Higher Education – Professional Growth Systems

Higher Education

Unique needs of colleges and universities

At an ever increasing pace, the higher education industry is being forced to evolve and adapt to diverse competitive structure. The internet, online courses, rising costs with decreased funding and a more sophisticated student customer have combined to dramatically change a college or university’s competitive landscape.

How do PGS products and services address the unique needs of higher education

  • Higher Education Strategic Planning: PGS’ Vision Navigation® system incorporates the work of Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter on Competitive Forces. We help our college and university clients to examine not only the direct competition, but also the demands of customers, potential substitutes and suppliers, like funding sources. The result? Combining Porter with our other assessment tools, we step our higher education client through the development of a thorough, usable, complete assessment from which to create highly successful strategic projects.
  • Higher Education Project Planning : The scarcity of funds and the abundance of competition it is more critical that universities and colleges deliver large scale projects on budget and on time.
  • Higher Education Process Improvement: With Process Advantage®, universities and colleges create staff teams that understand the unique processes of the institution and are empowered to achieve successful, lasting improvements – saving time and money while offering a better end product to both internal and external customers.

Examples

Challenge

An osteopathic medical university was encountering tremendous growth. They needed a tool to effectively plan and control the growth so that both the university and its students maintained high standards and a quality education.

Solution

PGS brought in Vision Navigation® strategic planning, and the university was able to effectively plan and control their growth, almost doubling in their medical school student population in two years.

Challenge

A state University system was responding to significant budget shortfalls. Their need was to create more efficient and effective internal processes.

Solution

PGS brought in Process Advantage® and trained staff in house to deliver the change management tools. The university is now on its 3rd year of process improvement, training new staff each year and successfully implementing significant improvements in multiple core processes. For example their faculty pre-recruitment process dropped from a cumbersome 65 step process to a smoothly executed 10 step system.

Challenge

A major university’s school of nursing had come under intense pressure from the regional hospital community to expand in order to relieve a severe shortage of nurses. The school had been attempting to define and implement a way forward for well over a year without success.

Solution

Using the Dynamic Planning® project planning process, the school was able to design and implement a major expansion of its capacity within one year, doubling its number of graduates without impacting the quality of their education.