business plan for academic institution

Business Plan Template for Higher Education

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Thinking about the future of your higher education institution can be overwhelming. But with ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Higher Education, you can easily map out your strategic goals, financial projections, and marketing initiatives all in one place.

This template is specifically designed for higher education institutions, helping you:

• Clearly outline your institution's mission and objectives
• Create detailed financial forecasts to attract funding and manage resources effectively
• Develop targeted marketing strategies to increase student enrollment and drive institutional growth

Whether you're a university or a college, this template will provide you with the tools you need to create a comprehensive business plan that sets you up for success. Get started today and secure the future of your institution!

Business Plan Template for Higher Education Benefits

A business plan template specifically designed for higher education institutions offers a range of benefits, including:

• Streamlined strategic planning process to align the institution's goals and objectives
• Clear communication of the institution's mission, vision, and values to stakeholders
• Comprehensive financial projections to secure funding and effectively manage resources
• Strategic marketing initiatives to attract and retain students
• Operational strategies to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in delivering educational programs
• Student enrollment targets to drive growth and success
• A framework for monitoring and evaluating progress towards institutional goals
• Enhanced accountability and transparency in decision-making processes

Main Elements of Higher Education Business Plan Template

ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Higher Education provides a comprehensive solution for higher education institutions to effectively manage their strategic goals, financial projections, and operational strategies. Here are the main elements of this template:

• Custom Statuses: Track the progress of each section of your business plan with statuses such as Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do, ensuring accountability and visibility.
• Custom Fields: Utilize custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to add relevant information to your business plan, ensuring that all necessary details are included and easily accessible.
• Custom Views: Access different views like Topics, Status, Timeline, Business Plan, and Getting Started Guide to organize and visualize your business plan from various perspectives, allowing for a holistic understanding and effective communication of your institution's strategic vision and initiatives.
• Collaboration and Integration: Collaborate with team members, assign tasks, set due dates, and automate workflows using ClickUp's collaboration features. Integrate with other tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Slack to streamline your business planning process and enhance productivity.

How To Use Business Plan Template for Higher Education

If you're in higher education and need to create a business plan, don't worry - we've got you covered with our Business Plan Template for Higher Education. Just follow these four simple steps to get started:

1. Define your objectives and goals

Before diving into the details, it's essential to clearly define your objectives and goals for your higher education institution. Are you looking to increase enrollment, improve student retention rates, or expand your academic programs? Knowing what you want to achieve will help guide the rest of your business plan.

Use Goals in ClickUp to set specific objectives and track your progress towards them.

2. Conduct a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a crucial step in any business plan as it helps identify your institution's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Evaluate your resources, faculty expertise, facilities, and any potential challenges you may face. This analysis will provide you with valuable insights to build upon.

Use a Table view in ClickUp to create a SWOT analysis and easily visualize your institution's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

3. Develop your marketing and recruitment strategies

To attract and retain students, you need effective marketing and recruitment strategies. Identify your target audience, research your competitors, and outline your unique selling points. Develop a comprehensive marketing plan that includes digital marketing, social media campaigns, open house events, and partnerships with local businesses or organizations.

Use a Board view in ClickUp to create tasks and track your marketing and recruitment strategies, ensuring that each step is completed on time.

4. Create a financial forecast

Financial planning is a crucial aspect of any business plan. Project your revenue streams, such as tuition fees, grants, and donations, and estimate your expenses, including faculty salaries, facility maintenance, and marketing costs. This financial forecast will help you understand the financial viability of your institution and make informed decisions moving forward.

Use Dashboards in ClickUp to monitor your financial forecast and track key metrics such as revenue, expenses, and projected growth.

By following these steps and utilizing the Business Plan Template for Higher Education in ClickUp, you'll be well-equipped to create a comprehensive and effective business plan for your institution. Good luck!

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Higher Education

Higher education institutions can use this Business Plan Template for Higher Education to effectively outline their strategic goals and drive institutional growth and success.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a comprehensive business plan:

• Use the Topics View to organize your business plan by different sections, such as strategic goals, financial projections, operational strategies, and marketing initiatives
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section, with statuses including Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do
• The Timeline View will give you a visual representation of your business plan's timeline, allowing you to set deadlines and milestones
• The Business Plan View will provide a holistic view of your entire business plan, allowing you to easily navigate and make updates
• The Getting Started Guide View will provide a step-by-step guide on how to use the template and create a successful business plan
• Utilize the custom fields Reference, Approved, and Section to add additional information and track the status of each section
• Update statuses and custom fields as you progress through each section to keep stakeholders informed of progress
• Monitor and analyze your business plan to ensure it aligns with your institution's goals and objectives.
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School Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

School Business Plan

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 500 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their schools.

