To navigate today's fiscal challenges successfully, school districts must constantly examine the long-term fiscal implications of policy, programmatic, and human resource decisions on their organization. They must look at the effect of such items as bargaining agreements, contracted services, placement costs, transportation costs, benefits,…

Preparing for every possible contingency seems daunting, but with teamwork and some help from the government, it's almost do-able. There is a great system out there that will help business professionals and educators develop a strong, effective emergency preparedness plan. If they haven't done a good job of implementing a solid emergency response…

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…

A rapidly changing global economy, shifting demographics, and concerns about our ability to maintain a competitive workforce have focused national attention on the educational systems of America's states, highlighting their critical role in ensuring a productive and creative future for our country. As a result, Americas colleges and universities…

Many institutions have structured processes for gaining the necessary internal and external approvals for initiating academic programs. Unfortunately, program planners often lack the data required to develop a full understanding of the systemic implications caused by such changes. This article provides both a framework and an interactive data…

Two systematic ways of analyzing and planning the components of a program or project, both used extensively by industry and government, are discussed in this paper. The methods are Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) Networks and Critical Path Method (CPM) Arrow Diagrams. The purposes of this paper are (1) to explore the need for…