Presented by Larry Gould, Provost San Diego, February 2008

1. Competing on Innovation, Quality, Partnering and Price:
Transforming and Amplifying the Future of the
State Comprehensive University
“The best way to predict the
future is to invent it”.
---Alan Kay

2. About Fort Hays State University
• Founded in 1902 as a “teaching academy” on 4,000 acres of
military land ceded to the state of Kansas by the federal
government
• Its state college role was expanded in the 1960s in response to
the need for access/affordability for first generation and
nontraditional students and the changing demands being place
on other types of four year institutions (AASCU)
• Assigned current liberal and applied arts mission in 1992 as one
of three regional, state comprehensive universities in the
Kansas Regents System (36 institutions) responsible for 66
western and central counties (52,000 square miles)

3. About Fort Hays State University
• Founding member of the Higher Learning Commission’s
(HLC/NCA) alternative accreditation track known as the
Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP)
• Academic Programming
 52 undergraduate degree programs
 19 graduate degree programs
 25 programs completely accessible off-campus
• General Structure
 Three divisions: academic, student affairs, admin-finance
 Four academic colleges, graduate school, distance education
delivery unit called the Virtual College

4. About Fort Hays State University
• Branding Tagline: Affordable Success
• Enrollment: The Way We Were (Fall, 1998)
 On-campus: 4718
 Off-campus: 839
 Grand total: 5557
• Enrollment: The Way We Are (Fall, 2007)
 On-campus: 4449
 Off-campus: 5375 (2300 in China)
 Grand total: 9824

5. Where in the World is FHSU?

6. The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be:
Change-Drivers Reshaping Higher Education
• The emergence of a more demanding, educated consumer with a
“shopper’s mentality”
 More choices among a wider array of options
 Convenient, relevant and close to home learning experiences
 Readiness to use several educational organizations on the way to one
or more credentials
• Growing pressure for flexibility/nimbleness to meet learner needs
• Competition: new providers/old players
• A growing, worldwide demand for learning

7. The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be:
Change-Drivers Reshaping Higher Education
• Changing demographics/diversity
• Continuing need to integrate/apply technology
• The realization of a lifelong relationship between work and
learning
• Greater segmentation of the learning marketplace
• Caught in the squeeze: declining public funds vs. market
opportunities
• The public reform imperative: access, affordability, assessment
and accountability

8. Taking Charge of Change:
Framing Strategic Choices/Inventing FHSU’s Future
• Analytical Questions for Developing Strategy
What are the key issues/opportunities we face?
How can we best compete?
In what “direction” do we want to go?
• In the Process of Responding to the Analytical Questions, What
“Big, Hairy, Audacious Approach” Frames the FHSU Selection
of Strategic Themes and Competitive Capabilities?
An Approach/Guide for Shaping the FHSU Future:
Mission-Centered, Market-Smart, Politically-Savvy

9. Mission-Centered, Market-Smart, Politically-Savvy:
The Value Proposition
• “….when the history of American higher education….in the 21 st
century is written, we hope that becoming more market smart proves
to be only part of the tale. The rest of the story ought to be about
using market smarts to regain control of institutional mission---about
the restoration of American colleges and universities as places of
public purpose.”
---Zemsky, Wegner and Massey, Remaking the American
American University: Market-Smart and
Mission-Centered (2005), p. 202.

10. Mission-Centered, Market-Smart, Politically-Savvy:
Select Elements of the Value Proposition for FHSU
• Demographics (Growth and Diversity)
• Caught in the Squeeze: Declining Public Funds
• Financing Institutional Goals and Creating Campus Culture
 Internationalization/Worldwide Demand for Learning
 Technology: Mobile Learning and Enterprise Initiatives
 Continuous Quality Improvement (AQIP)
 Convenience of Access (graduation rate), Affordability of Access (low
tuition), Learning Accountability (assessment), Faculty Enhancements
• New Ways of Doing Business (flex, common course and redesign
strategies/see Graves, “Voluntary Counter-Reformation”)
• Energizing Mission, Public Purposes and the American Dream

11. Translating the Mission-Centered, Market-Smart, Politically-Savvy
Strategic Approach into Themes and Essential Competitive
Capabilities
Strategic
Approach Mission-Centered, Market-Smart, Politically-Savvy
Continuous
Strategic Quality
Themes Innovation Partnering Price
Improvement
Interactive
Competitive People Strategic Focus Operations
Capabilities and and and
Leadership Alignment Management

12. Using Themes to “Stretch” the Strategy:
Competing on Innovation
• Envision and Introduce Curricular Products
– Online BBA in Management/Marketing (sustaining innovation)
– Alternative Teacher Certification (low-end disruptive innovation)
– Professional Science Masters (new market disruptive innovation)
• Envision and Implement Curricular Reformation
– MIS 101(course redesign to improve learning/reduce costs)
– On-line Service Learning (unique off-campus learning and
meeting public purposes)

13. Using Themes to “Stretch” the Strategy:
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)
• Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP)
– New, more inclusive view of institutional excellence (applies to all three
divisions---see Ruben, Pursuing Excellence….2004)
– New opportunities to leverage excellence across the institution, e.g. AQIP
action plans (research, mobile learning, new annual reports)
– Year of the Department (YOTD): A Call to Engagement (defining the
faculty role in academic quality work/academic audit)
• Office of Quality Management
– Aligning process improvement and performance initiatives with long-term
strategic planning, themes and priorities
– Kansas Board of Regents Performance Agreements
– Institutional Expansion of Academic Analytics