If you’re unfamiliar with creating a school business plan, you may think creating one will be a time-consuming and frustrating process. For most entrepreneurs it is, but for you, it won’t be since we’re here to help. We have the experience, resources, and knowledge to help you create a great business plan.

In this article, you will learn some background information on why business planning is important. Then, you will learn how to write a school business plan step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What is a School Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your school as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategies for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a School

If you’re looking to start a school or grow your existing school, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your school to improve your chances of success. Your school business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Schools

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for schools are donations and gifts, tuition, personal savings, credit cards, bank loans, and angel investors. When it comes to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to ensure that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for schools.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

How to write a business plan for a school.

If you want to start a school or expand your current one, you need a business plan. The guide below details the necessary information for how to write each essential component of your school business plan.

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your executive summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the kind of school you are running and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a school that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of schools?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan.

• Give a brief overview of the school industry.
• Discuss the type of school you are operating.
• Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers.
• Provide a snapshot of your marketing strategy. Identify the key members of your team.
• Offer an overview of your financial plan.

Company Overview

In your company overview, you will detail the type of school you are operating.

For example, you might specialize in one of the following types of schools:

• Private K-12 school : this type of school typically charges tuition, and may be affiliated with a religious organization, or specialize in a particular learning method.
• Charter school: this type of school offers primary or secondary education for a tuition, and may receive some public funding, and/or donations. These schools require their students to take state-mandated exams.
• Special subject school: this type of school specializes in teaching a specific subject, such as driving, first-aid, self-defense, fine arts, language, or general tutoring.
• Preschool: this type of school typically serves children who are aged 3 and 4. These schools prepare young children to enter formal education, and are funded by some combination of tuition, donations, and government grants.

In addition to explaining the type of school you will operate, the company overview needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to questions such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of students served, the number of students accepted into elite formal education institutions, etc.
• Your legal business Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry or market analysis, you need to provide an overview of the school industry.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the school industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your marketing strategy, particularly if your analysis identifies market trends.

The third reason is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your school business plan:

• How big is the school industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential target market for your school? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your school business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: families with elementary-aged children, families with high-school-aged children, families with preschool children.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of school you operate. Clearly, families with high schoolers would respond to different marketing promotions than families with preschoolers, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, including a discussion of the ages, genders, locations, and income levels of the potential customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can recognize and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

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Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other schools.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t directly competing with your product or service. This includes public schools, virtual schools, and families who do homeschooling. You need to mention such competition as well.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their business and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as

• What types of students do they serve?
• What type of school are they?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide specialized instruction, either in subject or in method?
• Will you offer courses or services that your competition doesn’t?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.  

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a school business plan, your marketing strategy should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of school that you documented in your company overview. Then, detail the specific products or services you will be offering. For example, will you provide religious-focused K-8 education, college preparatory courses, or single-subject instruction like driving or fine arts?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your plan, you are presenting the courses and/or extracurricular activities you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the site of your school. Document where your company is situated and mention how the site will impact your success. For example, is your school located in a growing neighborhood, in the city center, or will you operate purely online? Discuss how your site might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your school marketing plan is where you will document how you will drive potential customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Advertise in local papers, radio stations and/or magazines
• Reach out to websites
• Distribute flyers
• Engage in email marketing
• Advertise on social media platforms
• Improve the SEO (search engine optimization) on your website for targeted keywords

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your school, including answering calls, planning and delivering instruction, applying for grants, fundraising, performing administrative tasks, overseeing instructors, handling discipline, scheduling and monitoring extracurricular activities, etc.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to enroll your Xth student, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your school to a new city.  

Management Team

To demonstrate your school’s potential to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally, you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing schools. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act as mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in running a school or experience with public school administration or who has served on a public school board.  

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statements.

Income Statement

An income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenue and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you enroll 100 or 1,000 students per semester, and/or offer extracurricular activities? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets

Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your school, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a lender writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement

Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and ensure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.

When creating your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a school:

• Cost of equipment and supplies
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Other start-up expenses (if you’re a new business) like legal expenses, permits, computer software, and equipment

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your school location lease or a list of elective courses or extracurricular activities you will offer.  

