Being focused exclusively on higher and further education, Ellucian came into being at the same time several transformative trends are having an impact on this sector and our customers.
Revenue Pressures and Austerity: Static and contracting budgets, revenue management, efficiencies and cost-cutting
Engaging Learners: Attracting and retaining students, serving non-traditional students, consumerization of education, cultivating lifelong relationships
Educational Access and Readiness: remedial education, online education and distance learning, affordability
Accountability & Outcomes: Accountability, learning outcomes, completions, return on investment, transparency, data-driven operations
Globalization: New opportunities about for learners to access education and for institutions to expand their reach. Higher and further education are also major factors and targets for investment in the drive to increase economic growth and competitiveness.
Transformative Technology: Cloud computing, mobile communications, social media and Big Data are changing how we interact with other people and technology, and these developments are also changing our thinking about what is possible in the educational experience today and in the future.
Within these trends, a number of disruptive phenomena are forcing colleges and universities to rethink their very business model, in the same way their customers – today’s students, prospects, instructors, alumni and other members of the campus community – are also rethinking the process and value of higher and further education. For example:
- These tough economic times and their fiscal effect on education
- Rapid movement towards performance-based funding and how to align funding to completion-related outcomes
- In the US, college affordability and the ballooning level of student loan debt
- The so-called “higher education bubble” and an approaching tipping point at which many people may no longer feel that higher education pays
- Continued growth in the for-profit education sector in the US and other global markets
- MOOCs and other open learning initiatives
- Increasing viability of Do-It-Yourself higher education to gain the knowledge, skills and even a credential but without the high pricetag of a formal degree
- E-textbooks and other technology for the classroom that is slowly figuring out how to make a difference in how people learn
- Use of Facebook and other social media for networking, relationship building, marketing, educational communities, etc.
- Demographic shifts that make a strong majority of today’s college students “non-traditional”
We know there are a lot of challenges to deal with – so how do we govern making decisions to make progress in these areas
Briefly outline key business needs resulting from the trends discussed (see points on slide, also noted below)
Funding Pressures: Revenue management: recruitment, retention, fundraising
Increasing enrollment, capacity, revenue generation
Tuition pressures and affordability
Operational Efficiency: Optimizing resources, containing costs
Process transparency, agility, improvement
Financial visibility, discipline, controls, metrics
Student Success: Services and tools to keep learners on track
Diverse, flexible pathways to learning
Improving learning outcomes (retention, completion, etc.)
Accountability: Timely, reliable, useful information for each stakeholder
Measuring and documenting performance, outcomes, compliance
Data-driven decisions and discovery-based planning
Constituents Expectations: Faster, more flexible access to information and services
Managing and keeping up with pace of technology change
Education experiences that set your institution apart
Engaging the Community: Cultivating relationships with constituents of all types
Partnerships with donors, peer institutions, industry, etc.
Shared services, community source, resources, information, best practices
Like ‘Camelot’ every group in the institutions has equal representation and input into the governance discussion.
Jaime set stage re: what ellucian says vs school
Client specific comments in quotes
Ellucian perspective
Note different school types high level
What we are going to do today is share our insights from those discussions and the work we do as a management consulting team in the field on how you can better enable governance to minimize the chaos on campus
Chief Information Officer
Senior Student Affairs Officer
Chief Academic Officer
Laurien Alexandre, Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, Antioch University
Felice Nudelman, Chancellor, Antioch University
Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College
President Joanne Jaeger Tomblin
governance as “a collaborative process that involves representatives of the college working in a climate of mutual trust and respect.”
Three principles guide this governance process: disclosure, responsiveness, and accountability.
Members of the committees use online tools to shape their agendas, share their ideas, and ultimately make formal recommendations to the administration.
Quarterly “governance” day
the system “provides a voice for everybody in the institution to make a recommendation, talk about issues, and to seek change as we move forward.”
Muskegon Community College
“We report to our community using multiple methods in ways that hadn’t been done before,” he says, including a monthly forum with the president. That’s just one side of the transparency that now characterizes governance at the school.
Before Nesbary was appointed president, the college’s human resources office was a part of the administration division. But Nesbary found that “human resources decisions weren’t visible to the entire community in a way that I thought was important.” So again in the interest of transparency, he decided to give HR a seat on the president’s cabinet. Once HR was integrated into the cabinet, “that allowed for administrative decisions to be more transparent,” Nesbary says, which in turn “allowed for a much broader discussion” of HR issues.
