Academic Portfolio Design to Drive Market Alignment and Impact

Líderes Compartilhe suas experiências de campo Construindo portfólios acadêmicos equilibrados

O design e o gerenciamento de um portfólio acadêmico de faculdade ou universidade estabelecem as fundações para o seu sucesso a longo prazo. maneira. Que os esforços de revisão e design do portfólio acadêmico devem ser multifacetados, contabilidade para o posicionamento do mercado, economia de portfólio e estratégia e contexto institucional. Tempestade perfeita - em evolução preferências de alunos e ensino, estudantes e famílias que questionam o valor e os resultados de seus diplomas, aumentando a concorrência de mercado para os estudantes, à medida que mudanças demográficas afetam os mercados tradicionais e crescendo preocupações financeiras. Para construir um portfólio equilibrado posicionado para o futuro, as instituições precisam identificar novos programas de graduação ou credenciais para atrair novos públicos e misturar esses novos conceitos com ajustes de mercado e missão nas ofertas atuais.

• Academic portfolio design is critical for guiding long-term planning for colleges and universities.
• It helps position the existing academic portfolio for growth and sustainability and prioritizes investments in new or evolved offerings that extend an institution’s impact in a mission-aligned way.
• Huron’s holistic methodology for academic portfolio design balances market positioning and portfolio economics with institutional strategy and context.

Higher education institutions across the country are facing the perfect storm – evolving learner and teaching preferences, students and families questioning the value and outcomes of their degrees, increasing market competition for students as demographic shifts impact traditional markets, and growing financial concerns. To build a balanced portfolio positioned for the future, institutions need to identify new degree programs or credentials to attract new audiences and blend those new concepts with market and mission-informed adjustments to current offerings.

Together with Inside Higher Education, Huron hosted a webinar with Dr. Christine Siegel, provost at Fairfield University, and Dr. Lance Tatum, president of Northwest Missouri State University and former senior vice chancellor for Academic Affairs and chief academic officer at Troy University, to learn more about their institutions’ experiences with academic portfolio design and innovation.

Insights captured from the webinar address the importance of defining academic portfolio design for campus stakeholders and how the process can guide long-term planning in the context of an institution's mission, competitive landscape, and unique assets.

Leaders are learning that academic portfolio review and design efforts must be multifaceted, accounting for market positioning, portfolio economics, and institutional strategy and context. These efforts constitute future planning exercises for the academic enterprise that incorporate and balance the institution’s mission, competitive standing in the external market, student and labor market demand trends, and internal economics to develop a clear road map to position the existing portfolio for growth and sustainability. They also help prioritize investments in new or evolved offerings that extend an institution’s impact in a mission-aligned way and, when used as an ongoing management tool, allow leaders to be responsive to trends in student success, educational preferences, curricular complexity, and faculty workload.

“Until we started to engage seriously in academic portfolio planning over the last seven years, our graduate offerings were relatively small,” noted Dr. Siegel. “Due to these efforts, we now have three professional doctoral programs and over 40 master’s degree programs and have begun to expand geographically. While we have grown, we have ensured every new program maintains alignment with our mission by designing programs that help students grow intellectually and socially and become men and women who contribute to the greater good in society.”

Similarly, Dr. Tatum shared, “We hadn’t done a full academic portfolio review before, so one of our primary goals was to develop the methodology that we could adopt and move forward with to review, analyze, and plan as we looked at ways to invest and remove barriers to improve the market position and relevance, internal economics, and student outcomes of our programs. This approach also forced us to confront long-standing issues with accessing, using, and integrating data across the enterprise to inform our work. We used the academic portfolio review as an opportunity to illustrate the benefits of how integrated data can inform and improve our decision making.”

Fairfield University Allavajou os princípios de revisão e design do portfólio acadêmico para identificar e buscar crescimento para avançar sua missão. A Universidade Troy se concentrou em identificar e priorizar investimentos e oportunidades para posicionar e alinhar seu portfólio existente para a sustentabilidade contínua em um mercado cada vez mais competitivo. Embora sejam duas aplicações, há outras questões estratégicas que um processo de revisão e design de portfólio acadêmico pode abordar. Embora o crescimento tenha sido o resultado mais desejável, outras respostas da pesquisa incluídas:

In a poll of webinar attendees, 45% shared that enrollment growth was the most valuable outcome they hoped to achieve by conducting an academic portfolio analysis, illustrating the vital link between the academic enterprise and enrollment management. While growth was the most desirable outcome, other survey responses included:

• Alinhando a demanda do mercado de programas
• fornecendo aos líderes acadêmicos dados para informar sua tomada de decisão gerencial em andamento
• Identificando áreas de investimento || .. 587
• Achieving faculty workload clarity
• Optimizing the economics of the portfolio
• Melhorando os resultados dos alunos

Para aqueles que contemplam esses projetos, Huron incentiva você a refletir sobre a posição atual da sua instituição e os resultados desejados de um processo de revisão do portfólio acadêmico. Ao fazer isso, considere esta amostra de oito perguntas que nossos recentes clientes de portfólio acadêmico usaram para orientar seu trabalho:

1. Quais são nossas áreas acadêmicas de força e como devemos definir a "força", dada a necessidade de equilibrar o missão, a sustentabilidade financeira e as necessidades de mercado e a demanda?
2. Como podemos aproveitar os pontos fortes existentes dentro da empresa acadêmica para aproveitar oportunidades de receita novas ou adjacentes por meio de novos programas ou evoluir a entrega/pedagogia existentes? Resultados (receita, margem, matrícula, sucesso do aluno)?
3. What strategies or policies could be adopted to improve portfolio economics in targeted academic areas or the portfolio as a whole?
4. If structured or resourced differently, can existing programs achieve more substantial outcomes (revenue, margin, enrollment, student success)?
5. As políticas ou processos estão atualmente inibindo os esforços de inovação ou a capacidade de operar em maior alinhamento com as necessidades dos alunos? Onde existem lacunas entre os resultados atuais e os resultados desejados? Quais mudanças de estratégia/operacional/política podem melhorar os resultados futuros?
6. What student outcomes are our academic programs delivering today? Where are there gaps between current outcomes and desired outcomes? What strategy/operational/policy changes may improve future outcomes?
7. Como nosso portfólio de ofertas se compara aos nossos concorrentes mais próximos? Como podemos diferenciar nossos programas em um mercado competitivo de inscrição (conteúdo, preços e alinhamento do mercado de trabalho)? Design. Autor
8. What types of targeted investment(s) would be most appropriate for individual programs based on their advantages and challenges both internally and within the market?

Listen to the webinar recording for deeper insights into academic portfolio design.