Writing a business plan for your school is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will understand the school industry, your competition, and your customers. You will develop a marketing strategy and will understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful school.  

School Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my school business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily write your school business plan.

How Do You Start a School?

Starting a school is easy with these 14 steps:

• Choose the Name for Your School
• Create Your School Business Plan
• Choose the Legal Structure for Your School
• Secure Startup Funding for Your School (If Needed)
• Secure a Location for Your Business
• Register Your School with the IRS
• Open a Business Bank Account
• Get a Business Credit Card
• Get the Required Business Licenses and Permits
• Get Business Insurance for Your School
• Buy or Lease the Right School Equipment
• Develop Your School Business Marketing Materials
• Purchase and Setup the Software Needed to Run Your School
• Open for Business

Learn more about   how to start your own school .

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Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to learn about Growthink’s business plan writing services .

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Building operational excellence in higher education

When colleges and universities think about building academic enterprises for the 21st century, they often overlook one of the most critical aspects: the back-office structures needed to run complex organizations. By failing to modernize and streamline administrative functions (including HR, finance, and facilities), universities put themselves at a serious disadvantage, making it harder to fulfill their academic missions.

Take faculty recruitment and retention. The perceived level of the administrative burden is often a major factor in the attractiveness of an academic job offer. In 2018, the administrative burden on productive research faculty was measured at 44 percent of their workload (up from 42 percent in 2012). 1 Sandra Schneider, “Results of the 2018 FDP faculty workload survey: Input for optimizing time on active research,” Federal Demonstration Partnership, January 2019, thefdp.org. For faculty members, the prospect of moving to an institution where they would have a lighter administrative load is a huge selling point, since “institutional procedures and red tape” ranks as one of the top five sources of stress. 2 Ellen Bara Stolzenberg et al., “Undergraduate teaching faculty: The HERI faculty survey 2016-2017,” Higher Education Research Institute, February 2019, heri.ucla.edu. Something similar happens with students: studies show that the need to jump through administrative hoops is an important driver of “summer melt,” when students admitted to a school fail to matriculate for the upcoming year. 3 Emily Arnim, “Why summer melt happens—and how to freeze it,” EAB, April 30, 2019, eab.com.

Outdated and ineffective administrative operations can have more direct effects on an institution’s reputation. Financial fraud, ineffective or unfair personnel practices, and grants lost as a result of poor research administration can all lead to negative press reports—or worse. The 115-year-old College of New Rochelle, in New Rochelle, NY, recently closed its doors after fraud decimated its finances and reputation, making any chance of recovery impossible. 4 Dave Zucker, “As College of New Rochelle closes, Mercy steps in to take on displaced students,” Westchester Magazine , March 5, 2019, westchestermagazine.com.

A vast challenge

In our experience, most colleges and universities that set out to improve their administrative operations fail to meet their stated goals and in some cases take a step backward. There are several reasons, many relating to the unique constraints of academic institutions:

• Starting from the top down. Universities are essentially confederations of departments and functions, each with its own internal organization and power structure. Rather than gathering input and alignment from these constituencies, many new administrative plans are run centrally and fail to gain traction.
• Putting the answer before the problem. Another common pitfall is starting with a solution and looking for ways to solve a problem for that answer rather than doing the work needed to gain a deep understanding of the problem on the ground and building a solution collaboratively with stakeholders.
• Focusing on dollars rather than sense. Other change programs flounder because they focus primarily on cost savings rather than on improving service levels or the experience of the administrative staff.

A failed program is more than just a loss of time and money. By raising the expectations of faculty and staff and then failing to follow through on them, such failures stoke resentment and make it harder for future programs to gain traction.

While improving administrative operations remains a vast challenge for many universities, a few are taking a new approach—and posting meaningful results. In some cases, institutions that transformed their back offices have managed to halve the time needed to hire new staff or have reduced wasteful procurement transactions by more than 50 percent.

A new approach for a university in gridlock: A case study

A major public research university knew it had reached the breaking point. Its outdated administrative operations were holding it back on several fronts. Slow response times, red tape, and time-consuming administrative tasks had generated resentment and frustration among faculty. Some had already left for other universities, citing a lack of support for research administration, an inability to hire critical lab staff in less than six months, and difficulty keeping labs stocked with supplies.

Part of the problem was that no one seemed to be accountable. The schools and other units blamed the central administration. Central staff, meanwhile, thought the schools and units weren’t doing their part. In this stalemate, nothing got fixed.

