Chief academic officers and deans have increasingly realized that meeting enrollment, cost efficiency, and student success goals requires change at the academic department level. Essentially all academic programs are housed within these units, which are responsible for enrolling, educating, and awarding credentials to students.
From a budgetary perspective, 44% of public institution and 51% of private institution costs reside in these units as well, allocated largely toward faculty salaries, benefits, and facilities costs. Yet the department chairs leading these units rarely have the training and skills needed to effectively align activities with important strategic goals—if they even know how to translate strategic goals into goals for their own departments.
Improving on these goals requires a more data-informed approach to decision-making and resource allocation at the department level. Unfortunately, the metrics and goals that apply at the institutional level do not help departmental and faculty leaders understand how their regular responsibilities and decisions drive institutional change.
Though department chairs may feel disconnected from the strategic plan and institution-wide objectives, they influence decisions from faculty hiring to course scheduling to curricular choices that can determine whether the institution meets its strategic goals.
The first step to showing chairs and faculty their role in driving strategy is to choose metrics and analyses that isolate the roles and responsibilities of departments aligned with institutional goals.
Academic leaders need the support of departments and their faculty to improve institutional graduation rates. Unfortunately, metrics like four- and six-year graduation rates hold departments accountable for activities that occurred during students’ first two years when they may have little interaction with the department’s faculty or curriculum.
Instead of tracking departments’ overall graduation rates, a better approach is to…