Although rising costs of higher education have made most college and university leaders defensive, educators should gather more facts to inform policymakers and the public of the advantages offered by the U.S. higher education system. Highly productive in economic and social terms, it has breadth and depth, and its contribution to economic growth…

The activity-based costing (ABC) method of analyzing institutional costs in higher education involves four procedures: determining the various discrete activities of the organization; calculating the cost of each; determining the cost drivers; tracing cost to the cost objective or consumer of each activity. Few American institutions have used the…

Stanford University (California) restructured its legal services office, for both cost containment and service improvement, by outsourcing legal work. The new system consists of a smaller in-house legal staff, for largely preventive work (academic and medical affairs, policy formation), and contracts with three outside law firms to work in…

Bowling Green State University, Ohio, carried out a study of learning communities and first-year programs to determine their success in facilitating student success, increasing engagement, and promoting connections. Findings from 10 learning communities show the overall success of these programs and provide favorable cost estimates. (SLD)

The purposes for publishing a factbook at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are reviewed and then used as a context to illustrate why this evolution took place and what was learned from the experience. Fact sheets, an on-line electronic factbook, and electronic databases are now being used. (MLW)

Budget decisions in large institutions should be decentralized. Decentralization can be accomplished by responsibility center budgeting, block budgeting, or combinations thereof. The system should be designed so that organization unit heads have maximum incentive to be efficient and to optimize decisions on an institutionwide basis where…

The trend toward commercialization in research universities is attributed not only to economic dependence on the commercial sector, but also to a changing interpretation of universities' role in research and service to include development of technology, technology transfer, and economic development. (MSE)

A seven-step strategy for improvement of college classroom spaces is outlined, and specific suggestions are made for designing efficient and effective spaces, including considerations for size, arrangement, seating, lighting, writing surfaces, and audiovisual and other classroom teaching equipment. (MSE)

The use of environmental scanning to link the external environment to institutional strategic planning is exemplified in Michigan State University's approach. The university's program is described, and in an appended section, 25 external tendencies are presented and related issues, trends, and events outlined. (MSE)

Since the late 1960s, Messiah College, a small, church-related college in rural Pennsylvania, has operated an urban satellite campus in Philadelphia in collaboration with Temple University, a public institution in that city. The campus makes accessible to students of both institutions the best of both private and public, urban and rural, and small…

Campus chapels once bespoke a school's curriculum, defined the student body, contributed to ambiance, and served as a recruitment tool for parents looking to religion to influence their children's character. As schools strayed from their religious roots, encountered pressing program needs, and faced funding concerns, many of these rarely used…

This study addresses several common shortcomings of current university campus sustainability initiatives, including a lack of attention to integrative issues such as land use, housing, and transportation, and a generally reactive rather than proactive approach to sustainability. To engage these concerns, we develop a model for assessing the…

Examines the methodologies, objectives, and assumptions of existing national enrollment projection studies. (Author/MLF)

Community colleges are in a good position to obtain reliable long-term forecasts of future demand. An approach developed at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, has enabled the college to assist other community institutions in their parallel planning efforts. (Author/MLF)

As more colleges and universities coordinate institutional research as a support system for long-range planning, new analytical tools become necessary. A system developed in Massachusetts to project the effect of statewide policy alternatives may have wide applicability to other institutions and to multi-institutional planning groups. (Author)