Things only got worse when university leaders decided to create a shared-services effort intended to deliver multimillion-dollar savings. When frustrated deans and faculty heard about the effort, they made it clear that any plan conceived without their input would not have their support. With no resolution in sight, and core functions such as hiring and procurement in jeopardy, university leaders realized they needed to find a new approach.

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Rethinking administrative operations from the ground up.

The leadership realized that instead of once again creating a solution they would then impose on a diverse system, they had to understand the problems from the point of view of the various stakeholders and then design targeted fixes. With that fundamentally different perspective, the change team created a carefully thought out road map and began the hard work of redesigning systems and processes:

• The first step was a listening tour to hear directly from faculty and staff on the problems they encountered. What were their pain points? Where exactly were the bottlenecks? The team got unvarnished feedback. From the director of a research center: “We had to hire temporary employees just to complete our normal tasks because the hiring time is so slow.” From a dean: “The university felt like it was in gridlock.”
• Next, the change team convened a group of design teams, made up of members from both the schools and the central staff, to break down the problems, reimagine the processes from a blank sheet of paper, and implement changes.
• The team started the redesign process with two specific initial goals: reducing the time needed to hire administrative staff from an average of more than 80 days to 45 days and reducing the number of procurement vouchers—tens of thousands of them—that wasted thousands of hours of staff time and failed to capture the right data.
• As the team worked through each service, it followed a fast, structured process, designing new solutions in about two months, piloting them for two to three months, and then rolling them out to the campus in waves of schools and units over the following six months.

The results were unequivocal: time to hire fell by 46 percent for nonfaculty positions, and improper procurement (measured by the volume of unnecessary vouchers) fell by 57 percent (Exhibit 1).

So far, the improvement in hiring time has had significant downstream effects. For example, 96 percent of hiring managers report acceptances by their first-choice candidates. In the past, many first choices had dropped out of the process to pursue other opportunities as their names sat in the queue during the months-long hiring process. Just as important, the change team created a community of faculty, staff, and academic leaders who fully embraced the new ways of working. Over the course of the redesign effort, the process involved more than 400 staff and faculty, held more than 50 listening sessions, convened more than 30 design workshops, and generated a list of dozens of initiatives to pursue in the future (Exhibit 2).

The team is currently pursuing transformational initiatives in research administration, travel, student-worker support, and academic personnel. Its ambitions are equally transformative. For example, its goal in research administration is to cut the time to set up awards in half. This collaborative, bottom-up process led many staff members to tell the leadership that “this feels different” from previous change efforts.

Understanding the elements of success

A few key elements helped make a big difference.

Involve faculty and staff as true collaborators. Don’t drive the change from the central administration down to schools and units. Instead, raise the quality and adoption rate of operational solutions by converting faculty and staff from sideline observers into true collaborators. Start with listening to end users, understanding the obstacles they face, and jointly identifying where and how the current system fails them. In that way, a university can bypass the tendency to consider overarching organizational solutions and focus on solving the actual problems at hand.

Have central administrators work side by side with employees of schools or units. For creating solutions, a partnership between the central administration and the faculty and staff of schools or units is even more critical. It is essential to develop solutions by having representatives from schools and units work together with central staff. Besides gaining a deeper understanding of the problems by including these stakeholders, leaders can begin to convert possible naysayers among faculty and staff into allies.

Focus on the university’s mission. While efficiencies and cost savings are important, they are notoriously hard to capture and reinvest. In addition, any sense that the real goal is to cut costs is unlikely to build internal allies among faculty and staff who already feel undersupported. Instead, leaders should communicate a message of improved service levels that can help further the university’s academic and community-impact missions.

Transformation 101: How universities can overcome financial headwinds to focus on their mission

Show an impact early. There’s a saying that nothing succeeds like success. By starting with one or two services that can be improved quickly and showing an impact within six months, leaders can build belief in the effort. Winning over skeptical constituents will make the rest of it move forward more easily.

Invest in a continuous-improvement team. Staff volunteers committing many hours a week on top of their day jobs can’t sustain changes and expand into other areas of the university entirely by themselves. Creating a small team dedicated to executing transformation initiatives across administrative functions can help accelerate and sustain the momentum for change across the university. A high-functioning team will have a catalog of services (such as training, facilitation, and full-on process redesign) that helps it tailor its support to the specific details of a given problem.

