| Chapter 1: | Africa's 21st-Century Renaissance in Higher Education: The Need for Strategic Planning |
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ordinarily referred to as the “internal assessment” or “internal audit,” while the search for external opportunities and key threats is called the “external assessment” or “external audit.”
Why Strategic Management in Higher Education?
Strategic management may be viewed as the “moral dimension” of higher education: it centers on how we enhance the lives of our students, transforming them, hopefully, in significant ways while using resources that may be or are usually scarce. Strategic management forces us to decide on a process, set goals and directions, and then begin to expend resources and money to attain this knowledge creation and enhancement. In many ways, strategic management enables us to respond to change with vibrant curricula and relevant programs to help students acquire requisite skills to use in the real world—both locally and globally. To this extent, it enhances institutional performance and success.
In the 21st century, strategic management in institutions of higher learning is necessary due to the following circumstances:
- • Changing student needs, involving the marketing concept of delivering the service or product your customer needs—in this case relevant educational programs and vibrant curricula
- • Declining enrollment, against the backdrop of higher operating costs
- • Shrinking sources of public or private financial support and, consequently, the need to prioritize allocation of scare funds, with the knowledge that universities cannot do everything for everyone
- • Increased competition from online or virtual universities, regional universities, local diploma-granting colleges (as opposed to degree-granting universities), fast-track institutions, as well as corporate universities