California's University System: What Went Wrong?

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

---

---

SCUP Link

This look at what has happened to higher education in California since Clark Kerr's original Master Plan for Higher Education is definitely of interest to SCUPers. The author, Lisa M. Krieger, of Mercury News, lists the following as among the most critical factors during that time:

• Plummeting state support;
• No huaranteed funding;
• Continued expansion; and
• Little coordination.
  Fifty years ago this month, California promised a low-cost, high-quality university education for every qualified high school graduate in the state. But that promise — inflated by growing populations and academic aspirations — expanded beyond the state's willingness to pay for it. What went wrong? How did the university system that was long the envy of the world suddenly become the focus of angry street protests, overcrowded classrooms, soaring tuition and a monumental debate over whether the state can ever make good again on its groundbreaking mission?

While the recession turned a slow-brewing problem into an instant crisis, a Mercury News analysis of California's higher-education mess reveals that many factors drove the inevitable and ugly collision between the university system's ambitious and uncoordinated growth and the state's declining ability and desire to pay for it.

---

---

SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

Managing the Enterprise on Limited Resources Using ERPs

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

---

---

SCUP Link

Tim Goral of University Business examines the use of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) in the current economic climate by interviewing several campus leaders and some experts from the corporate world:

We’ve all heard the mantra: Do more with less. In the current economy, colleges and universities are continually being asked to be more productive and effective with ever-shrinking resources. A key to accomplishing that is to have a solid information system—an intergrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that can help them toward that goal in numerous ways.

[And . . . ]

The other big difference is a fundamental shift in the way our staff is being used. When we had our legacy system, most of our development staff was in maintenance and repair mode. Now we’re almost completely out of that mode and looking at how to create value-adding projects for our university.

---

---

SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Integrating Sustainability in the Master Planning Process

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

---

---

SCUP Link

With AASHE rolling out its Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) earlier this year, the need to better integrate related planning efforts is clear. On many campuses, other than exercises related to accreditation the master planning process may be the best known and best integrated planning on campus. This workshop at SCUP–45 is very timely:

Audience: Campus planners involved in advancing sustainability through the effective use of master planning and appropriate measures at various planning levels.

Abstract: As the concept of sustainability is gaining momentum and many universities are committing to measurable environmental goals, planners are exploring strategies for integrating sustainability into the master planning process. One of the key challenges is incorporating measurable goals at different planning levels, where the required information and data may not be readily available. This workshop will review emerging methodologies for evaluating environmental performance indicators and for integrating sustainability in a comprehensive master plan.

Learning Outcomes:

• Assemble and organize sustainability goals, policies, and regulations relevant to the master planning process.
• Identify the key elements and metrics of a sustainable master plan.
• Test approaches for integrating sustainable design and planning goals in the master planning process.
• Review methodology for evaluating measurable outcomes of the sustainable planning process.
• Explore the process for reporting on sustainability outcomes.

---

---

SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Workshop: Linking Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

---

---

SCUP Link

You could not find a better presentation or a better, more-informed set of presenters on this topic.

Audience: Planners new to the use of the assessment process in accreditation activities as a springboard to integrated planning

Abstract: This workshop focuses on strategies for effectively utilizing information drawn from a broad range of assessment activities. It goes deeper into the content found in the SCUP volume, Integrating Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide (2006). Participants will identify the information that should drive the strategic planning process at a college or university and that provides the evidence needed to make more targeted decisions in the allocation of human and fiscal resources. The presentation will also highlight the linkage between assessment and planning as a critical compliance criterion among all regional accrediting bodies in the United States. The workshop will use a series of exercises throughout the presentation to interactively engage participants and reinforce the concepts and principles being presented. Each participant will receive a comprehensive workbook containing presentation materials and a list of resources for use upon completion of the workshop.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Ann Arbor - Planning Institute Step I - March 27

Take advantage of SCUP's Planning Institute Step I being offered at the headquarters of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) on March 27, in Ann Arbor. This step of the institute has been offered at many SCUP conferences, and is also being taken onto campuses for teams of colleagues around the country. This is the first time it is being offered in the Ann Arbor area, and the first time at the new SCUP headquarters. Find out more!