Focus on a transformational rather than incremental impact. Redesigning administrative operations across a university is a big effort. Leaders should take full advantage of the opportunity by thinking about a total transformation, not incremental change. Typical efforts aim for a 20 percent improvement. When leaders set their sights on improvements of more than 50 percent, they can free themselves from the status quo. That magnitude of change will force the change team to start with a truly blank slate and to reimagine a dramatically improved future one.

Taking an important step in transforming a university

A final insight: the work this university did enabled leaders of the administrative functions to shift their sights beyond fighting fires to the truly strategic parts of their work. The progress on hiring, for example, helped surface the challenges the university faces in attracting and retaining talent—particularly underrepresented minority faculty. Furthermore, conversations about improving the performance of the administrative functions highlighted the aspirations of leaders and staff to use machine learning, automation, and other advanced techniques in their work.

Although administrative operations are often overlooked, efficient and effective ones can lead to much broader changes. When universities can hire the high-potential candidates they seek, eliminate wasted time of faculty and staff, and unlock the power of data, they can catapult ahead in their ability to meet their educational and research missions.

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Suhrid Gajendragadkar is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office, where Ted Rounsaville is an associate partner and Jason Wright is a partner; Duwain Pinder is a consultant in the New Jersey office.

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How to Write a Business Plan for an Educational Institution

• Career Advice

• Posted On: 2023-02-12
• Posted By: Kunlery
• What is your education business idea?
• Who are the target customers or students of the institution and what is the size of the market for the institution or course?
• Which other educational institutions are already in the market and how they are positioned there?
• What are the business resources you’ll need? An educational institute, for example, will need classrooms, books, equipment, and teachers besides several other things.
• How will you do marketing of your institution? Here, you’ll have to brainstorm about the right place where your target customers hang out, promotion tactics, and marketing costs for different strategies you’ll use.

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Is Your Strategic Plan a List of Ideas or a True Change Engine?

Throughout any given year, I often meet with cabinets, presidents, and boards who are in the process of building/renewing their strategic plans. Strategic plans can be a fantastic way to create and propagate vision and—more importantly—progress toward needed changes at an institution. That being said, these initiatives often fall far short of being the catalyst of transformation at institutions and rather serve as a comprehensive list of ideas with little means of prioritization and filtering. Let’s discuss ways to shift this mentality and create a stronger pathway for plans to transform.

Find the real focus of your strategic plan

The power of a strategic plan is to create a focused vision for change (emphasis on focused ). One problem most presidents and planning committees face is that ideas largely tie to institutional missions and values. While these are extremely important ideals, missions and values tend to be extremely broad and therefore extremely poor filters to decide which plan initiatives to pursue—and perhaps more importantly, which ones not to pursue. 

One way that Carnegie gets through this conundrum is by using a different type of metric for filtering: institutional personality . The personality and culture of an institution is much more specific than its mission and values. This enables a committee to wrestle with the ideas that will enhance or confirm culture. As a successful university president once said to me, forming a strategic plan is like creating a 27-lane highway. Personality helps me figure out which cars to put in which lanes.

Avoid planning fatigue

A second problem facing many presidents is the fatigue that the planning process takes on the campus and the appetite for continuation. Most plans are huge consensus-driven projects with dozens to hundreds of campus constituents weighing in to the project. Consensus is a critical component of any shared governance culture, but using it in strategic planning is often misguided. 

The reality of most plans is that 10%–20% of the people involved create 80%–90% of the ideas that make it in the plan. As a result, consensus is wasted when it could be harnessed to enhance the understanding of culture, personality, or, even better, involvement in plan implementation. Considering the moment to call for consensus is very important to ongoing plan success and fatigue reduction on campus.

Maintain your momentum

A third and more problematic issue facing strategic plans is the fact that they often fail to produce momentum after competition. A plan will have a great website and fanfare only to fail to produce results in the outer years. 

One way we recommend harnessing your plan is through continuous planning processes (sometimes called “Evergreen”). In this philosophy, planning is never really complete and always in a state of implementation, evaluation, and renewal. Universities implementing such a model often republish their plans for the subsequent three-, four-, or five-year period annually and seek board adoption of the revision as well. 

As a result, institutions following this method often see much more focus and progress on critical initiatives, an increase in implementation activity, and the potential for a rise in institutional transformation. 

