Ph.D. in Economics, O.K. Denissova

D. Serikbayev East Kazakhstan State Technical University, Kazakhstan

Strategic planning of university development on the competitive market of educational services

In the context of market economy, the most important decisions influencing the development of university should be adapted to ever-changing infrastructure of economy, and demand on the educational services market and labour market. Development of educational system is now determined by the necessity of continuous, anticipatory, and open education, thus enabling the planning of long-term strategic projects. For this purpose, educational institutions should use the technique of medium-term strategic planning, to ensure sustainable development of scientific and educational activities of university based on the principle «plan today with future in mind». Such an approach helps build an information basis for university planning and management processes, evaluate the state of university activities, and build the development path for med-term.

Being one of the most important functions of management, planning not only sets goals to be achieved by university, but also forms methods to be used for attainment of these goals. Planning helps answer a series of critical questions regarding the development prospects of university, its innovative and financial potential, and development of business processes of a university.

Common need in planning under market conditions can be explained by stronger competition, bigger value of goals and motives, limited resources of universities, unstable external environment, need in flexibility when taking managerial decisions.

Within a market economy, building a system of indicative planning becomes more important, not only on macroeconomic scale, but also applied to a certain university, which can be characterized from two viewpoints:

- indicative planning in a university is a self-sufficient method of planning, focused on helping the management to identify the limits of indicators beyond which the university is bound to bear financial or material losses;

- indicative planning is a basis for indicative management of scientific and educational operations of a university based on monitoring, research, analysis, control, accounting and organization of achievement of most acceptable values of indicators of university activities.

Planning within a university based on application of business process indicators is a new and progressive method of managing scientific and educational operations.

Indicative planning is a complex of indicators and target setpoints aimed at sustainable development of a university.

Strategic indicative planning is a complex of strategic directions, goals and tasks describing the target setpoint for medium-term (3 years) and actions for the current period of planning (1 planned period) (table 1).

Table 1 – Structure of university development indicative plan

Strategic direction, goal, tasks	Specifications of indicators						Results of actual accomplishment of plan for 2010-2011 ac.year
	Description	Unit of measurement	Report for 2009-2010 ac.year	Planned period
				2010- 2011 ac.year	2011- 2012 ac.year	2012-2013 ac.year
Strategic direction 1: Innovational educational operations
Goal 1: Training of professional scientific personnel of high qualification	1. Share of graduates employed within the first year after graduation in jobs they have been trained for	%	90	90	91	95
Task 1: Improvement of teaching aids of rendered services in training and re-training of competitive personnel	1. Complete provision of all specialities under Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes of State Compulsory Education Standard	%	100	100	100	100
Task 2: Increasing the coverage of market with higher and postgraduate education	1. Expected enrollment for Bachelor programmes	чел.	2750	2800	2850	2900
	2. Expected enrollment for Master programmes	чел.	150	150	160	180
Goal 2: Maintaining the high level of professional education	1. Satisfaction of employers with the quality of training of graduates	%	97	100	100	100
Task 1: Providing organizations and enterprises with qualified personnel	1. Percentage of theses and projects assessed by SAC to be good and excellent	%	84	86	86	87
	2. Percentage of employment of graduates from the total number	%	94,5	95	96	96
…
Strategic direction 2: Educational and socializing activities
…

Every goal and task has its own indicators, number of indicators is determined individually, for an overall strategic plan, indicators should be aggregated, and preferably not more than 3-4.

Departments should prepare their plans for med-term and a current operative plan, not only with target setpoints, but also including the actions to be taken within one current planned period, with assigned performers and deadlines.

Thus every direction of university activities considering tasks to be performed can be characterized using a set of indicators which enable recording the state of actions in this direction and dynamics of its development.

Same as in strategic indicative plan, the indicators in department-wise plans can be integral or aggregated values.

Expressing the targets in the form of indicators describing the social and scientifically important results of scientific and educational activities of university will help assess and plan the desired states of development of educational system, create a monitoring system including the process of collection, control and taking managerial decisions which will enable solving the problem of achievement of goals through result.