This is a single day workshop, starting at 8 am with breakfast available at 7:30, including lunch and snack breaks, and ending promptly at 5 pm.. Completion of Step I is required in order to advance to Steps II and II of the institute. SCUP headquarters is less than a mile off the State Street Road exit for I-94.

Planning is about developing an explicit way for making choices. An effective planning process focuses the campus, and the various constituencies and players, on what the choices are and how to make them in an integrated way. Choices made in this way include careful consideration of the real costs and a commitment to allocate the necessary resources to bring them to fruition. What integrated planning truly fosters is a culture of planning that allows institutions to be nimble enough to respond to unanticipated threats and opportunities.

Participants in the initial workshop in the series of three use SCUP’s Walnut College case study to apply the basic elements of integrated planning. The value of evidence-based planning is emphasized, as is the central place that the academic mission holds in focusing and driving campus decisions. Integrated planning promotes institutional distinctiveness that is sustainable. Find out more!

Four key questions drive planning and the discussions in this workshop:

• Whom do we wish to serve?
• What programs and services will reinforce our distinctive image?
• How do we want to be perceived?
• How will we know we are succeeding?

Step I models the elements of effective planning by creating a collaborative environment through the delivery of the workshop content. It ensures that participants have the opportunity to address the questions they brought, to build national networks for ongoing discussions, and to understand how integrated planning addresses issues of accountability and accreditation. Find out more!

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

U Iowa Integrated Academic & Budgeting Planning Task Forces Reports

In early 2009 Iowa provost, Wallace D. Loh, formed six task forces to examine ways to shape the future of the academic programs at the university, in relation so the various external forces affecting university campuses. The final reports of each task force are now available as PDF. This web page lists the task forces and has links to their charge, membership, and reports plus appendices. Many SCUPers will enjoy learning from this work. The task forces were:

• Task Force in Strategic Budgeting
• Task Force on Undergraduate Education and Success
• Task Force on Graduate Education: Selective Excellence
• Task Force on Research and Creative excellence
• Task force on Internationalization and Diversity
• Task Force on Public Outreach and Civic Engagement

Audrey Williams June has this brief article about the graduate education task force's report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

At Michigan, Integrated Planning Ferries Student Veterans Through Launch of new GI Bill

At the University of Michigan, top administrators did some environmental scanning and spotted the potential for major problems in implementing the new GI Bill for veterans. So they engaged in cross-departmental, integrated planning and pulled off a very successful program:

“I knew we would rise to the occasion,” says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs. “Our student veterans earned these benefits, and university staff make sure our students are the priority.”

Initial notification of the new benefits program arrived from the Department of Veterans Affairs in January 2009. Students could begin to apply in May; but the VA’s procedural details were not available until June.

“We could see the potential for a serious logjam,” said Assistant University Registrar Christine Bedz. “With so little lead time, we were concerned about the adverse impact on our students if VA disbursements were delayed. We were determined to make our students’ experience seamless.”

With full appreciation of the operational complexity of the emerging program — including the related Yellow Ribbon tuition supplement, www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Jul27_09/17.php — staff from the Registrar, ONSP, Information and Technology Services, the offices of financial aid, student financial services and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business mapped out what they thought the new system would require.

They hit the bull’s-eye, producing a new process that provided common rules and procedures and, ultimately, a safe harbor for U-M’s student veterans.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

States and Schools and Sustainability

We're finding that the voice of the anonymous Getting to Green blogger at Inside Higher Ed, is a source of many SCUPer-like perspectives about integrated planning and campus sustainability. G. Rendell (a pseudonym) is in fact both a SCUP member and responsible for his (or her) institution's sustainability initiatives. Samples from the latest column:

The most typical state government response to fiscal crisis these days is a flat percentage spending cut across the board. The advantage of this is that it doesn't require explanation and it doesn't require thought. You're 15% short on cash, you cut expenditures at all agencies by 15%, everything's back in balance, right?

