By terminating 26 degree programs, 3 departments, and 3 schools and colleges, the State University of New York at Albany generated a pool of resource for reallocation to programs with greater need and priority. The difficulties of accomplishing this and the lessons for other campuses are described. (Author/MLW)

This study describes the actions taken by public institutions of higher education over the last several years to respond to severe financial pressures. It is based on the responses of 296 public colleges and universities to 24 questions included in the 1994 Campus Trends survey that were relevant to actions taken in expenditure control, new…

Adjustments that state policy-makers and institutions of higher education will need to make as they face cutbacks in public support and declining enrollments are described, based in part on a research project on retrenchment in higher education conducted by the Southern Regional Education Board. Given the long-term contractual obligations of…

Experiences of the 1970s and prospects for the 1980s of colleges that had undergone enrollment decline and/or financial cutbacks were surveyed, based on visits to 20 colleges and universities in 11 states in the Northeast, Midwest, and South. Some of the strategies to resist and overcome decline have potential for success in a wide range of…

Planning by the University of Wisconsin system for rational management of projected enrollment and fiscal decline is considered. It is suggested that a change in a college or university's mission may be an instrument for enabling a particular institution to meet unusual problems of declining resources. The elimination and consolidation of courses…

Single- and double-loop organizational learning are discussed in the context of higher education retrenchment. A model of the research university illuminates impediments to internal resource reallocation, program elimination, and integrative leadership, and suggests the need for alternatives to usual efforts to increase efficiency while retaining…

Academic staffing practices used at four-year colleges and universities are identified, and recommendations are offered for achieving staffing flexibility in the face of conditions such as scarce resources. In addition to considering faculty flow models (e.g., Markov models and simulators) as a management/planning tool to evaluate personnel and…

Some of the responses of colleges and universities to declining enrollments and diminishing resources are reviewed. Institutions have tried to reduce the size of their operations, reallocate resources internally, and retrench a number of faculty and programs. Several approaches to reductions, reallocations, and retrenchments in specific cases,…

How institutional research can improve the quality of institutional performance of colleges and universities in the face of funding constraints is discussed. An example of the use of instructional research to assist in documenting institutional quality in Australia is noted. Institutional research uses data collection, analysis, and interpretation…

Proceedings of the 1981 University of Arizona conference on responses to fiscal stress in higher education are presented. Topics include the impact of the federal government on higher education, state and institutional responses to new federal policies, developing responses to fiscal stress, alternate perspectives on fiscal stress, and tactical…