Academic Scorecard: Balanced Scorecard Approach in Education
This paper reviews Harold F. O'Neil's study on adapting Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard framework for use in a university School of Education. Originally designed for business organizations, the balanced scorecard was reimagined as an "academic scorecard" to measure institutional progress and accountability. The paper examines the challenges of applying a business model to higher education, the role of academic freedom, and the use of existing benchmarks such as GRE scores and U.S. News and World Report rankings. It concludes that the model offers a viable and replicable framework for measuring academic performance across institutions.
- Overview of the Academic Scorecard Study: Summary of O'Neil's study and its conclusions
- Adapting a Business Model for Higher Education: Significance of applying Kaplan and Norton to academia
- Academic Freedom and Institutional Accountability: Tension between academic freedom and accountability measures
- Benchmarks and Performance Measures: Specific benchmarks used to evaluate school performance
- Conclusion: Evaluation of the scorecard model's value and replicability
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper clearly situates its subject within the tension between business-oriented accountability models and the traditional values of higher education, giving the review analytical depth beyond simple summary.
- It identifies the key innovation — adapting a for-profit framework to a nonprofit academic context — and explains why this adaptation is both significant and replicable.
- The conclusion ties back to the paper's central argument by commending the committee's creative problem-solving, reinforcing the evaluative stance maintained throughout.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates critical annotation and evaluative summarization. Rather than simply describing what O'Neil's study says, the writer assesses its significance, identifies its strengths, and considers its broader applicability to other schools and universities. This technique is essential in literature reviews and academic book reviews, where evaluation — not just description — is expected.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a summary of O'Neil's argument and its conclusion, then moves to contextualizing the significance of adapting a business model for higher education. It addresses the tension with academic freedom before analyzing the specific benchmarks used. The final paragraph offers a concise evaluative conclusion. The structure follows a classic review format: introduce → contextualize → analyze → evaluate.
Overview of the Academic Scorecard Study
In "Designing and Implementing an Academic Scorecard," Harold F. O'Neil discusses how a university School of Education adopted Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard approach to create an "academic scorecard" designed to measure the school's progress and accountability. O'Neil concludes that this scorecard approach is useful both for examining the Rossier School's academic performance and for identifying areas that need improvement.
Adapting a Business Model for Higher Education
The adaptation of the Kaplan and Norton model is significant, since this model was initially designed for business organizations — an area that universities have traditionally eschewed. However, O'Neil and the other educators at the Rossier School successfully adapted this model for the changing needs of the School of Education. In doing so, they created a model of accountability measures and benchmarks that could be adopted by other schools and universities.
Conclusion
O'Neil and the members of the Rossier School's accountability committee should be commended for their efforts in designing a model to measure their school's performance. By creatively adapting a model originally designed for the business world, they have produced a workable method for measuring academic progress and for identifying benchmarks in need of improvement.
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