Of course, the balance achieved is only financial, and only on paper. If you cut expenditures on programs which are saving you money in other areas (like arbitration which reduces court costs or prenatal services which reduces health costs), the savings are more illusory than real. And if you cut social welfare expenditures, crime rates may go up, policing costs may go up, incarceration costs may go up, up, up. The politically simple tends to be the pragmatically stupid.

and

What resonated with me was the fact that "leaders" of so many state governments were spending so much time, so much effort, so much political capital and never once asking the question of how the existing structure and operation of their organizations was resulting in problematic expenditure levels. They never managed to get to the question of what existing expenditures were unnecessary, or of low priority. They never asked what sorts of efforts more than paid their own way on a net-net basis, or which ones were basically pouring money down a hole.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

The Imagined Space of The Web 2.0 Classroom

Note that SCUP–45 plenary speaker, and SCUPer, Mark Valenti (of The Sextant Group) is one of our own experts in this realm. His presentation will bring you the state of the art!

Trent Batson, writing in Campus Technology magazine, explores physical classrooms and virtual classrooms, and the influences that one type may have on the design of the other:

Accommodating technology, that is, making it usable in a room, does require many changes: Rooms should be square or rounded instead of rectangular since sight-lines and visual display of information is now as important as the sound of voices; moving furniture for different ways to work with technology should not cause a sudden roar of noise, chair and table legs scraping on tile, but instead the soft rolling of table and chair on a soft surface. In other words, new classroom design is not based on unquestioned tradition but is based on new practices developed within the field of media architecture.

Note that SCUP has a Lyris-based email Knowledge Community [smartc] with this topical focus. There are more than 500 practitioners who are members of that often quiescent discussion list.

---

Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Recent Posts on the Buildings & Grounds Blog

Keeping up with Lawrence Biemiller and Scott Carlson (and guest bloggers who are frequently also SCUPers) can be tough. SCUPer Rives Taylor of Genzler is currently guest blogging. His posts include:

• You Can’t Sustain if You Don’t Maintain
• The Campus as Teaching Tool, and Lever
• A 3-Step Approach to Programming Your New Building

Here's a partial listing of some other fairly recent posts there:

• Yale's 'Best Doomed Building' Awaits Its Fate
• Shop Talk: Oklahoma City Community College Replaces Signature Red Roof (left; Oklahoma City Community College image); American U. in Cairo Opens New Campus in the Desert; New Texas A&M Building Dedicated to Arts And Humanities Is Announced Street Crossing Ball State U. Campus Will Get (Needed) Make-Over
• Shop Talk: SUNY Institute of Technology Begins Work on $20-Million Field House (left; SUNYIT image); Universities Look to Keep Event Rooms Full as Meeting Business Declines; Indiana U. School of Medicine at Fort Wayne Will Dedicate New Building Friday; Opponents Protest Destruction of 16 Trees at Northern New Mexico College
• Princeton Renovates Whig Hall, a Modernist Landmark That Dates to the 1890s
• Shop Talk: Developer Seeks to Add Condos in Old Marymount College Building (Left: Marymount College in an undated postcard view; the college closed in 1989); Williston State College Breaks Ground for Career and Technical Education Building; Bradley U. Plans $22-Million Expansion of Its 2nd-Oldest Building; In Campus Apartments, U. of Richmond Students Complain of Leaks and Mildew
• U. of Delaware Makes Deal to Purchase Chrysler Plant on 272 Acres

Building a Learning University: Creating a Community of Purpose With Educators and Stakeholder Groups

This is an unexpectedly deep Learning Abstract that we found on the website of the League for Innovation in the Community College. Written by Tony Gurr, it begins:

The type of university needed for the new age of higher education will have to engage in a continuous process of self-review and refocusing over its lifetime. This will require systematic and purposeful processes of strategic planning that draw on the active participation of a broad range of stakeholders who, in their work together, align the institution’s policies, processes, and practices to make them more responsive to the changing needs of students.

Before this, however, the university needs to commit to a core purpose centred on student learning and what this means to how it does business. How do we get to this purpose? Surely, developing an innovative mission statement, hiring the best practitioners money can buy, and mimicking best practices should do the job for us.

Sadly, it does not.

Dashboards Deliver Data Visually at ASU

Arizona State University is now also a leader in dashboard use. This is a nice article from Campus Technology magazine by Linda L. Briggs:

ASU currently has some 30 dashboards across 25 subject areas, drawing on thousands of key data items. The popularity of various dashboards is cyclical, Rome said, but currently, a dashboard that summarizes CRM help desk support ranks high in use, as does a high-level financial report dashboard, along with dashboards summarizing HR reports and one on research grants and awards.

