Describes creation of a relational database at the University of Washington supporting ongoing academic planning at several levels and affecting the culture of decision making. Addresses getting started; sharing the database; questions, worries, and issues; improving access to high-demand courses; the advising function; management of instructional…

Examines how Wall Street's view of technology-mediated higher education as a rapidly growing market is prompting many colleges and universities to consider a nonprofit/for-profit hybrid model that includes a separate for-profit entity for electronic learning. A table identifies factors influencing the decision to create a for-profit entity, and…

The participative model of institutional budgeting is compared briefly with two other common models, and its rationale is discussed. An explanation of nine basic principles of participative budgeting uses examples from a variety of colleges and universities, and concludes with the author's reflections on the approach, based on his experience. (MSE)

The key to an American corporate renaissance is the development of "participation management" skills and environments that allow for the full use of ideas that arise from within the corporation itself. Companies must relearn to trust their people and encourage them to use neglected creative capacities. (Author/MLW)

Responsibility Center Budgeting/Management in higher education places at the heart of the university a mode of rationality in decision making that subverts educational policy and weakens the institution's ability for corrective cultural criticism. Academic leaders should make academic and research decisions based on students' and society's…

d the Knight Collaborative. Drawing on the experience garnered by those organizations over the last two decades, The Learning Alliance is becoming higher education's decisionmaking hot line for higher education executives--a number they can call to work through their most pressing problems. This issue of The Landscape draws upon the substance of…

The way private liberal arts colleges choose to answer the question, "How shall we govern ourselves in the 21st century?" has a great impact on what kinds of institutions that they can and will become. The urgency of this issue is apparent in public criticism, in governance disputes on many college campuses, and in recent publications on…

Examples of retrenchment at colleges and universities are given as are five principles such as the need to reconsider institutional mission. Both strategic and tactical perspectives are applied to retrenchment decisions of college leadership. (DB)

New research from the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement provides a tool that colleges and universities can use to describe the higher education market, find their places within it, and identify what they need to do in the future. The market analysis and segmentation tool is outlined, and a worksheet for institutional planning is…

Fifteen guides to college choice and admission are described and their characteristics and special uses are noted. The guides include primary, secondary, and "insider" sources. Some are traditional information sources for college-bound students, and some are newer publications. (MSE)

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching conducted a nationwide survey of high school seniors and their parents. Parents and how they shape their youngsters' post-high school plans, the qualities they look for in a college, and what they expect their children to gain are discussed. (MLW)

"Thinking without assent" is seen as a moral pathology within our pluralistic society. Dealing with it should be higher education's agenda. Citizens in academe can provide new convictional possibilities for a pluralistic society. (MLW)

Recommendations of commission reports on improving quality in public education are seen as primarily political statements reflecting the public outrage over the declining quality of American schooling. If the recommendations for sharpening basic skills spill over into higher education, there will be pressure to make colleges into trade schools.…

When declining resources make difficult choices unavoidable, higher education must: assert a unified, coherent state strategy for instruction, financial aid, research, and public service independent of federal policy; eliminate outmoded facilities and obsolete equipment; reconsider the instructional process; and reevaluate the role of faculty.…

Universities are "organized anarchies," with individual colleges and even departments pursuing independent objectives. The institutions themselves contribute to this organizational anarchy and to their own disintegration in how they organize themselves with regard to budget, in the incentives they give to colleges to raise their own funds, and in…