By James L. Morrison and George Keller

[Note: This is a re-formatted manuscript that was originally published in Planning for Higher Education, Winter 1992-93, 21, pp. 27-34. It is posted here with permission from the Society for College and University of Planning (SCUP).]

Nearly all American colleges and universities now realize that the environment in which they operate has become turbulent and in some cases threatening. In moving away from excessive attention to their internal operations and politics toward an alert scrutiny of societal changes and outside forces—from wish-list planning to strategic planning—institutions have been struggling to find an appropriate way to monitor their external environment.

Numerous methods for doing so through environmental scans have been tried by colleges and universities over the past 10 years: issues management schemes (Hearn and Heydinger 1985; Lozier and Chittipedi, 1986; Murphy 1989), methodical scans (Fahey and Narayanan 1986; Callan 1986; Morrison 1992; Morrison 1987; Morrison and Mecca 1989; Pritchett 1990), and numerous variations in between. While several strategic trend intelligence systems have produced extraordinary data and enabled campus administrators and faculty to become more aware of the external changes likely to affect their lives, environmental scanning as it has been evolving has some drawbacks.

Environmental scans are time-consuming and can be expensive. They often do not involve leaders at the university. And scans usually require many persons to work on them. For example, the scanning program or the Georgia Center for Continuing Education—one of the nation's most thorough—uses 65 scanners from four operational divisions, as well as two committees to review all the scanning data and to develop policy and suggest changes based on the data. Cardinal Strich College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, employs 80 individuals to scan 199 different publications regularly for its excellent external events intelligence reports.

Also, broad environmental scans produce some information on trends only remotely connected to higher education, and information that may not be useful for specific colleges, given their nature, size, and location. The result: environmental scans may be weakly linked to policymaking and strategic institutional changes. Small colleges especially have difficulty mounting a sophisticated. comprehensive environmental scan. Finally, the financial difficulties at many institutions during the 1990s have inhibited campuses from making new investments of staff time and money to monitor the host of external changes in society.

New technique on the block

Both of us, therefore, have separately been experimenting with and developing a form of environmental probe that is less time-consuming, less labor intensive, and less expensive. One that is more institution-specific and more likely to result in swift decisions and constructive changes. And one that involves busy faculty and campus leaders themselves.

We think we have developed an instrument that fits most of these criteria. We call it the institutional vulnerability audit.

It derives in part from a little-known procedure proposed in 1977 by SRI International and called by them a "vulnerability analysis." What these California researchers suggested was that companies constantly should assess those customer bases, cost structures, technologies, competitive conditions, political climates, and social values they regard as critical to their success, and carefully watch the environmental changes that would undermine those critical elements, leaving the companies vulnerable to disruption and decline (SRI 1977). The key question is: "What supporting elements in the environment, if diminished or taken away, might impair or seriously weaken the organization?"

Thus, for example, a college devoted to teaching engineering, technology, and science might be radically affected if nearly everyone was suddenly able to have a personal computer, or if secondary school students began taking fewer mathematics and science courses, or if the tax laws changed to discourage corporate giving to universities. This is what happened to some extent to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, which has been traditionally heavy in training scientists, engineers, and technicians, but in the past decade has become increasingly filled with students who want to major in business. Similarly, in recent decades many women's colleges have been forced to become coeducational because of changing gender values and attitudes (Pampusch 1991). And changing demographics. Erosion in the high schools, and inner-city changes have made the traditional purposes of numerous community colleges vulnerable (Eaton 1992).

The institutional vulnerability audit is a way of scanning only those portions of society's changes that directly impinge on the central features of an individual college or university. It puts boundaries on the environmental scan. The audit requires an institution to ask itself what underpinnings are necessary for its continued successful operation, and examines those underpinnings in detail to see how they are changing and how the changes could affect the institution.

Most colleges and universities in trouble today have assumed the continuation of past trends and practices and have neglected discontinuities and subtle shifts. They failed to identify the potentially threatening forces that could wound them. Often they over-looked potentially damaging changes because their dominant concern in planning was with growth, add-ons, new dollars, novel programs. But the first rule of any institution is survival, and this mandates a fierce defense of established domain. The primary planning obligation of the 1990s, a decade of discontinuities, is avoidance of serious vulnerabilities. Growth in quality and innovation continue to be imperative, of course, but both can be built only on a reasonably stable foundation.

