Continuous Improvement in Higher Education

How to Begin Your Institution’s Lean Journey

Bonnie Slykhuis

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367405519
• eBook ISBN: 9780429632631
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Is your college or university struggling with how to adapt to budget cuts, changing student needs, technology, or regulatory changes? Do you have a program or staff assigned to help coordinate change efforts? Are you ready to become more proactive in how you react to the changes that affect your institution? Structured continuous process-improvement programs have benefitted manufacturing companies for decades, but what works in manufacturing does not work the same way in education!

This book, written by a higher education Lean practitioner using real examples from higher education, shows you how to create a continuous-improvement program specifically for higher education It walks you through the key steps for building your first-year continuous-improvement plan. It provides templates, checklists, and best practices to assist in your planning process. Whether you are a Lean novice or a current Lean/continuous-improvement practitioner, this book will add tools to your tool kit and lay the groundwork for successful change initiatives.

Chapter 1

Big Picture Rationale

Everyone knows that the world is changing. In fact, it is changing at a rate that surpasses any other time in our history. Fueled by innovation, global competition and technology, colleges and universities cannot afford to be complacent. They must find ways to adapt to current and future challenges or risk becoming obsolete like many companies (i.e. Kodak, Blockbuster, Palm, Toys-R-Us, General Mills, TWA) who were unwilling or slow to change.

The following are some of the impending challenges facing higher education. As you read through them consider whether your college is currently and effectively dealing with these challenges, whether they are planning to, or whether they need to do so.

■    Funding – Colleges throughout the US continue to see a decline in state funding, forcing many to find ways to bridge the financial gap. According to a 2014 Government Accountability Office report, state funding for public colleges saw a 12% decline from 2003–2012 while the average tuition fee increased 55%.¹ The fluctuation in support is tied to the state’s economy and competing demands for state funding with K-12 education, mental health coverage, Medicaid, and prisons to name a few. Based on these and other trends since 1980, the American Council in Education (ACE) predicts that “the average state fiscal support for higher education will reach zero by 2059.”²

■    Accountability of institutions – In the last decade student loans have jumped 150% leaving the average college/university graduate $25–50K in debt. The increased cost of higher education is forcing many to consider options other than traditional advanced education after high school. To compound the problem, businesses are seeing a widening of the skills gap. Part of this is due to the pace of technology and the impact it has on the world we live in. Many of today’s high-demand jobs didn’t exist 10 years ago. Sixty-five percent of current grade school students will hold jobs that don’t yet exist.³ Much of the information that college students are currently learning will be obsolete by the time they graduate. Colleges/universities are struggling to keeping up with the ever changing demands of the workforce. To fill the skills gap companies must recruit from competitors or develop internal training programs. Colleges must find better ways to assess and align with current and future job needs or risk losing students due to poor job placement.

■    Competition for students – Students are no longer limited to regional colleges, physical campuses or standard class times. Through technology students can literally access classes around the world. Research continues to show a decline in traditional on-campus students while the numbers of online or distance learning students rise.⁴ This and other shifts are forcing colleges to seek out new student populations (i.e. working adults, other countries) and evaluate how to better meet student needs (i.e. on-demand classes, shorter schedules, and adaptive teaching methods).⁵ Some are turning to predictive analytics as a way to better target recruitment efforts and increase retention. The online news publication EdSurge reports that as the competition for traditional students tightens, the number of for-profit and non-profit college closures and acquisitions continues to trend upward.⁶

That brings us to talk about Lean, the subject of the next chapter. Lean is one way to effectively deal with many of the problems and issues facing institutions of higher education. My goal for this book is to narrow down the vast amounts of information about Lean into focused first steps that will hopefully aid you in setting up and starting your own Lean/continuous improvement program.

Notes

1    Average tuition fees went from $3,745 in school year 2002–2003 to $5,800 in school year 2011–2012 for in-state students.

2    The ACE reported in State Funding: A Race to the Bottom (Mortensnson, 2012), that based on the trends since 1980, average state fiscal support for higher education will reach zero by 2059. Many reaching it by 2039.

3    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwtS6Jy3ll8.

4    The Babson Research Group reported a 6.5% drop in students that study on US college campuses (1,173,805, or 6.4%) between 2012 and 2016 (Seaman, Allen, and Seaman, 2018).

5    A 2015 Changing Higher Education article reports that MIT is offering undergraduate courses online free of charge to students around the world. The online components will enable flexible time scales and location-independent participation.

6    According to the online news publication EdSurge, in the last two academic years, the number of nonprofit colleges decreased by nearly 2%. For-profit reductions were especially pronounced at 11%.

Bibliography

Harris, A. 2018. Here’s How Higher Education Dies. The Atlantic, (June) www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/heres-how-higher-education-dies/561995/.

MIT’s self-disruption: An update. October 13, 2015. Changing Higher Education. www.changinghighereducation.com/.

Mortenson, T. G. 2012. State Funding: A Race to the Bottom. American Council on Education. www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/state-funding-a-race-to-the-bottom.aspx.

Seaman, J. E., Allen, I. E., and Seaman, J. 2018. Grade Increase: Tracking Distance Education in the United States, Babson Survey Research Group.

Seltzer, R. 2018. Moody’s: Private-College Closures at 11 Per Year. Inside Higher Education, (July)www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/28/moodys-predicts-college-closures-triple-2017.

United States Government Accountability Office. 2014. Higher Education: State Funding Trends and Policies on Affordability. GAO-15-151. www.gao.gov/assets/670/667557.pdf.

Chapter 2

What Is Lean and Continuous Improvement?

When people hear the word Lean they often think of a reduction in staffing and doing more with less. Lean is not an acronym. It is a term that was first used by John Krafcik, an MIT graduate student, in an article he published in 1988. Jim Womack and Daniel Jones picked up the term and used it in their 1990 book, The Machine That Changed The World, making the word synonymous with process improvement. That book is about the car manufacturing industry and how the Japanese motor company, Toyota, designed a Lean production method that allowed them to produce and sell cars cheaper in the United States than American auto manufacturers. For more than 50 years Toyota has been achieving renowned success producing autos with nearly zero defects, developed efficiencies that have led to higher production, held the world’s record for workplace appreciation and satisfaction, and many more notable accomplishments. The Toyota Production System, as it’s known to many, has helped countless manufacturing companies throughout the world remain competitive and even thrive, because Toyota freely shared their methods and successes with the world. Seeing the successes in manufacturing, other business sectors such as healthcare, insurance, banking, software development, government, and education began modifying and adapting Toyota’s model.

Many people do not realize that Lean is more than just a set of tools. It is a way of thinking, a way of behaving, and a set of tools.

■ Way of thinking – Actively developing employee business and technical skills so they are able to make good decisions and be more productive. Training employees to continually identify w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• 1. Big Picture Rationale
• 2. What Is Lean and Continuous Improvement?
• 3. What Is Waste?
• 4. Common Types of Waste
• 5. Lean Tools
• 6. Do Your Research
• 7. Determine Budget and Who’s Driving Your Efforts
• 8. Determining Purpose
• 9. Planning Your Lean Journey
• 10. Leaders on Board
• 11. All on Board
• 12. Communication
• 13. Preparing to Launch
• 14. Planning Considerations
• 15. Working Your First Year Plan
• 16. Conclusion
• Index