Strategic planning enables colleges to direct discretionary dollars into high-impact areas that can enhance critical core activities, improving output. When the institution can disinvest financial resources in weak or noncritical core areas and redirect them through careful budgeting, it improves its chances for success. (MSE)

This guide is designed to help school districts develop a consolidated plan for programs and resources. It outlines the importance of generating a consolidated plan to reduce duplication, identify children's needs, and coordinate funds from various programs. Consisting of 10 modules, the guide addresses all components of the planning process and…

This paper argues for increased universitywide research planning, with emphasis on collective identification of priorities, open communication at all levels, careful allocation of resources, and long-range strategic planning. (DB)

A university strategic planning approach that allocates resources simultaneously from the top down (administratively) and from the bottom up (based on expressed needs of the schools, colleges, and support units), making adjustments late in the process, is described. (MSE)

Five strategies for realistic deficit management in the college or university during fiscal stress are examined: (1) comprehensive strategic and operational budget planning; (2) examination of tenure-stream faculty positions; (3) program review and evaluation; (4) self-supporting auxiliary and service units; and (5) increased flexibility in use of…

This publication presents case studies of 10 colleges and universities that developed creative approaches to resource allocation in order to confront the fiscal realities facing higher education. The case studies describe strategic review and planning efforts in times of fiscal austerity. They look at streamlining, but also explore permanent…

This booklet for trustees of institutions of higher education offers guidelines to enable trustees to fulfill their fundamental responsibility of ensuring the financial health of the institution. Introductory sections address: challenges of the financial environment in which trustees must make decisions; specific responsibilities of the…

The extent to which a college has been engaged in strategic planning was studied with a sample of 96 institutions which had been identified as using strategic planning in a 1985 study. Survey questions consisted of a mixture of: (1) activities proper and essential to strategic planning; and (2) approaches and views of strategic planning that have…

Although the major locus of mental health care in the United States is in community agencies, funding cutbacks threaten the services those agencies provide. To assist human service managers in developing guidelines and concrete action strategies for dealing with financial problems, 106 mental health professionals (e.g., agency directors, technical…

Franklin and Marshall College (Pennsylvania) has used institutional mission, strategic planning, lessons learned from previous experience, and sound general management principles to guide reallocation of resources during a period of financial constraint. The objective was repositioning, not retrenchment, and the resulting academic program is…

Prairie View A&M University's (Texas) experiences are offered as lessons in how to establish institutional priorities and procedures for retrenchment. Thirty-one specific cost-reduction strategies and policy changes are presented, and the evolution of a formal, institutionalized budget process, nonexistent until fiscal year 1991, is described.…

Emphasizes the necessity for libraries to implement strategic planning for information technology. Topics discussed include assessing strengths and weaknesses; the allocation of resources; an OCLC report that surveyed member libraries to determine their planning activities; long-range planning; the need for flexibility; integrating planning with…

Higher education's search for growth in revenues and missions, largely successful to date, may be reaching its limits. If this is true, future attention in college administration will focus more on reducing expenditures, with implications for institutional research opportunities, use of resources, and the institutional research office's…

The transformation of higher education through the integration of information technology into teaching and learning has begun, but it will not happen overnight. Most institutions have not planned for continuing capital investment and operating funds to support routine use of new technology by students and faculty. (MSE)

This background paper examines the current state of higher education finance--the scope of the higher education enterprise, challenges to its funding base, and undesirable consequences of current financing practices--and describes what is meant by a "restructuring" of higher education finance. It demonstrates that the structures and practices…