Whether your strategic plan is on its next iteration or you’re just initiating the first of many versions to come, it’s important to reflect on the way to filter ideas, the timing and use of consensus, and the process for plan renewal in order to realize the desired transformation at your institution.

Happy planning. 

If you are considering a strategic planning project and want to learn more about how institutional personality can help you create a plan that inspires authentic change, contact us to set up time to talk. 

Scott Ochander is a Partner and Chief Client Solutions Officer at Carnegie. As a former Vice President for Enrollment and Marketing, Scott is regarded as an expert in reputation and enrollment strategy in higher education. He pioneered a consensus-building reputation and change management research model in higher education that has empowered campus communities and enabled enrollment growth and reputation transformation. Scott has worked extensively in marketing and enrollment strategy, completing hundreds of strategy development projects across higher education at some of the largest and most influential institutions in the nation.

Follow and engage with Scott on Twitter and Linkedin , where he shares content and opinions on enrollment strategy, marketing, brand management, change management, and organizational operations.

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SIT Academic Strategic Plan 2021-2026

Last updated June 14, 2021

Office of the Dean of Faculty, Approved by AAC

To make School for International Training a leading institution of global higher education recognized for its innovative academic programs, impactful research, transformative learning practices, and inclusive, pluriversal, and non-hegemonic intellectual engagement with the critical global issues facing the world today.

We will innovate through planned diversification of academic programs, design of a comprehensive education portfolio that spans from pre-college to doctoral degrees, integration of data-driven approach to internationalization , enhancement of an inclusive pedagogy that reckons with impacts of social justice values, and creation of opportunities for faculty and students to conduct effective and groundbreaking engagement and research.        

The strategic goals in this plan are the outcomes of in-depth analysis, reflection, and processing of formal and informal input from a variety of stakeholders including students, faculty, SIT departments, partner institutions, and market or audit reports submitted by professional organizations. The strategic plan reaffirms the institutional goal of ‘building back strong,’ determines the best response to conditions in a time of disruption and shifting needs and provides a focused vision of a dynamic academic structure that aims to center SIT as a leading global institution of higher education. 

Over the past year,  we have conducted an assessment review of the academic relevance of programs, identified critical academic areas that need to be addressed in conversation with stakeholders, taken part in Blue Skies meetings and developed a solid understanding of the external environment of study abroad and international education, debriefed with faculty the Diversity Abroad scoreboard report and climate survey of SIT/WL diversity, equity, and inclusion performance, sat through weekly meetings of graduate faculty, studied the EIL/SIT market exploratory reports submitted by marketing consultants, presented a preliminary review of the Asia Pacific undergraduate portfolio at the program development meeting, shared a draft vision of the strategic plan at the virtual faculty workshops, briefed the IHP advisory board on the re-envisioning of the IHP portfolio, presented a succinct overview of the plan to WL academic affairs committee and WL Board of Trustees, and maintained throughout regular discussions and consultations with SIT President on the overarching vision for the new academic structure to ensure that the strategic plan is aligned with SIT/WL institutional orientation.

APPROACH 

Rationale .

The aim of the strategic plan is to improve the performance of the academic programs and align internal resources with key institutional goals. The academic programs are the heart of the institution where all departmental efforts are synchronized to support faculty and students. The academic strategic plan actively brings about transformative thinking and action by balancing available human and financial resources and anticipated conditions and establishes a bridge between current state and the vision for SIT as a leading global institutional of higher education. 

Scope 

The strategic planning process addresses key focus areas of the academic programs for the 2021-2026 time period. These focus areas include precollege, first-year, undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, and address in their horizontal and vertical approaches SIT’s three organizing success categories: teaching, research, and community engagement.

The priorities that drive the focus of this strategic plan are grouped in the following three main action areas:

Enhance Program Academic Relevance 

• Review curriculum to center outcome-based learning
• Rethink CGIs in the context of shifting needs and changing higher education environment
• Design a DEI plan for academic excellence to facilitate integration of inclusive pedagogy and equitable shared governance
• Improve systems and operational support of graduate and undergraduate programs
• Support high impact practitioner expertise and research by facilitating professional development opportunities for faculty and students

Develop Innovative Academic Programs

• Grow virtual internship and language programs by 60% over the next five years
• Develop applied learning and career-oriented programs with STEM focus
• Diversify design of IHP programs to enhance support and sustainability
• Strengthen regeneration of graduate institute through building enrollment, ensuring that each of the degrees is successful, and that the global master model is appropriate while planning for incremental growth of portfolio
• Implement vision of SIT as a comprehensive education institution with learning opportunities that extend from pre-college through first-year to doctoral programs

