Policy-impact analysis is introduced as a model to aid higher education in dealing with the significant problems in the decade of the 1980s. The model provides a framework within which a variety of futures research techniques are tied to policy development, implementation, and evaluation. The utility of the model is that it structures communication between those developing information about the future and those responsible for policy formulation and decision-making in such a fashion that policy-makers can choose among alternative policies based upon the probable impact of each. There are four stages in the policy impact model: monitoring, forecasting, goal setting, and policy analysis and implementation. Monitoring and forecasting perform the role of organizing, structuring, and articulating images of the future with respect to a particular set of assumptions and indicators. The next stage of the model, goal setting, revolves around the process of setting realistic goals given the information provided in the first two stages. This stage requires the generation of a desirable future in a procedure much like that of forecasting using the delphi method. The first three stages serve to identify specific trends, the events which may affect those trends, and the goals of the organization. In the final stage, the research staff estimates how a particular policy may affect a given trend through influencing the probability of the occurrence of one or more specified events affecting the trend. When the selected policies are implemented, the process of monitoring begins anew, thereby enabling the staff to evaluate the effectiveness of the policies by comparing actual impacts with those forecasted. (SW)