174 Strategic Leadership
Scenarios at John Adams University
A brief example from higher education may help to give concreteness to the
idea of scenarios. Consider John Adams University, a small public institution
in the West that is developing a strategic plan and is ready to define a series of
new initiatives. It wants to test the coherence of its ambitious strategic vision to
become a state and national leader in funded applied research and in the assess-
ment of student learning. In particular, it has decided to create a truly comprehen-
sive and expensive program of institutional and academic assessment to enhance
its quality. To test these and other strategies, the SPC develops three scenarios
based on a PEEST analysis that reflects changing trends both in the state and
nationwide.
Many aspects of the future environment are known and will be constants in
each of the scenarios, including a consistently high and increasing demand for
educational services in the state, supported by steady population growth. Changes
in the economic fortunes of the state and region are automatically translated
into growing or declining state subsidies, so the nature of the state relationship
and different political philosophies are the primary differentiating characteristics
in each of the scenarios. Over the past decade the state legislature has provided
erratic levels of support for its public institutions, dictated strictly by the state’s
revenues. Tuition rates at Adams were cut for one four-year period and then
increased dramatically. There have been some strong signs that the state wants to
foster institutional autonomy, but others indicate that bureaucratic regulation is
a fixture of government. Based on a careful analysis of these and other trends and
political tendencies, the university develops three scenarios for plausible futures:
Business as Usual, Creative Self-Reliance, and the Competitive Marketplace.
Business as Usual
In this scenario, it is clear that the intricate patterns of governmental,
bureaucratic, and university interactions and expectations will not change
substantively or structurally. As far as the eye can see, there will be erratic fund-
ing based on the state’s changing economic situation, as cycles of political and
bureaucratic control alternate with some movement toward more autonomous
forms of governance, but not in fundamental, coherent, or predictable forms.
Tuition will follow gyrating patterns of stability or increase based on the state’s
revenues, and capital funding will be reactive rather than proactive and a function
of the political timing of bond issues.
Creative Self-Reliance
In the second model, the picture is different. This scenario sketches a coherent
plan driven by political leadership to make constructive self-reliance a model of
governance and decision making. State funding increases modestly for the public
universities, but in ways that are targeted to build capacity and to encourage
initiative. Research facilities are funded, for example, but operational support