CUTBACK MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Statement of the Problem. During recent years, cutback management or retrenchment has been a fact of life for American higher education. Through a mail survey and case studies, this research sought a better understanding of how institutions respond to stresses caused in part by difficult economic conditions and declining student pools. Mail Survey of Cutback Management. The major portion of the research involved collection of data on cutback management using a survey of chief business officers at over three hundred institutions in the Northeastern United States. A research framework and hypotheses anticipated that the more severe the resource decline, the more centralized decision making would become, the more active campus groups would become, and the more severe administrative policies would be. Data from the survey failed to produce expected relationships among the variables despite the fact that a representative group of more than seventy percent responded to the survey. The survey did, however, produce descriptions of contemporary management and budget techniques practiced by institutions of higher education. Cutback management in higher education is not a neat process following the rational-comprehensive style of decision making. Neither does cutback management appear to be a short process with a clear ending. Alternative explanations such as the garbage can, political, or incremental models may better describe the process of cutback management in higher education. Case Studies of Turnaround Management. A secondary portion of the research involved six case studies of institutional turnaround at private institutions in the Northeast. These cases were intended to illustrate the process of returning to normal from situations of decline. A business administration model of the turnaround process was used in analyzing case data. Evidence indicated that there are common stages in turnarounds and common keys to success. The process appeared to be lengthy, sometimes taking a decade or more. Furthermore, the process appeared to be a highly individualistic one that focused on unique, marketable aspects of the institutions. Finally, evidence from the case studies provided some support for basic hypotheses from the mail survey. Thus severity of decline experienced seemed related to severity of cutback administrative strategies, for example.