regional, national, and disciplinary accreditors. Generally, the regional and national organizations handle institution-wide accreditation. Although each separate accrediting agency develops its own rules, standards and criteria for accreditation, increasingly there are significant similarities in those characteristics that institutions must be able to demonstrate in order to be accredited, including the expectation for integrated planning and assessment. This expectation, in turn, provides a measure of public accountability.
Emerging New Directions in Integrated Planning and Assessment
Looking toward the future, we can see the following:
- The press for accountability and transparency in the way in which colleges and universities do business is here to stay. In general, the prices that higher education institutions charge to deliver a college education have reached a threshold where parents, legislators, and potential donors will continue to demand credible and understandable evidence of return on investment. Those institutions that take assessment seriously will be in the best position to respond to those calls for accountability and transparency in the coming years.
- In a related vein, colleges and universities will be called upon to demonstrate that they are taking effective steps to contain expenditures. To do so will require demonstration of an understanding and unbundling of the fundamental cost drivers at colleges and universities. Institutions will have to discuss in unambiguous terms steps taken not only to contain instructional expenditures, but also how they are addressing administrative expenses that include health care, technology, energy, etc. As the current wave of baby-boomers in senior faculty and administrative positions move to retirement, colleges and universities will have to develop plans for replacing those individuals at salary and benefit levels that do not break the bank.
- Two major areas loom on the horizon as major focal points for higher education planning, and assessment of the quality of those plans – sustainability and globalization. Colleges and universities, within the context of their missions to create and disseminate new knowledge, must be at the forefront in developing a more sustainable world that maximizes natural resources in a manner that minimizes mankind’s impact on the environment. And because the world is shrinking, and economies and cultures are becoming increasingly intertwined, education in general, and higher education in particular, has to be at the core of promoting communication and cooperation between and among diverse populations.
The central argument in this chapter is not that institutions must plan or that they must engage in assessment; it is that the two processes must be inextricably linked. All too often, strategic planning is done in an atmosphere devoid of assessment. Similarly, too many institutions engage in assessment, only to have the information that has been gathered go unused. The most effective institutions systematically use assessment data to inform the strategic planning process.
This is not an abstract concept. As institutions systematically gather measures of student learning, those data can be used for improvement of teaching strategies, to inform the institution with respect to the effectiveness of various pedagogies, and as noted earlier, to drive other types of planning in areas such as facilities and student support services. Similarly, assessments on institutional effectiveness enable a college or university to more efficiently deploy its human and fiscal resources in support of its mission. Planning and assessment entail thoroughly answering the four central questions posed earlier in this chapter, and doing so in manner that allows for introspection with regard to institutional purposes and how best to achieve those purposes. Often, that introspection occurs in the form of institutional self-study related to accreditation or reaccreditation from one of the nation’s six regional accrediting bodies. Each of those six agencies is working with member institutions to ensure greater accountability and transparency in operations, largely by ensuring that planning and assessment are appropriately linked.
Additional Information and Resources
Primary Resource for the Chapter
Hollowell, David, Michael F. Middaugh, and Elizabeth Sibolski. Integrating Higher Education Planning and Assessment: A Practical Guide. Ann Arbor: Society for College and University Planning, 2006. This volume is about effective planning and assessment and its integration into the fabric of institutional processes, the audiences that play important roles in developing and sustaining integrated processes, and outcomes that might be expected from good planning and assessment practices. In his forward, George Keller noted that “…given the recent and swelling demands for better accountability for results of the nation’s huge investment in higher education, this book neatly fuses educational planning with assessment of the plan’s success or shortcomings…”
Other References
Keller, George. Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in American Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
Selected Higher Education Associations
The Association for Institutional Research (www.airweb.org) is the professional association representing institutional research personnel at colleges and universities. The focus of many of this organization’s publications is on practical approaches for research, data collection, and analysis.
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (www.chea.org) is a private, nonprofit national organization that coordinates and serves as a voice for accreditation activities in the United States.
The Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org) is an association focused on the promotion, advancement, and application of effective planning in all functional areas of higher education. Of particular interest to SCUP members is the library of Web site links to several hundred plans that have been developed by various colleges and universities.
Other associations can provide information and resources on topics that are specific to their individual missions. The Association of Governing Boards is an excellent source for information about trusteeship and governance. The National Association of College and University Business Officers is the professional group representing administrative/financial officers of colleges and universities as well as education service providers.
U.S. Regional Accrediting Associations
Middle States Commission on Higher Education (www.msche.org)
New England Association of Schools and Colleges (www.neasc.org)
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org)
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (www.nwccu.org)
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (www.sacs.org)
Western Association of Colleges and Schools (www.wascweb.org)
Labels: A Guide to Planning for Change, Integrated Planning and Assessment, New Directions in Planning
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