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Cover image of Reengineering the University
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Reengineering the University

How to Be Mission Centered, Market Smart, and Margin Conscious

William F. Massy

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How can colleges and universities improve efficiency while preserving academic values?

Winner of the Typographic Jacket of the Washington Publishers

Higher education expert William F. Massy’s decades as a professor, senior university officer, and consultant have left him with a passionate belief in the need for reform in America’s traditional universities. In Reengineering the University, he addresses widespread concerns that higher education’s costs are too high, learning falls short of objectives, disruptive technology and education models are mounting serious challenges to traditional...

How can colleges and universities improve efficiency while preserving academic values?

Winner of the Typographic Jacket of the Washington Publishers

Higher education expert William F. Massy’s decades as a professor, senior university officer, and consultant have left him with a passionate belief in the need for reform in America’s traditional universities. In Reengineering the University, he addresses widespread concerns that higher education’s costs are too high, learning falls short of objectives, disruptive technology and education models are mounting serious challenges to traditional institutions, and administrators and faculty are too often unwilling or unable to change.

An expert microeconomist, Massy approaches the challenge of reform in a genuinely new way by applying rigorous economic principles, informed by financial data and other evidence, to explain the forces at work on universities and the flaws in the academic business model. Ultimately, he argues that computer models that draw on data from college transaction systems can help both administrators and faculty address problems of educational performance and cost analysis, manage the complexity of planning and budgeting systems, and monitor the progress of reform in nonintrusive and constructive ways.

Written for institutional leaders, faculty, board members, and policymakers who bear responsibility for initiating and carrying through on reform in traditional colleges and universities, Reengineering the University shows how, working together, administrators and faculty can improve education, research, and affordability by keeping a close eye on both academic values and the bottom line.

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Reviews

Massy's in-depth yet highly accessible analysis is a must-read for any academic leader.

Massy has done an excellent job of explaining the interaction between the university budget, which creates the margin, or the financial return on investment, and the role of teaching and learning being core to the university mission. He spends considerable time helping integrate and resolve the two dimensions of mission and margin.

This is a thoughtful book by an author who has a formidable range of experience with different formats for teaching... His arguments are tough, intricate, and demanding.

... Massy, perhaps more than any other contemporary student of higher education, knows and critically thinks about how universities function day-to-day and academic year-to-academic year: what decisions have to made, who should make them, with what analytical information, and within what time frame. He keeps a close eye on multiple cause and multiple effect, as one must in multiversities. It is hard to do.

William Massy is a complex, deeply knowledgeable man: half hopeless romantic about the value and high purposes of higher education and half pragmatic engineer focused on costs, efficiency, and metrics. That combination proves to be just right for this wise and insightful book.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
304
ISBN
9781421422749
Illustration Description
30 line drawings
Table of Contents

Preface
1. Understanding the Traditional University
Problems and Opportunities
Assets Worthy of Preservation
Why Traditional Universities Do What They Do
Implications for Tuition and Cost Containment
Busine

Preface
1. Understanding the Traditional University
Problems and Opportunities
Assets Worthy of Preservation
Why Traditional Universities Do What They Do
Implications for Tuition and Cost Containment
Business Models and Value Propositions
2. The Reengineering Challenge
Flaws in the Academic Business Model
Building a Reengineering Portfolio
Implementation Considerations
Responsibilities for Reengineering
3. The New Scholarship of Teaching
Conceptual Underpinnings
Illustrative Applications
Two "Outside the Box" Proposals
Organizing for Improvement
4. The Cost of Teaching
Alternative Approaches
Design of Teaching Systems
Modeling from University Transactional Data
Extending the Model across the Campus
Areas of Application
5. Financial Planning and Budgeting
Envisioning University Information
Coherent Financial Planning
Coherent Resource Allocation
A Model for Balancing Mission and Margin
Conclusion
Appendixes
A. Teaching and Learning Principles
B. Course-Based ABC
C. Computer-Aided Course Design
D. Incremental Cost of Enrollment
E. Smart What-Ifs in the Course-Based ABC Model
F. Margin Equivalents for Start-Up Programs
G. Extensions to the Mission-Margin Model
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
William F. Massy
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William F. Massy, PhD

William F. Massy, a higher education consultant, is professor emeritus of education and business administration and a former vice president and vice provost at Stanford University. The author of Reengineering the University: How to Be Mission Centered, Market Smart, and Margin Conscious, he is the former president of the Jackson Hole Higher Education Group.
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