This article describes reasons why strategic planning in academe may fail (e.g., the president does not assume the role of chief planner) and why other efforts succeed (e.g., a realistic timetable for results is set). Leadership, communication, involvement, training, timing, and concern for the individual as well as the organization are stressed.…

An effective college or university budget process is dependent on the culture of the institution. Different processes and budget types are appropriate to different institutions. Understanding the interrelationships of budgeting, planning, and financial modeling can help make the budget more predictable and relevant to the college's values and…

The key challenge to academic leadership is to restructure the allocation of academic assets, particularly the organization of the faculty, in ways that better serve emerging societal and scholarly needs.

Northern Kentucky University shapes internal and external accountability efforts around its mission to meet the needs of the region.

This article details the challenges that UC Merced faced in building up the critical areas of student and residence life. The new institution held great promise for achieving the ideal of a student-centered university, but certain bedrock problems proved difficult to overcome. One was that at the beginning, both administration and faculty saw…

Current decision-making practices at a sample of institutions offer suggestions about desirable faculty and administrator roles in the planning process. (Author/LBH)

Complex institutional problems require comprehensive and complex solutions, including such strategies as defining or redefining institutional mission, finding a market niche, planning, cutting costs and increasing income, structural change, enterprising leadership, and using existing assets and good luck to best advantage. (MSE)

Periodic tenured faculty evaluation can be an opportunity for professional and personal redirection, revitalization, and renewal. The institution profits as much as the individual through better academic planning, teaching, and research. (MSE)

The rationale and procedures are described for moving academic planning from "disjointed incrementalism" to a continuing, systematic, cyclical process involving six phases. They include: institutional assessment, goal clarification, data analysis and modeling, designing and testing change efforts, implementing the strategy, and program monitoring…

The decision on the most appropriate size for liberal arts colleges should not be made on economic grounds. Analysis of literature shows that economic benefits through economies of scale are too debatable to play an important role. Fixed costs may be offset by less institutional complexity in small colleges. (Author/MSE)

The issue of whether institutions of higher education should cost account space and physical plant operating and maintenance expenses to their academic programs is examined. Space costing is cited as a philosophical base for cost accounting space, operating, and maintenance expenses to the individual academic unit of an institution. (Author/MLW)

This article argues that, while college and university programming for leadership development may depend initially on the creativity of a few supporters, such programming should also be positioned in a unit within the institution that has the resources and support to nurture it over the long term. (MSE)

The University of Wisconsin (Madison) has developed a pilot Environmental Stewardship Initiative, a mechanism for incorporating environmental stewardship into the university's operations and curriculum. The complex and dynamic campus ecosystem serves as a model community and field station for student research on natural history and institutional…

Rapid advances in information technology have rendered conventional approaches to planning and budgeting useless, and no single method is universally appropriate. The most successful planning efforts are consistent with the institution's overall plan, and may combine conventional, opportunistic, and entrepreneurial approaches. Chief financial…

Review of demographic changes finds that by midcentury a majority of the college population will be minorities, and all of the net increase in student population will come from minorities. Implications for recruitment, remediation, and retention are drawn. (DB)