How do forward-looking institutions with rich landscape and architectural heritages integrate contemporary programming and design? This article explores the evolution of the Mills College campus and compares it with two larger western universities: the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and Leland Stanford, Jr., University (Stanford…

Accreditation, the primary means of assuring and improving academic quality in U.S. higher education, has endured for more than 100 years. While accommodating many changes in higher education and society, accreditation's fundamental values and practices have remained essentially intact, affirming their sturdiness. Accreditation is a form of…

The contemporary university operates within a global context characterized by ever-increasing uncertainty and complexity. Strategic planning must, therefore, be cognizant of future trends and how those trends will affect the university by creating both threats and opportunities. Our hypothesis is that an approach we refer to as "strategic…

Most people in the United States, no matter how extensive their education, have never had a course dealing primarily with the future. But they have had at least one course, and probably many courses, dealing with the past. Most also have never questioned why the past is so emphasized in formal education while the future--the only arena over which…

Institutions should not assume that since they can't predict the future they should not consider it. Instead, they can use their imagination to anticipate any number of possible, probable, positive, and even preventable futures. Attendees of the joint conference, "Campus of the Future: A Meeting of the Minds," in Hawai'i this past July--hosted by…

Changes in clientele, course offerings, accreditation procedures, and classroom locations head the list of trends affecting the evolution of postsecondary education in the United States. (Author)

The ways in which a futures and strategic planning preconference workshop provided an environmental scan to identify a number of issues facing higher education are described. Exercises designed to rank and evaluate these issues are discussed. (MLW)

Major rasons why institutions ought to engage in planning are reviewed. The critical planning issues that should be addressed and the major factors and forces that ought to be considered when analyzing those issues are identified. The characteristics of an "ideal" planning process are identified. (Author/MLW)

Many administrators are planning and implementing systematic marketing strategies designed to attract, matriculate, and graduate students. Most administrators prefer to shape a direction according to their institution's needs rather than to take a reactive position. A marketing action plan is provided. (MLW)

North Central College in Illinois designated 1986-87 as a planning year. One of the major objectives of the Five-Year Master Plan, the development of a computerized planning model later used in a board of trustees planning conference, is described. (MLW)

Modern universities fully recognize the importance of strategic planning, but such planning tends to be short term (five years out). As a result, there is a tendency to assume that the future will greatly resemble the immediate present. While this is rational thinking, institutions do change quite dramatically because the alternative is to cease…

An approach is proposed whereby all institutions in a state higher education system may proceed to plan for the year 1990. The approach incorporates two major planning tools--Delphi and Multiple Scenario Analysis--and shows how a structured process can help an institution to generate alternative views of the future. (MLW)

Program review must transcend preoccupation with the past and become an integral part of planning for the future. Linking academic program reviews closely with formal institutional planning processes will benefit both. Academic planning, institutional practice, and obstacles are discussed. (MLW)

Designing a cost planning requires attention to the external environment, as well as an understanding of the relative influence of facts, as opposed to values, in resource allocation processes. A context for selecting design characteristics of a planning process is established. (MLW)

It is argued that while the concept of "vision" in higher education has been met with disdain, criticism is based on misconceptions of vision's nature and role--that vision requires a charismatic administrator and that visionaries are dreamers. Educators and planners are urged to use imaginative thinking to connect the institution's and staff's…