So is the blunt, and I would say accurate, assessment of Robert Dickeson in the widely admired Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services: Reallocating Resources to Achieve Strategic Balance.

“Today, as part of a University of Guelph Board of Governors planning meeting, I was privileged to participate in a session with Dickeson as the University embarks on a prioritization process based on his model. The immediate goal for Guelph is to find $32M is base budget savings. The more substantive goal is fundamental organizational change.

Dickeson’s approach academic prioritizing is based on seven main observations:

“1. Academic programs are not only the heart of the collegiate institution; they constitute the real drivers of cost for the entire enterprise, academic and nonacademic

2. Academic programs have been permitted to grow, and in some cases calcify, on the institutional body without critical regard to their relative worth.

3. Most institutions are unrealistically striving to be all things to all people in their quest for students, reputation, and support rather than focusing their resources on the mission and programs that they can accomplish with distinction.

4. There is a growing incongruence between the academic programs offered and the resources required to mount them with quality, and most institutions are thus overprogrammed for their available resources.

5. Traditional approaches, like across-the-board cuts, tend toward mediocrity for all programs.

6. The most likely source for needed resources is reallocation of existing, resources, from the weakest to strongest program.

7. Reallocation cannot be appropriately accomplished without rigorous, effective, and academic responsible prioritization.“