Don’t Mention the Monsters
Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History is a useful (if lengthy) book if for whatever reason you are thinking about going into a strategic planning process. It traces the history of the concept of...
View ArticleSame But Different (Part 1)
One of the challenges I find in doing comparative higher education work is that because everyone in the field went to university, they think they know what a university is. But the fact is...
View ArticleSame But Different (Part 2)
Yesterday, I outlined the key similarities between the US and Canadian higher education systems. Today, let’s talk differences. The most obvious dissimilarity is some of the institutional forms....
View ArticlePublic Engagement in Strategic Planning
A key thing about strategic planning exercises in higher education is that they are pretty much the only time when universities and colleges engage widely with stakeholders – students, faculty, staff,...
View ArticleThose Two New Laurentian Reports
What Laurentian reports are we talking about now? Last summer, after the big round of layoffs at Laurentian, the administration said it wanted to do three big reviews before exiting CCAA protection –...
View ArticleImproving Senates
I thought I would follow-up on Monday’s discussion of Laurentian University’s Senate-busting escapades with another piece on what Senates could – and should – be. Because while I disagree strongly...
View ArticleImproving Boards of Governors
Improving Boards of Governors Last week, I did a piece on academic Senates and how they could be improved. This got a few of you asking, “what about Boards of Governors”? Man of the People that I am,...
View ArticleInstitutional Strategic Plans: Control v. Vision
Here are a couple of quick thoughts on institutional strategic plans and how they tend to fall into two big categories. Most institutions typically prefer plans that are about control. That is, they...
View ArticleStrategic Actors, Strategic Planning, Strategic Hiring
Why do universities keep writing strategic plans? It sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. Every institution has a strategy, in the sense that it has a sense of “where it wants to go” and how...
View ArticleFin (pour l’instant)
So, this is the final entry for Year XI of the One Thought Blog. I hope you have enjoyed another year of my semi-structured scribblings. Regular service will resume sometime around Labour Day (not...
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