Ten deans of continuing education identified external threats to their programs as funding, competition, and professionalization. More serious were threats from their universities: reduced resource allocation, change in their unit's position in the hierarchy, perceived lack of academic credibility, and decentralization. (SK)

Reviews the impact of local-management-of-schools funding formulae on schools of different size. Examines the ways that over 80 local education authorities (LEAs) have defined formulae to protect their small schools and reports the effect of the change to formula funding from 27 LEAs to describe the pattern of "winning" and…

When Oneida, Tennessee's K-12 school was threatened with closure by the state fire marshall, the community mounted an extraordinary effort to save it. Challenged by local philanthropists, the community drastically raised its taxes and built three new schools, furnished with the latest equipment and innovative curricula. (SV)

The environment most characterizing today's public schools is continuous change, spurred by increased demands for performance and accountability. However, discontinuous change, in which organizations must question basic operating assumptions, is imminent. Continuous learning must be built into an organizations' fabric and it needs acceptable…

Many small liberal arts colleges nationwide are facing unprecedented challenges in finances and demographics. Unless they have name recognition, a sizeable endowment, or especially strong academic offerings, most struggle to attract students from outside their regions. To survive, colleges have been urged to expand adult education and distance…

Explains two problems of the postmodern era-fragmentation (disintegration of social, economic, and political institutions) and symbolic consumption. Discusses two postmodernist epistemological challenges to educational marketers-anti-foundationalism and poststructuralism. Transactional views of marketing must yield to relational and interactive…

It is a frequent, if not ongoing, problem: deep funding cuts despite increased enrollments, and accompanying need for more instructors and updated technology. According to Joe Barwick, Roy Flores, Bernadine Chuck Fong, Al Lorenzo, Judith Redwine, and Jerry Sue Thornton, community colleges should start at the top when they deal with institutional…

Dual superintendency is a popular tack in rural America for the preservation of proud communities. The job is not for someone who wants to coast. There are two budgets to develop and monitor, two school boards, two sets of priorities. Keeping everyone in two school districts satisfied is more than a full-time occupation. Other school communities…

Agricultural education has been an essential factor in the success of agricultural development in the Netherlands. At present, as in many countries throughout the world, the position of agricultural education is threatened. Does agricultural education have a future in the Netherlands, and if so, what strategies are being used for its survive? This…

This paper uses data from a survey of K-12 unit schools to fashion a measure of small school sustainability and relate it to variables pertinent to the rural context. Drawing on definitions of sustainable development and sustainable agriculture, this study proposes sustainability as a concept appropriate to schooling in general, and to small rural…

This report examines the change process at a regional university in achieving a higher level of excellence in all its programs and activities. Results from 30 interviews are discussed in explaining how this university endured a major retrenchment and survived and thrived while simultaneously contributing to the surrounding community's economic…

A case study is presented which tests Hossler's 1984 assertion (that well conceptualized plans to manage enrollment can lead to a better institutional self-understanding and an enhanced institutional health and vitality) and critically examines one private, comprehensive university's effort to improve the quality and quantity of its environmental…

Strategic planning is discussed as a viable, effective method for coping with change to help an institution achieve its goals. A nine-step model of strategic planning is presented, and the results of a critique of a planning process at a major western research university are described. The nine steps are to: develop a planning culture, planning…

Three position papers, originally presented at a special symposium of economists and educators, are presented concerning the policy impact that the changing economic environment will have on colleges and universities in the financing of higher education in the United States. The position papers are: "The University and the Reemergence of…

The momentum of the individual rights movement has placed such an emphasis on individual claims and needs that all the nation's institutions have become suspect. These include churches, the family, and schools--those structures that mediate between the individual and the impersonal megastructures of society. These institutions are part of the…