March 11, 2019

I have been part of institutional long-range planning now for almost 25 years.  In fact, at SMC, we are getting ready to meet with our Board of Trustees as part of our annual long-range planning.  What I have generally appreciated at SMC is that long-range planning rarely comes with a definitive end date.  You know, the kind of plan that ends at a definitive year with expressed goals in terms of enrollment, or transformation, or or facilities growth.  You can insert your adjective as you wish:

Vision 2023: _____

Indistinctive College 2024: _____

To me, it has always seemed foolhardy for leadership to know exactly where they plan to be in 5 years, especially in a world where the environment can change within 6 months.  If nothing else, it is non-sensical to lock yourself into a goal 5 years out that in 2 years you may need to abandon.

All of this seems relevant today when I read of "Innovation Ambitions Gone Awry at UT Austin."  Nonprofit Quarterly does an excellent job enumerating where the University of Texas' long-range plans for Project 2021 went seriously off track:

• buying too much into the promise of online as the future delivery of student choice (online has much to offer, believe me, but too many traditional universities and colleges have not figured out the balance between it and their core face-to-face product).
• believing that non-standard credit could easily be covered/accepted by financial aid (higher education is incredibly conservative and bureaucratic by nature, in part because of the conservative, bureaucratic nature of governmental financial aid).
• attempting to institutionalize an individual scenario in the beliefs that everything could be transformed in the same way (see first half of parenthetical above).

Not surprisingly, this leads me to some parody and verse, Foreigner's Double Vision:

Doubtful Vision

Feeling wound and worthy, feeling kind of green,

I'm a new president, need to promise the extreme.

This idea is a good one, we ain't got time to wait,

I wanna claim a vision that everyone says is great.

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Fill my eyes with that doubtful vision.

No disguise for that doubtful vision.

Oooh, when it goes through me,

It's always a joy to me,

My doubtful vision gets the best of me.

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We won't do more than we really need.

But our goals are ridiculous, institutional greed.

This year's the year, we're gonna push past the limits.

I reduce all the college's efforts to a single gimmick.

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Fill my eyes with that doubtful vision.

No disguise for that doubtful vision.

Oooh, when it goes through me,

It's always a joy to me,

My doubtful vision gets the best of me.

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Oooh, doubtful vision.

I have doubtful vision.

I am clearly cracked in the head,

So cracked in the head.

I got my doubtful vision.

Seeing doubtful, doubtful,

Ooh, I have doubtful vision.

Yeah, I'm getting doubtful vision.

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The sad thing is that the president will leave, and both the new college he or she goes to, as well as the institution left, will hear something similar and it will feel like the first time.  It will all seem so urgent.  And no one will be smart enough to say, "that was yesterday."*

* I suppose at this point, I should admit that early Foreigner is one of my guilty musical pleasures.