Here at the University of Tuktoyaktuk (Tuk U!), we've recently undergone an extensive round of Strategic Planning. So I was interested in a letter on the subject published in the Chronicle this past week. The author (a Uni Prez) argued that strategic planning is essential to universities, because it's hard to do anything meaningful without a plan. He then pointed out that his own uni had made great progress with a good plan.
Fair enough. But since the letter was rebutting an earlier commentary to the effect that most strategic plans are crap, I read the earlier commentary as well. The jist of that comment was that most plans are useless verbiage. (my local water board recently unveiled that its mission is "Providing Excellence in World Class Service!" - C'mon guys, just make the water come out of the tap. Preferably potable.) The commenter even aknowleged that a good plan can be very useful. They're just extremely rare.
Stripped to its essence then, the argument is:
Commentary writer: A good plan is useful, but most strategic plans aren't good.
Upset Uni Prez: But we had a good plan, therefore strategic plans are good!
Seriously? This guy took time out from running a university to sit down and write to the Chronicle with a non sequitur, the purpose of which was to defend and justify his own administrative style.
Oh well. In other news, I invite you all to the groundbreaking ceremony for Tuk U's new "World Class Center for Excellence Studies". Bill and Ted
will deliver the keynote address
Oh God, you're reminding me that this week I get to sit through yet another department planning meeting in which we learn what buzzwords are appropriate to use so we can align our outcomes with those of the program as a whole, the division, the college, and the system. I served as the chair of this godawful committee for three years, during which time my major accomplishment was killing several trees. And those were the good ol' days! Now everything is about the numbers. Everything can and must be quantified, and it all comes down to how many we can get to pass anyway. If we don't meet the Magic Number, then we must have an action plan which will be monitored by a whole new office which exists solely for this purpose.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't even get me started about all the stupid focus groups I had to participate in to create mission statements, vision statements, and values....
Oh God. I just finished a mandatory stint as a faculty rep on the strategic planning committee where I work, and Ginsberg's article is depressingly accurate. What really annoys me is that whenever budget time rolls around, all the spending that could actually accomplish what was so lovingly set forth in the strategic plan (e.g. improve conditions for students, staff, and faculty) gets thrown out the window because "we need to cut costs." This, of course, is after senior administration have wasted a ton of money on their flavour-of-the-week pet projects.
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