An enrollment management dashboard allows the user to drill down on courses and information on prospective students, then, with the right permission, to link to the Oracle PeopleSoft program to update student data. Another dashboard offers a visual monitor of class enrollment, so that when a class reaches a certain size, a red dot indicates that the class is near capacity. A quick visual scan can indicate the red dots that suggest where to consider adding supplementary classes.

Of special interest is the use of students in developing dashboards.

From Campus Tug-of-War to Pulling Together: Using the Lean Approach

"Applying the 'lean approach' can yield surprising benefits to facilities professionals dealing with accomplishing more with fewer resources, while managing stakeholders with competing interests": That's how Facilities Manager describes this new article. (PDF) This is a thought-provoking article in a number of ways, one of which is that one could argue that the "Lean" approach to planning could be seen as "sustainability" but with a different phraseology; and it certainly is a form of integrated planning.

Is It Time to Rethink Physical Space?

In University Business, this article by Marisa Manley is titled "Building the Long-Term Value of Assets" and subtitled "Why it’s an opportune time for colleges and universities to rethink physical space." 

Capturing value during an economic downturn requires institutional leaders to think strategically about needs, goals, and physical space. When devising a strategic plan:

• View facilities as part of an overall business plan. Universities do well when their leaders consider property and space as part of the institution’s investment choices, considering all options as opposed to conducting a desperate search for space when needs are already pressing.

The Next Big Thing: Crisis and Transformation in American Higher Education

On Inside Higher Ed's "Blog U," the latest post is titled The Next Big Thing: Crisis and Transformation in American Higher Education, which concludes: "It is good to attend crisis conferences, seminars, and meetings on the next big thing. We all need to worry about the global transformation of higher education, but it is even more important for each institution to stay closely focused on the performance that produces high quality and high productivity measured against a clear and precise understanding of the marketplace for its mission. . . . When the moment passes, the publicity dies down, and the pundits turn to other crises, the college and university winners will be those who paid attention to the fundamentals all along." We might add that the winners will be the institutions which have used integrated, comprehensive planning to align the campus with its mission and vision.

What then is the optimal behavior of institutions suffering through the peaks and valleys of these serial crises? Some common sense guidelines may be helpful. The primary imperative surprises none of us: Pay attention to the fundamentals, all of which speak to the competitive performance of institutions within their sector and subsector of the higher education industry.

a. Enroll students.

b. Graduate students.

c. Focus on revenue.

d. Track expenses precisely.

e. Measure faculty, staff, and student performance.

f. Understand the difference between core activity and enhancements.

g. Do the core activities first and do them well.

Cool Campus! A How-to Guide for College and University Climate Action Planning

Walter Simpson is a major force in campus sustainability. Working from content on a Wiki set up via the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), he has produced a how to planning manual in book format, Cool Campus! A How-to Guide for College and University Climate Action Planning. It's free, a downloadable PDF of about 120 pages in length: "But who will lead the CAP effort? The leader or chair could be your sustainability director or energy officer, if he or she has enough experience and the right credentials, or a prestigious faculty member who is given release time to take on this project, It could be a special assistant to your school's president. . . . An undertaking this large could have co-chairs. Whoever is selected to lead should be enthusiastically committed to climate action, have strong technical background in relevant areas, be engaging, fair, well-liked, and be able to motivate others and build a strong team."

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Related: Related: A concurrent session at SCUP–44: Building the Plane in the Air: Changing a Campus Culture While Integrating Vision, Budget and Program Review.

---

We completely agree with the initial premiss of this article by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed:

You know the stereotypes—perhaps even believe them. College administrators these days care only for the bottom line. Professors can't decide anything or ever endorse change. When professors become department chairs or deans, they cross over to the 'dark side,' and forget their old values and friends. . . . In various forms, these views of the 'other side' are hardly new. But several researchers [recently argued at the 2009 AERA conference] that the economic crisis facing higher education makes it particularly important for the various players to work well together . . . . The idea . . . is not to presume that the differences will vanish. There are bound to still be professors more deliberative than administrators might want—especially those administrators facing deadlines to cut budgets. . . . a more nuanced approach might yield strategies that move beyond the false dichotomy of, for example, making every budget cut today or waiting two years to come up with a plan.