In the current and foreseeable harsh UK higher education environment, aspiring to best-practice financial management will be key to ensuring the prosperity--and indeed the survival--of any university. In this article I argue that good university financial management should provide stability to the institution, allow for investment as well as…

The renewal of strategy development and implementation is important in the context of the changing higher education landscape. Changing government policy and the political agenda require a university to engage in careful strategy development and implementation which result in long-term sustainability. The political interest of the government will…

Scenario planning is a tool which can help organisations and people to think about, and plan for, the long-term future. In basic terms, it involves creating a number of in-depth scenarios (stories), each of which tells of a different possible future for an organisation or issue, and considering how each different future might influence…

"The key needs of Bedfordshire, to improve the participation of its people in higher education and to regenerate its economy, will be best served by a new major access and employment oriented University." This vision statement was adopted by the Board of Governors of the University of Luton on 9 December 2005 on taking the decision to go ahead…

The increase in student numbers and the decline in the average unit of resource since the 1990s together with the changes brought about by rising student expectations are familiar circumstances to anyone working in higher education. The authors perceive this as part of the move towards a consumer culture in the public sector. This paper gives an…

The call to be strategic--and with it the concept of strategic management--can bring to mind a wide range of definitions, and there is now a huge array of academic literature supporting the different schools of thought. At a basic level, however, strategic thinking is probably most simply about focusing on the whole, rather than the part. In…

Like it or not, an institution's IT infrastructure is a matter with which institutional strategic planners must concern themselves. Information systems represent a significant investment, they perform mission-critical functions, and the appropriate use of information and learning technologies can have a critical part to play in delivering against…

Information and communications technologies are radically changing the way that teaching and learning activities are organised and delivered within higher education (HE) institutions. A wide range of technologies is being deployed in quite complex and interactive ways, including virtual learning environments (VLEs), mobile communication…

Strategic planning and quality management have been developed independently of each other, but they meet in practice in many kinds of organisations. Strategic planning and quality assurance integrate different aspects of higher education institutions (HEIs) to ensure high-quality educational outcomes. This paper investigates the role of these two…

Until recently, higher education institutions (HEIs) had been relatively free to pursue their own individual strategies, on the assumption that their combined effect would add up to a national strategy for higher education. As long as demand outstripped supply, market failures were not an issue. With supply and demand more in balance, the number…

This paper examines the approach of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to institutional strategy and planning, set out in 2000 in "Strategic Planning in Higher Education: A Guide for Heads of Institutions, Senior Managers and Members of Governing Bodies" ("the Guide"). It considers the general lack of clearly identified and…

This paper discusses the link between teaching and research, with emphasis on how best to manage core business of a higher education institution. The author argues that institutions should seek to integrate these core strategies, and agrees that 'universities need to set as a mission goal the improvement of the nexus between research and teaching'…