Cultivate Strategic Academic Partnerships

• Increase SIT visibility so that it is recognized as a high-quality academic global institution of higher education
• Promote academic collaboration with Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs)
• Build new domestic and global strategic partnerships to facilitate delivery of first year college and SIT Direct programs
• Use Centers of Excellence to extend network of program resources and professional development opportunities for faculty and staff
• Enhance academic and operational collaboration across SIT/WL learning centers and graduate and undergraduate faculty

Strengthen Shared Governance

• Finalize the different elements of shared governance (by-laws; faculty rank; professional development … etc.)
• Support faculty governance of the academic programs through appropriate and transparent working policies and processes 
• Establish regular communication with governance committees to ensure effective and timely deliverables

Process and Stages 

Over the past decade, SIT has held fast through many challenges including a significant drop in graduate enrollment, a decline in undergraduate enrollment in high-margin revenue regions, and the interruption brought about by the pandemic that led to the suspension of almost all programs. During these difficult times, faculty and staff have shown unwavering commitment to the institution and have stoically accepted to do more with less resources. Over the past year, many agreed to be on furlough or reduced pay so that SIT could sustain and remain productive. In parallel, consistent feedback from faculty has indicated the need for building trust through fair allocation of resources, development of transparent policies and protocols, and a strong shared governance system. We believe that this strategic plan and the strategic goals outlined below are an important step toward making the academic programs stronger, financially healthier, and, thus, enabling the institution to meet the needs of faculty and staff.          

For a fluid process of implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, the priorities are divided into nine organizing strategic goals:

• Review curriculum and program design 
• Review Critical Global Issues 
• Review and grow undergraduate portfolio
• Diversify IHP comparative portfolio
• Grow graduate portfolio 
• Use Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for academic excellence
• Cultivate strategic partnerships and professional development opportunities for faculty and staff  
• Increase revenue streams by diversifying academic models
• Enhance academic programs through project management [student wellness training, faculty onboarding, and program management systems]  

We will engage in an extensive review of curriculum and program design. The insights that guide this review are derived from data gathered through an assessment of program “academic relevance.”. Five criteria are used to determine academic relevance: 1) student input on program intellectual engagement, academic structure, and learning; 2) faculty vitality which includes scholarship, innovation, and creative activity; 3) academic reputation with program alumni and partner schools; 4) intellectual rigor, which assesses clarity of program outcomes, engagement with CGI, and capacity to facilitate the development of practical skills and self-growth; and 5) the extent to which the program is mission critical in terms of its alignment with the vision for the future and contribution to the advancement of WL/SIT core values.  

Curriculum design and review process is continuous, cyclical, and: 

• addresses the needs and interests of students;  
• applies a sound understanding of course and program outcomes; 
• clarifies priorities for student learning and how these will be met; 
• draws on recent literature and good practice; 
• maximizes use of local knowledge and resources;  
• connects local to critical global issues; 
• explains how student progress will be assessed. 

Curriculum review aims to:

• Create a dynamic and outcome-based curriculum;
• Articulate clearly defined, achievable, and assessable learning outcomes;
• Ensure curriculum is aligned with institutional mission and the academic standards of the accrediting agency;
• Engage with host communities in a mutually beneficial and respectful manner;
• Foster conditions for inclusive teaching pedagogy;
• Evaluate integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion in teaching, research, and community engagement;

Environmental Scan 

Environmental scan offers a picture of factors in the changing environment that may impact the program. Areas to review include:

• Student characteristics: How have students changed in the past five years? How have you adapted your program considering these developments? 
• Evolving student expectations: What are your students’ expectations? For example, are recent developments in the discipline, changes in the job market or credit requirements impacting your program enrollment? 
• Currency of curriculum: Has your program curriculum been revised over the past five years to reflect changes in the discipline or to respond to student needs? 
• Continuing need for program: For example, is your program attracting students from the same majors? Is the program appealing to students from new majors?  
• Enrollment trends: compare information about trends available through  Open Doors  data and enrollment trend on your program. 
• Program outcomes: are program outcomes clear for the student? Do they outline student achievement of theoretical knowledge and practical skills?  
• Student learning outcomes: describe knowledge, skills and abilities and how they are assessed. 
• Unique program features: what are learning opportunities that are unique to your program – that is, opportunities not available on competitors’ programs? 
• Post-review plan: need to set a plan for continuous enhancement. What is the time for the next review?  