Looking vulnerability in the eye

We think the vulnerability audit should be conducted at least biennially, though some colleges in especially protean settings may prefer to conduct the audit annually, as they do with their financial audit. We think it should be carried out by a relatively small team—to 10 persons at smaller colleges and 10 to 15 at large universities—comprised of senior leaders and outstanding faculty representing major functional areas of the institution. It is important that senior administrators and faculty conduct the audit so that it benefits from the best thinking, so that the environmental scan can be directly comprehended by the decision-makers, and so that results of the audit can lead quickly to operational changes or strategic new initiatives.

The vulnerability audit consists of five steps, which are transparently logical in their sequence.

The first step is to identify the environmental footings of the college or university. The underpinnings can be tangible, as in a steady, pool of incoming traditional students from three or four states, or a high percentage of alumni contributors as at Kentucky's Centre College, Williams College, and Dartmouth, or an increasing sum of money each year from the state's legislators and governor, as Arizona State experienced until last year. The underpinnings can also be intangible, as in the public's sense of the worth of giving money to colleges and universities or the attitude of black students about attending predominantly white colleges.

It is probably necessary to devote at least a half day to step one. Begin with the nominal group technique by asking each member of the team to offer his or her own candidates for the vital underpinnings for the college. On what is the college dependent for its continued stability? After each person has separately contributed, switch to the group brainstorming technique to solicit from the team collectively any underpinning that may have been overlooked during their individual donations of views. The point is to identify as many crucial areas as possible for the successful operation of the college or university.

The second step is to identify the forces, shifts, trends, and events that could damage the institution's health and quality. What developments in society could undermine each of the dependencies or underpinnings identified in step one? For example, one highly academic and noted liberal arts college which has styled itself as progressive and welcoming to people of alternative lifestyles and strong political passions currently finds itself vulnerable in admissions because more of today's outstanding applicants are conservative, prefer economics, science, computer studies, and professional studies, and eschew the counterculture and "granola'' liberals. This second stage requires a great deal of imagination, and members should be encouraged to be bold and creative. (Schwartz 1991). It is useful to post each of the vital underpinnings from step one on an easel sheet, and then list underneath the new conditions that could damage each of them.

Ignore the probabilities of the imagined changes happening at this point. Reach out beyond the conventional, even though some projected happenings may seem bizarre. (The dissolution of the Soviet Union, the recent increase of illiteracy in the United States, and the strength of the current attacks on higher education may have seemed bizarre five years ago.)

In step three, switch to the Delphi process. a forecasting technique where leading experts present oracular predictions of the likelihood and probable impact of new developments in some field (Salancik, Wenger, and Helfer 1971). In a campus IVA the experts are the team members. The team should number each of the threats of the college's underpinnings. It is helpful at this stage to hand out a chart like that depicted in Figure 1 to each member. After numbering each of the perceived threats to the college's underpinnings, ask team members to evaluate independently the probability of each threat on one axis and its likely impact on the institution on the other axis, then record the position of each threat by a number on the chart.

Figure 1: One individual's probability/impact chart showing an assessment of 10 threats.

Each threat to the underpinnings should be stared in terms of an event or condition that could occur within a specified time. (Examples: Within five years federal overhead rates for research could drop to a maximum of 50 percent, or within three years two-thirds of all freshmen will require remedial mathematics and introductory statistics.) Have each member mark his or her chart with a number for his or her assessment of the probability and impact of the threat.

Then, in the second part of step three, pool the individual evaluations for each of the perceived threats on master charts—one for each threat, as shown in Figure 2. This can be done on a chalkboard or easel pad. These charts will display the degree of consensus of each threat. If there are deviant or outlying appraisals, ask the members who offered them to express their reasoning for the evaluations. Sometimes these articulated reasons will cause some other ream members to reassess their position.

Figure2: Team's probability/impact threat assessment chart showing its assessment of one threat.

