PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

Calculating productivity in higher education is a new and strange task, but overdue. The external forces affecting the very survival of colleges and universities are now necessitating such undertakings. The entire community of higher education is struggling with limited funds and declining enrollments. The need for higher education to look at itself in terms of meeting goals and objectives of today is a focus of this dissertation. One way higher education can improve itself is through the introduction of productivity improvement programs. The need to utilize resources more efficiently now becomes an urgent and common goal. This dissertation is not a chant of doom, but rather it is a statement of the need to develop a methodology to take advantage of the wisdom of the higher education community in order to achieve a better use of resources. Very little has been agreed upon for higher education productivity measurement or about productivity improvement. Although many profit oriented organizations have instituted productivity improvement programs, research of current literature in higher education indicates virtually no use of such programs. This dissertation reviews some successful business organizations programs, and by way of knowledge transfer, the most important factors for improving productivity are developed into a unified model that can be applied at the department level in an academic institution or to the entire college or university.