Trusteeship - May/June 2020 - 24

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THE ENROLLMENT CRISIS-IT'S TIME TO MODIFY OUR LEARNING PARADIGM

4.	 Expansion Model: Marcy describes such colleges as having
"limited remaining liberal arts commitment [with a] focus on
additional and professional and graduate programs and enrollment growth" to provide more income. Marcy offers Utica
College and Drew University as examples of this model though
neither school was founded as a liberal arts college and both
schools currently have traditional liberal arts general education
requirements for their undergraduates. This model might best
be included as a subset of Marcy's fifth model.
5.	 Expansion and Separation Model: Such colleges add branch
campuses or online students to expand their programs and
enrollments beyond their home campuses. Southern New
Hampshire University (SNHU) is a pertinent example given by
Marcy. Using AI plus big data to provide an interactive online
student learning environment, SNHU has added a separate,
competency-based, self-paced online college to its 3,500-student
main campus. With more than 130,000 online students and more
than 2,700 part-time faculty in 2019, SNHU's online college has
become a primary "resource engine" for the whole university.
Marcy's models are appropriate starting points for trustees and
administrations to assess where their private college or university
fits into the current educational landscape. Any thorough strategic
planning process would consider all of Marcy's models, plus additional models, by placing them in the external context described
above and developing an institution-specific vision.
My book, Strategic Thinking and Planning in Higher Education-A Focus on the Future, provides specific examples of how different modes of strategic thinking (e.g., design thinking at Arizona
State University, scenario thinking at Smith College, etc.) have
been used to provide a holistic institutional vision (or alternative
visions) that engage contemporary external challenges. Henry
Mintzberg of McGill University equates strategic thinking with
"seeing" from multiple perspectives:
■	 Ahead and behind: "Any good vision of the future has to be
rooted in an understanding of the past."
■	 Above and below: Holistic, big-picture thinking has to be supported by exhaustive "deep digging" into relevant internal and
external data and information.
■	 Beside and beyond: Lateral or unconventional thinking seeks to
construct a new future, but it is only strategic "if it gets done!"10
Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great and the Social Sectors, says
that the difference between failed nonprofit institutions and enduring ones (from orchestras to private colleges) is that the successful
ones based their strategies "on a deep understanding along three
key dimensions: (1) What are you deeply passionate about? (2)
What can you be the best in the world at doing? (3) What drives
your resource engine?" Collins calls his threefold strategic thinking
process the "Hedgehog Principle." These three strategic ques24 TRUSTEESHIP  MAY. JUN. 2020

tions parallel Mintzberg's three modes of "seeing" but specifically
include the interdependence of mission/vision, select program
excellence, and financial viability.
Collins says that strategic planning is efficacious only if it helps
an institution determine not only what it does (or could do) best,
but what it should stop doing-a real challenge for higher education's "add-on" without "stop doing" cultural expectations. Strategic
thinking can be utilized to conduct a specific academic program
review or to direct a campus-wide strategic planning process. One
way to compare traditional planning processes with ones that use
strategic thinking can be summarized this way:

Strategic Thinking vs. Other Planning
Strategic Thinking

Long-Range/Other Planning

>Future/Vision oriented

>Mission/status-quo oriented

>Focuses on environment

>Focuses on institution

>Oriented toward change

>Oriented toward stability

>Develops Integrated actions

>Develops segmented actions

>Creates synergistic outcomes

>Creates individual outcomes

Goal: "Sustainable
Distinctiveness"

Goal: "Institutional Excellence"

Most "strategic plans" are not strategic because they too often
promote necessary "best practices" in five-year time frames without
asking more fundamental/systemic questions that could reorient the
whole institution. Best practices are intended to improve current
governance, enrollment, curricular, and operational practices. A
successful strategic planning process should provide an institution
with a strategic vision that generates passion, programmatic distinctiveness, and results in sustainable financial resources over the long
term. As important as best practices are, by definition they do not
typically provide a college or university with a competitive edge.
Strategic thinking and planning are best accomplished in what
the AGB Board of Directors' 2017 white paper on Innovation in
Higher Education calls "a culture of innovation" that supports "bold
responses and creative solutions." The paper rightly notes that an
institution's "culture determines and limits strategy," since innovation requires "stakeholders who recognize the need for change to
be engaged in that process." The AGB paper provides six principles
for innovation that suggest that building a culture of innovation
requires presidential and board leadership as well as collaboration
with faculty. This paper's list of innovations includes both best
practices (e.g., the creation of flexible faculty reward systems) and
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