These recent publications are filled with actionable, results-oriented, and often provocative guidelines and views.

Momentum

The Responsibility Paradigm and Virtuous Cycles of Change in Colleges and Universities

An era of accountability has swept over the higher education landscape. Everyone it seems—legislatures, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, books, and bloggers—wants to “hold colleges and universities accountable.” They are attaching strings to budgets; producing reports that read like exposés; developing clever systems to rank and sort us; and writing books and articles that describe the end of college as we know it.

According to them, we need to be reformed, re-imagined, and rebooted. 

Momentum changes the conversation from how others are holding higher education accountable to why colleges and universities need to embrace the need to demonstrate their own responsibility. The responsibility paradigm that emerges fundamentally shifts the dialogue from fixing to preventing, from reacting to creating, from surviving to thriving. To implement this new paradigm, the dynamics of virtuous cycles are introduced and described. These upward spirals build on their own successes and result in growing confidence—a sense of vitality and resilience. The future of these institutions isn’t the result of outside pressure or reformers. The future is something that can and should be created by those who take responsibility for it.

Both a “Dimensions of Virtuous Cycles” summary and a “Momentum Institutional Index” are available under Resources. 

Noble Ambitions

Mission, Vision, and Values in American Community Colleges

Community colleges have a unique place in the American higher education landscape:  they offer low-cost access, workforce skills, and general education for transfer. With more than 1,000 institutions spread across the country, they represent an incredible opportunity—democracy’s colleges—and a valuable asset to the communities they serve.

A large-sample critical examination of these institutions’ noble ambitions—their mission, vision, and values—reveals a broad range of ineffective efforts as well as promising practices in each of these areas. Moreover, a framework provides the link between noble ambitions and actions in the form of alignment with strategic planning.

Recommendations seek to provide institutions with strategic options for creating purposeful change.