14. Using Themes to “Stretch” the Strategy:
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)
• New On-line Quality Course Development Process
• New Student Outreach Call Center in Virtual College to Enhance Learner
Relationship Management and Findings About Learner Satisfaction
– Timeliness
– Knowledgeable and courteous staff
– Fair treatment
– Expected outcome achieved
• Institutional Performance Scorecard
• Dare to Dream: Yearlong Organizational Rethinking and Restructuring
Process (new units, programs, certificates, etc.)
• Kansas Academy of Mathematics and Science

15. Using Themes to “Stretch” the Strategy:
Strategic Partnering
• “As institutions promote their individuality and autonomy, they will also need
to enter into a wide array of partnerships and strategic alliances to maximize
their effectiveness and quality.”
--From the introductory message to the
ACE web site by David Ward, 2007
• For FHSU, strategic partnering is a leveraging process that expands growth,
learning opportunities, energy and revenue while helping to implement
strategy and maintain mission and public purpose.
• Office of Strategic Partnerships
• Internationalization of the Campus/Enrollment Management
• Pioneer in Cross-Border Distance Education (China, 2300 students)

16. The FHSU-China Connection
Shenyang Normal
Tianjin University of University
Science and Technology Shenyang
Tianjin
Shenyang
Beijing University of
International Business
and Economics
Xinzheng Beijing
Hangzhou Normal
University Sias International
Hangzhou Hangzhou University
Xinzheng
Beijing Normal University
Zhuhai Campus
Zhuhai Taiwan
Hong Kong Institute of
Tak Ming College
Continuing Education
Taiwan
Hong Kong

17. Using Themes to “Stretch” the Strategy:
Competing on Price
• Without going into issues of price elasticity, discounting and higher
education price indices, FHSU’s ultimate goal (horizon 3) is to remain
mission centered by spending its market earned marginal revenues to
enhance access, increase affordability and maintain the traditional public
purposes of the university. Price is determined by this careful balance
between market, mission and academic values and the political savvy to
understand that competitive pricing is closely tied to improvements in
productivity and quality.
• “To improve affordability, we propose a program of cost-cutting and
productivity improvements….new performance benchmarks [and]
lowering per-student educational costs by reducing barriers for transfer
students” (lowest in Kansas Regents System). ---Spellings Commission
• Average five year tuition increase: 5%

18. Using Themes to “Stretch” the Strategy:
Competing on Price
• On-Campus Tuition and Fees per credit hour
Undergraduate Resident: $111.85
Graduate Resident: $154.65
Undergraduate Non-resident: $351.45
Graduate Non-resident: $408.65
Undergraduate Contiguous State & MSEP: $155.06
Graduate Contiguous State: $219.19
• Virtual College Fees per credit hour
Undergraduate Virtual College: $148.00
Graduate Virtual College: $197.25
Graduate MBA Virtual College : $400.00

19. Developing Capabilities for Executing Strategy:
People and Leadership*
• “The good-to-great leaders began the transformation by first getting
the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus)…. and
the right people in the right seats---and then figured out where to drive
it.” Jim Collins, From Good to Great, 2001, p. 63.
• The Academic Compact: The Most Essential Social Software (YOTD)
• FHSU Academy of Academic Leadership
• You Are the Future: Yearlong New Faculty Orientation
• Faculty Leadership/interim Opportunities/Talent Development and
Succession Strategy
• Center for Teaching Excellence (CTELT)/Faculty Enhancement Plan
• Awards/Incentives/Amenities

20. Developing Capabilities to Execute Strategy:
Strategic Focus and Alignment*
• Council for Institutional Effectiveness (CIE) works to ensure that
process improvement and resources are devoted to the Strategic
Themes and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that measure progress
toward goal-achievement
• AQIP Action Projects, the university strategic planning process and
KBOR Performance Agreements serve as the foundation for cascading
themes, goals, KPIs and information designed to “align” organizational
with unit-level (college, departments, budget unit) plans and initiatives
• Themes provide unit-level leaders with flexibility and freedom to
innovate and develop goals of their own
• Employees are engaged in activities and receive information to help
understand the institution strategy, values, mission and capacity-
building efforts (Performance Scorecard and YOTD)

21. Developing Capabilities to Execute Strategy:
Operational Excellence and Management*
• Access, Affordability and Talent Development (success) as
branding elements are reinforced by operational excellence
(quality). Since uniqueness is hard to achieve, the FHSU choice
is to conduct “operations” better than any other SCU
• Use Principles of Excellence/Not Business
– Management by measurement/clarifying and improving processes
– Service quality in on- and off-campus operations (e.g. telephone
etiquette for administrative assistants)
– CIE operational plan ties together people, strategy and operations
– Review synchronization/alignment and need for strategy adaptation
– Results management plan including annual reports from NSSE, CLA,
FSSE, HERI, AQIP and specialized accreditation to close the
accountability gap

22. Developing Capabilities to Execute Strategy:
Operational Excellence and Management*
• Continuing discussion, implementation and institutionalization of
mission-centered structure and activities for serving public
purposes
– American Democracy Project (ADP) sponsored by AASCU (see
FHSU ADP web site)
– Center for Civic Leadership (Tigers in Service, Kansas Youth
Leadership Academy[KYLA] camps, service learning, Ben Franklin
Papers project, etc.
– Diversity Learning
– Internationalization/Seven Revolutions
*Adapted in part from Bossidy, L. and Charam, R., Execution: The Discipline of Getting
Things Done, 2002.

23. • In closing, let me re-emphasize why FHSU thinks it’s so
important to “take charge of change”:
On the plains of hesitation, bleach the bones of
countless millions who at the dawn of victory,
sat down to wait….and waiting, died.
George W. Cecil, 1923
Thank you. Questions?
Available at: <www.fhsu.edu/provost>