Christopher C. Morphew

Mission Statements: A Thematic Analysis of Rhetoric Across Institutional Type

Mission statements are ubiquitous in higher education. Accreditation agencies demand them, strategic planning is predicated on their formulation, and virtually every college and university has one available for review. Moreover, higher education institutions are constantly revisiting and revising their mission statements: as recently as the mid-1990s, the Association of American Colleges found that fully 80% of all colleges and universities were making major revisions in their mission statements, goals, curricula, and general education courses. It would seem that not having a mission statement begs the very legitimacy of a college or university. Of course, the crafting (and re-crafting) of such documents consumes considerable institutional resources, particularly that most precious resource: time. So, why bother? Some would argue that articulating a shared purpose is a requisite first step on the road to organizational success. Others are far less sanguine about such efforts and view them as rhetorical pyrotechnics—pretty to look at perhaps, but of little structural consequence. The purpose of this study is to begin an exploration of these hypotheses by first attempting to understand what institutions actually say in their missions and by exploring the relationship between these rhetorical elements and institutional type.

Conceptualizing Change in the Institutional Diversity of U.S. Colleges and Universities

The paper describes a study of change in the diversity of U.S. colleges and universities from 1972–2002. Replicating the methods used by Birnbaum, the study uses institutional theory and its concepts to explore why the larger system of colleges and universities in U.S. grew less diverse during this period.

What's Being Sold and To What End?: A Content Analysis of College Viewbooks

Viewbooks are an important medium for enticing students to apply to colleges. But what messages are conveyed in them? This study offers an in-depth examination of 48 viewbooks using content analysis. The findings point to the predominance of a highly privatized conception of a college education.

The Cost of Prestige: Do New Research I Universities Incur Higher Administrative Costs?

The authors construct and respond to several questions about changing administrative costs for new Research I Universities, a group of institutions that might be expected to incur new costs as a result of their new status. Using IPEDS data, the study provides mixed support for the claim that universities reaching the pinnacle of research university status experience increase administrative costs as a result of their aspirations and the realities of their new stature.

What College and University Websites Reveal about the Purposes of Higher Education

College and university websites play an important role in the college search process. This study examines the textual and visual elements on the websites of 12 colleges and universities. Findings suggest that websites communicate a message consistent with private purposes of education and inconsistent with those linked to public purposes.

Centralization and diversity: evaluating the effects of government policies in U.S.A. and Dutch higher education

The article details a comparative study of higher education policies in the U.S.A. and The Netherlands. The policies are similar in their attempt to centralize the governance of public higher education in state and national systems in an attempt to promote and maintain diversity. The authors examine the policies in the context of previous research on higher education and provide data that shed light on the growth of degree programmes within public universities. Findings show that public higher education systems in several U.S.A. states and The Netherlands have not grown less diverse over time. Other findings provide mixed support for the argument that centralization is an effective means of limiting homogeneous growth in public systems of higher education.

On the Efficacy of Raising Your University’s Rankings

Rankings are the Swiss knife of higher education – they are a single tool with many uses. Like many other universities, Texas Tech University utilizes rankings as a barometer to judge whether the university exhibits dimensions of quality. (The term “universities” will be used to describe all postsecondary institutions throughout this chapter.) The “Goal Two: Academic Excellence” section of its 2005 strategic plan cites rankings 12 times. Three of the nine objectives in this section of the plan are explicitly aimed at improving the institution’s national ranking, whether it be in selectivity, grants, scholarly productivity, or the quality of the university’s library system (Texas Tech University 2005). The use of rankings as a measure of a college or university’s excellence, improvement in quality, prestige, character, hipness, or value is ubiquitous. The pervasiveness of ranking systems has spread to institutions outside the United States as well. At world-renowned institutions like the University of Melbourne in Australia, for example, international rank is so important it occupies the second highlight on the “About the University” page, sandwiched between the institution’s foundation date and the number of enrolled students (University of Melbourne 2010). Even lesser-known institutions, like the University of Kwazulu-natal in South Africa use higher education rankings in creating strategic plans as well as guideposts in determining institutional quality (University of Kwaxulu-natal and Strategic 2007). As these examples demonstrate, universities have adopted the use of rankings as a means of assuring internal actors that the institution is on course toward its goals.

The Realities of Strategic Planning: Program Termination at East Central University

It is not difficult to find advice for colleges and universities about management and restructuring during periods of financial stress. Texts and chapters on strategic planning (Keller, 1983; Rowley, Lujan, & Dolen, 1997; Schuster, Smith, Corak, & Yamada, 1994) and restructuring in lieu of retrenchment (Karr & Kelley, 1996; Leslie & Fretwell, 1996; MacTaggart, 1996; Myers, 1996) provide recipes for proactively managing a university through hard times. These texts and chapters guide managers interested in such topics as environmental scanning, resource reallocation, dealing with faculty, and the role of campus culture. Primarily, however, these sources provide “macro” case studies: they aggregate examples of restructuring at colleges and uni-

FROM THE BARRIO TO THE BUCOLIC: THE STUDENT TRANSFER EXPERIENCE FROM HSIS TO SMITH COLLEGE

The study reported in this article examined two Hispanic-serving institutions, Miami-Dade Community College and Santa Monica College, and the innovative transfer agreements they have with Smith College, a highly selective private womens college. Factors that influence the successful transfer of women students to Smith from these HSIs are highlighted. The article concludes with recommendations for how Hispanic-serving institutions, and community colleges in general, can learn from the exemplars offered here how to develop their own unique transfer initiatives that benefit Latinas/os and other underrepresented students to transfer to and be successful at elite four-year colleges and universities.

Organizational Identity in Higher Education: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives

This chapter examines evolving perspectives, methodologies, and narratives that inform scholarly understanding of organizational identity in higher education. It coalesces a broad, discursive, and multidisciplinary body of work around established eras and streams of thought in higher education. Conceptual and chronological foci include institutional storytelling and popular media boosterism at the turn of the twentieth century; the phenomenon of institutional saga developed amid emerging organizational science in the postwar years; the emergence and impact of systems thinking, strategic planning, rankings, and mission drift on institutional distinctiveness in the 1980s and 1990s; and the influence of branding and market positioning on institutional distinctiveness in the early twenty-first century. The literature is organized, also, according to its constituent emphasis—whether created for and about internal members of college and university communities on the one hand or developed with regard to higher education’s external audiences and consumers on the other. As a whole, the chapter integrates and analyzes a previously fragmented body of literature and highlights the ways in which conceptions of institutional identity in US higher education have evolved in relationship to a changing national context.