Muskegon relies on a robust governance structure based on councils. Councils focused on instructional affairs, technology, business activities, and student services report to the school’s coordinating council, the primary governance council. The councils generally function independently of the administration, but the school’s board, administration, faculty, and students all have ways to give input to respective councils. In addition, decisions can move between councils to get different input as needed. Decisions made by the coordinating council are reported to the president’s cabinet. Councils can make recommendations to the coordinating council about allocation of resources – such as the addition of a new faculty position. Budget requests are filtered through the operating budget and managed by the school’s divisions.
“when I look at some of the voting members and non-voting members of our councils, one of the issues that I have is that it appears that some of our councils don’t have actual voting memberships with students.” he has challenged the councils to all allow students to have voting membership
Wright state
“it is incumbent on the leadership of all these groups to align their work efforts with the university’s goals, objectives, and strategic plan” and “to collaboratively develop relationships and areas of focus to continue to drive forward.”
the new budget model “has to have a governance structure associated with it that is truly stakeholder driven, brings in the perspective of all budget-matter experts, and has the ability to create ownership for budgets in ways that can drive change throughout this organization.” Moreover, he adds, “the more people know about budgeting, the more we can inform ways to address our budgetary risks and challenges.”
“Knowledge management is a huge opportunity for us,” he says. To that end his office is developing an IT-based knowledge management system that will include organizational charts, project management tools, policies and procedures, process maps, and KPI dashboards and scorecards—all designed to support project and change management, improve efficiency and operations, and facilitate continuous process improvement.
“Our president regularly reminds us that when the planning’s done, the hard work is really beginning. That’s when you’re delivering on the initiatives that will align with the various action plans associated with your strategic goals and objectives,” Polatajko says.
To get from idea to delivery, “you have to have relentless execution,” Polatajko says. “Having an infrastructure in place around change management is critical to success in delivering on all the strategic objectives that have been identified.”
SSAO is the primary student advocate, and steward of student success – on the cabinet should ALWAYS take on the persona of ‘what is best for our students’ in discussions that his/her peers recognize, respect and balance against the other institutional realities.
Primary constituent – student – has touch-points with virtually every other unit so the culture of the institution – across all humans and units – should reflect consistently. Don’t get treated at the shoe counter of Nordstrom’s differently than treated at the cosmetic counter for a reason
Using a business term here with the word “transactions” but by that I mean all of the interactions in which our students
Successful and seamless delivery of services for transactions, development and support
Enrollment of the ‘best fit’ students for our mission and capacity for effective education
Student (stakeholder) true engagement and growth within our learning environment
Achievement of our institutional goals for student achievement individually and collectively
Adherence to best professional (e.g. CAS) and legal standards (e.g. FERPA, Title IV) and practices
Productive partnerships between our student-facing and supporting infrastructure units (e.g. IT, Facilities, Security)
Successful and seamless delivery of services for transactions, development and support
Informed planning, decision-making, and resource allocation
Effective coordination, collaboration, and communication among constituents
Effective governance also fosters collegial partnerships between the Chief Academic Officer and other key campus executives, such as the:
Chief Financial Officer to allocate the financial resources needed to successfully fulfill the college’s educational mission and vision;
Chief Information Officer and Director of Facilities to ensure that the academic master plan is aligned with the institutional master plan and IT strategic plan;
Chief Enrollment Officer to recruit and enroll the optimal number and profile of students in each program of study;
Chief Student Affairs Officer to ensure that student services are in place for student academic success and co-curricular learning;
Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness to assess program quality and prepare for accreditation;
College or program deans to establish a coordinated approach to educational delivery, outline common faculty expectations, and assess student learning outcomes; andFaculty Senate to promote effective communication and shared governance.
Framework illustrates why a Revitalization moves well beyond software solution enhancements to address higher-level needs
This shows Revit done at the highest level with all components. Can scale back but try to incorporate all of the elements even when small.
True transformation = cultural change = long term, deliberate, more costly. But will avoid repeating the cycle, experiencing same problems later on
Like ‘Camelot’ every group in the institutions has equal representation and input into the governance discussion.
The starting point in designing governance processes is to assess the maturity level of the organization with regard to existing governance practices and processes. In this context, the process perspective makes use of so-called maturity models, such as those from the IT Governance Institute or Luftmann’s IT maturity model,12 to determine the current maturity state (as is/where the organization is now) and the future maturity state (to be/where it wants to be) of the IT organization. Based on the findings, gaps are identified and specific actions to move toward the desired level of process maturity are defined. These actions lay the groundwork for later design and modeling of the IT governance processes.
