Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services: Reallocating Resources to Achieve Strategic Balance
American colleges and universities face an ever-growing challenge to maintain academic standards of excellence while keeping tuition costs in check. It is a formidable task. Blue-ribbon panels, the federal government, and the public demand accountability for tuition increases at a time when colleges and universities grapple with strategies to pay for rising operational costs. Institutions of higher education often use tuition increases to pay for these rising costs and maintain the quality of existing programs and services. Although the pace of tuition rate increases has slowed in recent years, tuition costs still are climbing faster than the average family income, making higher education affordability a mounting concern. Echoing this concern, the Commission on National Investment in Higher Education recently recommended that institutions "make major structural changes in their governance systems so that decision-makers can assess the relative value of departments, programs, and systems in order to reallocate scarce resources."
Where can beleaguered higher education administrations turn for counsel? Dr. Robert C. Dickeson, a former college president and currently a senior vice president at the Foundation, offers a how-to guide for college and university administrators with his book, Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services: Reallocating Resources to Achieve Strategic Balance. In concise, practical terms, Dickeson offers advice to administrators on prioritizing academic programs and services to reallocate funding from areas of marginal productivity to sectors that are more efficient, effective, and essential to the organization.
Dickeson combines more than 35 years of experience as an educator and academic administrator, government official, consultant, and corporate officer to deliver this guide. The book is a flexible tool for college and university administrators, helping them to conduct academic prioritization on their own campuses.
Dickeson believes the first step in the prioritization process is to recognize the need for reform. Reform at any institution, regardless of size, can be a challenge. Barriers such as program history, faculty resistance, student needs, and alumni opposition may stand in the way of reform. Thus, strong and supportive leadership is essential to reform. Administrators must also focus on the institution's mission and the goal of improving academic quality for the college or university to move beyond the status quo. By identifying and possibly redefining the school's focus, administrators will get a clearer sense the institution's main priorities.
Dickeson identifies 10 criteria to consider when prioritizing academic programs. These indicators generate quantitative and qualitative measurements of a program's relative value to an institution.
- History, development, and expectations of the program.
- External demand for the program.
- Internal demand for the program.
- Quality of program inputs and processes.
- Quality of program outcomes.
- Size, scope and productivity of the program.
- Revenue and other resources generated by the program.
- Costs and other expenses associated with the program.
- Impact, justification, and overall essentialness of the program.
- Opportunity analysis of the program.
Although other authors have suggested a few of these criteria, Dickeson's approach offers a more complete method of comparing all programs with each other. With the data collected from this process, administrators can measure, analyze, and prioritize academic programs. As a result, administrators can reallocate resources from lower to higher institutional priorities. This process also can help schools meet new accreditation standards requiring program review.
The prioritization process helps administrators focus on programs that may be ripe for reduction, consolidation, or elimination. It also can create awareness of new programs that are needed. But there are pitfalls to making these hard decisions. Dickeson points out that administrators must consider the legal and policy implications of implementing such reforms. Additionally, leaders should consider the impact of the changes on the people involved with the institution. Reform usually is met with challenge, particularly when people feel threatened by change. The process of implementing change will be smoother if students, faculty, staff, administrators, and particularly members of the governing board are involved in the entire prioritization process.
By presenting resourceful new techniques used to address these obstacles, Dickeson challenges college and university administrators to address barriers to reform, tighten their focus, and reallocate resources. He shows that challenges confronting higher education are not irresolvable. This concise, step-by-step guide offers a method for reallocating resources, ranking programs, and thus reducing the pressure to increase tuition.
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