Reengineering the University How to Be Mission Centered, Market Smart, and Margin Conscious

Higher education expert William F. Massy’s decades as a professor, senior university officer, and consultant have left him with a passionate belief in the need for reform in America’s traditional universities. In Reengineering the University, he addresses widespread concerns that higher education’s costs are too high, learning falls short of objectives, disruptive technology and education models are mounting serious challenges to traditional institutions, and administrators and faculty are too often unwilling or unable to change.

An expert microeconomist, Massy approaches the challenge of reform in a genuinely new way by applying rigorous economic principles, informed by financial data and other evidence, to explain the forces at work on universities and the flaws in the academic business model. Ultimately, he argues that computer models that draw on data from college transaction systems can help both administrators and faculty address problems of educational performance and cost analysis, manage the complexity of planning and budgeting systems, and monitor the progress of reform in nonintrusive and constructive ways.

Written for institutional leaders, faculty, board members, and policymakers who bear responsibility for initiating and carrying through on reform in traditional colleges and universities, Reengineering the University shows how, working together, administrators and faculty can improve education, research, and affordability by keeping a close eye on both academic values and the bottom line.

"Massy's in-depth yet highly accessible analysis is a must-read for any academic leader."—Academic Leader

"William Massy is a complex, deeply knowledgeable man: half hopeless romantic about the value and high purposes of higher education and half pragmatic engineer focused on costs, efficiency, and metrics. That combination proves to be just right for this wise and insightful book."—Michael S. McPherson, The Spencer Foundation

"Reengineering the University spells out the efforts that William Massy has made throughout his extraordinary career to develop models to aid academic institutions in improving their cost efficiency and academic quality. Written in clear and concise form, academic administrators and faculty concerned about the future of their institutions should read it."—Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Cornell Higher Education Research Institute

"This book is a game changer. It cogently deals with the problem of long-term sustainability of universities by addressing the core problems of quality in relation to cost and margin. Massy builds a strong case for his 'reengineering tools' which any university leader would find remarkably helpful in tackling critical issues of quality-conscious cost containment."—Paula Myrick Short, University of Houston

"Reengineering the University is a tough love prescription for making the nation's colleges and universities more affordable by reengineering them to be more efficient. It is Bill Massy at his best."—Robert Zemsky, Founder of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania

"Only Bill Massy could provide this perspective on an extraordinary moment in higher education, offering leaders a variety of adaptive tools and methods to engage this moment and strengthen the important work of creating sustainable futures for our universities."—John J. DeGioia, Georgetown University

William F. Massy, a higher education consultant, is professor emeritus of education and business administration and a former vice president and vice provost at Stanford University. The author of Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education, he is the former president of the Jackson Hole Higher Education Group.

Higher education expert William F. Massy's decades as a professor, senior university officer, and consultant have left him with a passionate belief in the need for reform in America's traditional universities. In Reengineering the University, he addresses widespread concerns that higher education's costs are too high, learning falls short of objectives, disruptive technology and education models are mounting serious challenges to traditional institutions, and administrators and faculty are too often unwilling or unable to change. An expert microeconomist, Massy approaches the challenge of reform in a genuinely new way by applying rigorous economic principles, informed by financial data and other evidence, to explain the forces at work on universities and the flaws in the academic business model. Ultimately, he argues that computer models that draw on data from college transaction systems can help both administrators and faculty address problems of educational performance and cost analysis, manage the complexity of planning and budgeting systems, and monitor the progress of reform in nonintrusive and constructive ways. Written for institutional leaders, faculty, board members, and policymakers who bear responsibility for initiating and carrying through on reform in traditional colleges and universities, Reengineering the University shows how, working together, administrators and faculty can improve education, research, and affordability by keeping a close eye on both academic values and the bottom line.