Still going

You are now ready for step four: a review of the overall pattern of threats to the institution and the degree of its vulnerability. Begin with a thorough discussion of each of the external threats to the university. Then, with the aid of the vulnerability chart, as in Figure 3, The team should rate each of the threats for likely impact and probability of happening.

Threats in quadrant 1 will be those to which the college is most vulnerable. These possibilities demand immediate attention, with prompt and powerful strategies to ward off the threats and to reduce their impact, and contingency plans in case they occur very soon.

The threats in quadrant II are likely to be the real "sleepers," and will require careful study and monitoring. You will find that the vulnerability audit team usually reaches a much greater consensus about the impact of outside developments than about the probability of occurrence. This is because campus leaders know more about their institution than they know about the external environment. There is a chance, therefore, that the probabilities of upsetting events happening are being rated too low.

The team may wish to consult outside experts or several scholars on the faculty who are highly knowledgeable about specific areas, such as threats from new developments in communications technology or your state's politics. Or they may wish to have the institutional research or a research librarian gather more information about these areas to enable more informed judgments.

The moderate threats in quadrant III can often be addressed by taking thoughtful preventive action. For example, if the team estimates that the maintenance workers or security guards might go out on strike or demand out-of-line wages, the institution should probably identify a labor mediator or begin looking at the costs of outside maintenance and security services and of temporaries. Or if the college is admitting Hispanic students at a brisk pace but not appointing new Hispanic faculty, the institution might launch an intensive effort to identify young Hispanic scholars to recruit, or establish a new fellowship program to attract outstanding Hispanic graduate or post-doctoral students who could be used as instructors and become faculty members.

Quadrant IV threats usually consist of annoyances—power outages, an unusually cold winter, the resignation or sudden death of a very popular dean, teacher, or athletic coach, the relocation of a major local industry, a new newspaper editor who dislikes your institution or intellectuals, or a demand by the local government for a tax contribution for the municipal or county fire department. Contingency plans can usually handle such possible changes.

In the fifth and final step the team should design strategies to overcome, subdue, or lessen each of the vulnerabilities, assign persons to be responsible for directing each strategy, and allot resources to carry out the priority actions.

Limitations and benefits

The institutional vulnerability audit is not without its limitations. The process does not address the problems caused largely by internal factors, nor does it include a competitor analysis. Unlike the now-standard SWOT analysis—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—it concentrates on the threats. Also, the two-day retreat for the vulnerability audit may be insufficient time. The process depends on shrewd and insightful contributions by senior campus experts, who may not attuned to examining the effects of social and economic changes on campus operations.

But the vulnerability audit draws on the expertise and experienced judgment of the institution's leaders and compels them to acknowledge outside threats and construct defenses to keep the institution stable. By identifying environmental threats early, leaders have time to monitor them, to review options, and to plan for changes to diminish the emerging threats. With a vulnerability audit, a college can better avoid unpleasant surprises. It provides an early warning system that can help protect the institution's academic and fiscal integrity.

There are other benefits. The vulnerability audit can help improve communication among departments and divisions, and it links senior administrators and faculty in devising strategies and fosters collaborative management. Also, the vulnerability audit is relatively inexpensive and is frugal with that scarcest of resources among busy executives and scholars: time.

Most important, perhaps, the vulnerability audit does not waste resources, but ties environmental scanning and monitoring directly to the future of your own institution. The search is not wide-ranging and vagrant but pointed and highly relevant. The focus is squarely on those environmental trends, events, and conditions that may cause the biggest problems for your own institution. Also, by having senior leaders engage in the process the distance between external threats and strategic actions to prevent difficulties is reduced.

Above all, the institutional vulnerability audit helps campuses to know themselves, and to know what ingredients are vital in keeping the institution strong. Knowing where a college is vulnerable helps focus time, money, and care on those people, activities, and conditions that provide indispensable support for the college or university.

The better institutions will always be opportunity seekers as well as protectors of their flanks. But no army should plan major new activities unless its supply routes are secure. In the 1990s. when higher education faces diminishing financial support, declining public trust, and an eroding base of traditional students, strategic planning should concentrate first on the changes that reduce vulnerability. The IVA is a new tool to do just that.

References

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