There are many indicators for assessing the level of goal attainment, each describing different aspects of university activities and having a special unit of measurement from % to identical representation of measurement – score, square meters, thousand tenge, etc. In order to measure the results of each indicator, they are converted into unidirectional unit of measurement and normalized by converging the range of variations of values to dimensionless relative values – fractions or percents.

If deviation of obtained results from planned results (more than 100%, less than 100%) exceeds the variation limits set for this indicator, this fact is to be recorded, the reasons for deviation to be analysed, these reasons should be identified, actions to eliminate them should be devised and implemented.

If the results of university operation, which are the results of analysis, are neutral (equal to 100%), when planned indicators match the actual ones, the performance of employees is deemed satisfactory. But this result should be regarded as an opportunity to improve the performance in future, adjusting the strategic plan, and motivating the employees to achieve more.

Sources of information are educational and scientific statistics, financial data, personnel coverage, and condition of infrastructure and facilities.

The technique of analyzing the obtained data should be based upon application of conventional statistical tools, ensuring the reliability of information and determining control limits acceptable for this system of indicator variations.

Devising a system of indicators is a labour-intensive and tedious process. It is hard to evaluate which factors are determinative for assessment of university condition, and moreover, the importance of these factors can vary in time. The following format of describing the indicators is proposed (table 2).

Table 2 – Format of describing the indicators

N		Feature		Explanation
1		Name		Name should be specific and express the indicator that can be quantitatively defined
2		Sources used when elaborating the indicator		Give references to the source
3		Indicator type		Select from: quantity (Q), quality (Ql), efficiency (E), performance (P)
4		Business function		Name of business function of corresponding business process
5		Business operation		Name of business operation of corresponding business function
6		Which process deviations are identified		Specify the usefulness of indicator for identification of problems in organization of scientific and educational activities
7		Unit of measurement
Calculation method
1			Formula for calculating the indicator		Specify how numerator and denominator are defined when calculating the indicator
2			Indicator value		Specify the numeric value of indicator for accounting and current periods
3			Target value of indicator		Specify the numeric value of indicator for planned periods (1, 2, 3)
4			Source as per which the target value of indicator is set		Give references to sources based on which the target or acceptable values of indicator were chosen
Procedure for collecting data for calculating the indicator
1	Frequency of measurement				Academic period, academic year, for financial indicators: monthly, quarterly, annually
2	Who measures the indicator				Specify the department and the specialist
3	Sequence of collecting data for calculating the numerator and denominator				Appointment of expert committee, selection of statistically significant data, elaboration of certificate, entry of data, calculation of indicator value
4	Sources of data for collecting the information for indicator				Educational and scientific statistics, financial data, personnel coverage and condition of infrastructure and facilities

Lifecycle of devising a strategic indicative plan of university development consists of the following stages:

- preparation: analysis and monitoring of the state of scientific and educational activities of university for current and past periods, identification of problems to be solved;

- organization: devising the mission and perspective of development of educational system for mid-term, stating the strategic directions and target setpoints of desired future sustainable development;

- content: devising the contents of target setpoints of desired future for mid-term through stating the indicators as expected socially and scientifically significant results of target setpoints and current tasks;

- action: devising and substantiating the actions for the 1^st planned period for implementation of target setpoints of this planned period specifying the performers and deadlines for these jobs;

- agreement: studying the contents of the plan with general concept of targets of university development for mid-term, assessment of established socially and scientifically significant ultimate results, making adjustments, agreement of resources required for reaching the target setpoints (finances, infrastructure, personnel), review of plans;

- approval: approval of agreed strategic indicative plan of mid-term development of university, publishing this plan and issuing orders related to its execution.

Strategic indicative plan of medium term development should be developed starting from June (organization stage of lifecycle), and be submitted for approval (approval stage) on the first week of September of the current year. Schedule for discussion and agreement is to be determined individually.

Every strategic plan is complimented with different reports regarding the achievement of ultimate results for the corresponding planned period, accounting forms are determined individually according to the nature of indicators and form of activities.

Thus midterm management focused on result enables: building an approach to planning and management of scientific and educational activities of university, in which target reference points and current tasks are linked to socially and scientifically important results expected of them; assessing and planning the desired conditions of development of educational system; creating a system for monitoring and analyzing the business processes of university.