In this final chapter, we summarize the lessons learned from working with six systems/consortia to enhance and expand undergraduate research. The theory of change model for systems/consortia differs in significant ways from the change processes exhibited by individual institutions, offering important insights for academic leaders as they seek to…

Those who work within adult higher education know there is something unique about their perspective on academic life. Employed in the adult education arena in one capacity or another since 1993, the author has had the privilege of working at an institution with a small adult program and an institution with a very large adult program. In this…

Fundamentally, ethical codes take on the most troublesome of behaviors related to academe and present ways for individuals to behave in the face of pressures and uncertainties. They represent the ideals of various stakeholder subgroups and even mediate key institutional relationships. Codes can also exist at different organizational levels in…

Adult degree programs have been seen as a win-win solution for private colleges and adult learners, but their innovative and often-entrepreneurial postures are not a natural fit with governance structures in more traditional institutions. Through narrative and illustrative vignettes, this chapter presents an overview of efforts employed by some…

Campuses that pursue the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification will in some form take full inventory of their engagement efforts in order to address the range of questions posed by the Carnegie Foundation. At an institution as large, diverse, and decentralized as North Carolina State University, this was no small undertaking. NC State's…

Universities have long struggled with balancing their core instruction, research, and service missions with the win-at-all-costs mentality of spectator sports. Indeed, much has been written about the athletics-academic debate. Unfortunately, the athletics-academic debate often masks the complexity of characterizing athletics programs as either…

In this article, the author discusses his researched framework that has been used in government organizations, the military (including international militaries), large corporations around the globe, and educational institutions such as the Sonora Institute for Technology in Sonora, Mexico. This framework is termed an "Ideal Vision" that expresses…

Planning, opening, and bringing to life a new institution of higher education is a challenging undertaking. At UC Merced, it has been a daunting and exhilarating experience for its founding administration, faculty, staff, and students. Campus pioneers had no road map, no playbook to tell them how to plan and build in the twenty-first century a…

This article presents working definitions of efficiency, accountability, and quality, offering a framework in which an individual institution can make idiosyncratic use of these definitions, suggests tools for managing educational processes with respect to these three attributes, and presents examples of how institutions have improved efficiency,…

The University of Wisconsin-Stout, recipient of the Baldrige National Quality Award in 2001, developed a planning system that has evolved into a comprehensive and collaborative process for visioning, developing and implementing goals, and tracking university performance. This chapter describes the tactics that have contributed greatly to the…

Creating a new generation of leaders and managers has been the task of the innovative U.K. Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

This article examines why state planning and policy for higher education are increasingly focused on increasing educational attainment, quality, and the productivity of the system. It presents four "stories" which illustrate initiatives to improve attainment, quality, and productivity, but fall far short of exhausting the available material.

Contemporary organizational theory is seen as not providing the kind of guidance that it should for practitioners in higher education. It is suggested that the issue of goals should be reintroduced into organizational theory, and that certainty is as important as uncertainty. A Marxian alternative is discussed. (Author/MLW)

As an enterprise that relies heavily on state funding, public higher education has long seen its support rise and fall with the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy. This chapter examines how the University System of Maryland repositioned itself as a state system able to thrive in an era of permanently diminished resources and perpetually escalating…

Planning for the ongoing support and maintenance that accompany implementation of new enterprise resource planning systems may be more essential to realizing benefit from a technology investment than choosing the product with the most features. (Contains 1 table.)