LHE-7600: Strategic Planning and Operations in Higher Education

Hinton, K. E. (2012). A practical guide to strategic planning in higher education. Society for College and University Planning.
Read pages 7-17. This guide provides a concise overview of strategic planning fundamentals, including a short history of how planning evolved in higher education, the main components of strategic plans, and how institutions develop and implement plans.

Suskie, L. A., & Ikenberry, S. O. (2015). Five dimensions of quality: A common sense guide to accreditation and accountability. Jossey-Bass.
Read Chapter 1, pages 3-10, and Chapter 9, pages 99-105. Suskie and Ikenberry provide a brief overview of the higher education landscape to provide context to the factors affecting higher education institutions, thus influencing their planning processes. The trends identified by Suskie and Ikenberry, including rising higher education costs, the high cost of tuition for students, concerns over return on investment, and changing demographics, are factors every institution considers in their environmental scanning processes. In Chapter 9, Suskie and Ikenberry discuss institutional purpose and how institutions use this to derive a well-articulated mission statement.

Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthing and sustaining organizational achievement (5th ed). Wiley.
Read Chapter 1, pages 30-58. While this book is written for non-profit and government institutions, not specifically for higher education, the strategic planning process has many of the same elements. As such, it is good to learn about how similar institutions implement planning processes. Bryson provides an overview of the national and international factors affecting non-profit and governmental institutions, strategic planning benefits to organizations, and how organizations implement their plans. There is also a case study comparison of three different organizations and how they addressed challenges and issues as part of a strategic planning process.

Delprino, R. P. (2013). The human side of the strategic planning process in higher education. Society for College and University Planning.
Read Chapters 1 to 3, pages 7-35. Delprino raises excellent points about strategic planning being a people process. He begins by outlining the change process and factors involved in change, then delves into the stakeholder groups involved in the planning process and how institutional leadership is needed to sustain planning. This publication provides a good overview of the theoretical framework affecting systems.

Mathew, R., Bonilla-Martin, E., Santana, D., & Gonzales, E. (2020). Untangling the history and procedures for strategic planning: We review a century of literature for answers. Planning for Higher Education, 48(4), 25-34.
The authors provide a short, yet thorough overview of the history of strategic planning within higher education. They make a compelling case for strategic planning within higher education, including the need to conduct SWOT analyses as part of institutional planning processes and the need to create operationalized plans.