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.
Reengineering the University spells out the efforts that William Massy has made throughout his extraordinary career to develop models to aid academic institutions in improving their cost efficiency and academic quality. Written in clear and concise form, academic administrators and faculty concerned about the future of their institutions should read it.
This book is a game changer. It cogently deals with the problem of long-term sustainability of universities by addressing the core problems of quality in relation to cost and margin. Massy builds a strong case for his 'reengineering tools' which any university leader would find remarkably helpful in tackling critical issues of quality-conscious cost containment.
Reengineering the University is a tough love prescription for making the nation's colleges and universities more affordable by reengineering them to be more efficient. It is Bill Massy at his best.
Only Bill Massy could provide this perspective on an extraordinary moment in higher education, offering leaders a variety of adaptive tools and methods to engage this moment and strengthen the important work of creating sustainable futures for our universities.
Book Details
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