Innovative Strategies for Times of Austerity

90-120 min keynote, Half- or Full-day workshop

Most academic institutions have expansive aspirations that assume continually growing programs, enrolments and resources. Strategic planning and budgeting exercises are smooth sailing when the economic winds are at your back, and distant shores beckon. Stakeholders willingly accept new technologies and programs, and support investments in EDI, UDL and SDGs. But now, college and university leaders face genuinely rough seas, thanks to ebbing government funding, swelling inflation and labour strife, capped tuitions and international enrolments. In the face of overwhelming fiscal headwinds, many will be tempted to abandon their ambitions and seek out safe harbour, or allow their institutions to drift off course.

The shift from abundance to scarcity – not seen on many campuses in decades – demands new approaches to prioritization, retrenchment, and resource allocation. Nimble institutions will trim their sails and batten down the hatches, streamlining bureaucracy and structures, finding efficiencies and eliminating redundancy, leveraging data for decision-making, collaborating with private and public-sector partners, embracing automation, and focusing resources on their core strengths. Visionary leaders will seek out promising currents and new markets, pursue entrepreneurial new revenue streams, explore countercyclical opportunities, and embrace challenges and constraints as the impetus for innovation and invention.

In this eye-opening half- or full-day workshop, higher ed strategist Ken Steele will provide a sweeping view of your strategic planning horizons and emerging trends, and float some striking examples of bold institutional strategies and turnarounds, austerity budgets and deficit planning approaches. Ken will help your team navigate a course through the current turbulence and future scenarios in the offing, and explore systemic approaches to sustain a culture of innovative thinking and resilience on campus, despite anxiety and austerity.

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