Strategic Plan Strategic and Other

¶ … Strategic Plan

Strategic and other indicators

Identify which indicators you would utilize to measure progress towards achieving your stated objectives. Explain your rationale for choosing them.

Economic, ethnic, and racial diversity of the school: Although ethnic background is not directly related to socioeconomic status, maintaining the affordability of the school can be measured to some degree by its diversity. Socioeconomic diversity is desirable in terms of the contribution it makes to the education students receive inside and outside of the classroom, and if only students without financial need feel able to apply, matriculate, or remain at the university this is a warning flag that the university is not upholding its ideals.

Do not increase tuition at a greater rate than the overall rate of inflation: To ensure affordability, especially in the wake of reduced access to loans, this is essential.

Find ways to strategically cut aspects of college budget that does not significantly impact quality of instruction or student life: If the economy does not improve, and the endowment does not significantly increase, finding ways to cut costs are required to maintain affordability and need-blind admissions.

Maintain high level of faculty instruction: Ensure that top-rated faculty, based upon student evaluations are retained, despite needed salary and staff reductions overall

Step 7: Evaluation

Describe ways you might implement the CASH model for evaluating your strategic plan.

Comparison: Compare composition of student body in terms of its diversity and tuition with similar, small universities without large endowments.

Given the financial situation of the university, comparing the school against aspirant universities with larger endowments would not be useful in terms of setting feasible goals. For example, while increasing faculty salaries on par with aspirant schools would be a potentially desirable strategy to draw top talent, this is currently not possible. Competitor universities may have different financial situations that likewise make them less useful as comparative models, even if they attract a similar student demographic

Average: Assess average financial aid package, tuition and budget of universities across the nations, as well as average expenditures in areas designated for cuts. Can students get a better 'deal' elsewhere, at comparable institutions? Comparing projected expenditures on areas designated for cuts such as food services can give an idea of how much 'fat,' realistically speaking, can be trimmed from the budget.

Standards: The standards the university will set for itself are as follows

Maintain tuition at current rates (allowing for inflation).

Maintain or increase measures of demographic diversity.

No significant decrease in students with financial need as percentage of incoming class.

Maintain top faculty.

Historic: Historic expenditures of university regarding tuition, financial aid, and student services can be used for comparison.

Step 8: Action steps

Look back at the goal and objectives you developed last week for Step 5 of your strategic plan. Outline a series of action steps that could be implemented to achieve them; include a timeline.

Step 1: Audit of university expenditures: effective immediately

Step 2: Hiring freeze on faculty and administrative personnel. Replace retiring members with graduate students and adjunct faculty who do not receive benefits. Examine possibility of administrative staff reduction, letting go non-tenured faculty (especially in majors with few students) and consolidation of academic departments: Notify staff immediately about possibility of layoffs. Layoffs and consolidation begin after audit for staff immediately. For faculty, layoffs begin of the summer/end of semester.

Step 3: Reduce food service expenditures (accomplished by having fewer hours of service, having students buy more of their own food), trim the budgets of the less popular extracurricular activities, replacing permanent staff with work study students: Effective after audit.