Timeline and Process

While the Office of the Dean of Faculty will oversee and facilitate the process, the expectation is that faculty and their local teams will be fully involved in the project. The process will extend over three years (2021-2023) and will focus on review of each CGI program cluster. 

• Faculty will fill out a self-reflective Program Appraisal Form
• Appraisal form is reviewed by a sub-committee composed of members appointed by the Office of the Dean of Faculty
• Review includes additional data from past curriculum reviews (when relevant), student evaluations, Open Doors, feedback from partner schools
• Action plan is designed
• Implementation timeline
• Monitoring and assessment schedule

Timeline of the review:

• July-August 2021 – Self-reflective program appraisal completed
• September-October 2021 – Sub-committee review completed
• November-December 2021 – Action plan design and implementation timeline is set
• January-June 2022 – Implementation of review for programs in Development & Inequity and Identity & Human Resilience CGIs with relatively minor changes
• January to December 22 – Implementation of program changes in Development and Inequity and Identity and Human Resilience with substantial changes.

The CGI framework is a hallmark of the SIT academic programs. CGIs encompass interconnected economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural processes that have significant effects on the future of humanity. The CGI approach allows for an interdisciplinary engagement where intellect, emotion, and imagination intersect to create new ways of engaging with critical planetary issues such as inequality, climate change, health, education, and peace and justice. Whether at the level of graduate or undergraduate programs, the CGI optic creates opportune conditions to intervene in an intellectual and affective space that underlines the interconnectedness of human narratives and life stories. We understand that impacts of CGIs are dependent on structural changes in geopolitical regional and world configurations as well as changing epistemic, political, and socio-economic planetary engagement. The UN, for example, publishes every year a list of the critical global issues “to watch for.” In 2021, the list includes:

• A decade to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals
• Inequality & Exclusion
• Humanitarian catastrophe and response
• Equity and Inclusivity
• Reimagining multilateralism(more networked and inclusive of civil society, businesses and local organizations)
• The sustainability test | the inclusion test| the innovation test| 

It is for the same reasons that we revisit, periodically, our list of CGIs.

The CGI review process is guided by the following objectives:

• How have the world’s pressing global issues shifted since the last time we reviewed the CGIs?
• How do we take into consideration the needs of Gen-Z students as we engage with the redesign of the program’s focus?
• How do we formulate CGIs while taking into consideration Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
• How do we ensure that Critical Global Issues allow for pluridisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches?
• How do we formulate CGIs to prepare students to be the leaders of tomorrow and to develop skills that are relevant to their career choices?

We will oversee and facilitate the process in collaboration with faculty. The process will extend over three years (2021-2023). We will proceed first with the review of Development | Inequality and Identity | Resilience CGIs and will review program cluster in each of the CGIs. The review process should accelerate once Chairs are appointed. 

• July-December 2021 – Development and Inequality/Identity & Human Resilience
• Janvier -June 2022 – CGI cluster #2, to be determined considering availabilities of CGI chairs and most pressing needs
• June -December 2022 – CGI cluster #3, to be determined considering availabilities of CGI chairs and most pressing needs
• December-June 2023 – Review and assessment of CGI clusters #1 and #2
• June-December 2023 – Review and assessment of CGI cluster #3

2021: Review Development | Inequality and Identity | Resilience CGIs

Development | inequality.

Currently 21 Programs list Development and Inequality as the primary CGI and 35 list it as the secondary CGI. As shown in the table below, enrollment on development focused programs has been inconsistent (if not consistently decreasing) over the last five years. Except for IHP Cities, Australia Sustainability, and Chile Valparaiso, most of the other eight programs could barely enroll 150 students over 11 semesters (three programs could barely reach 100 students). The review should first redefine the CGI in terms of the new focus of development research (post-development), make development practice a major component of the program including project design and appraisal, needs assessment and project proposals, and engagement in public consultations, and expand the scales of development to include both the Global North and Global South. Inequities in distribution and access to resources, inequalities in human development, and local and global governance will continue to “shape the prospects of the people who live to see the 22 nd century.”  At the same, development projects are more and more associated with response to natural or human catastrophes. It may therefore be better to reframe this CGI around Post-Development | Humanitarianism to integrate design of relief and humanitarian aid projects and focus on the

Identity | Resilience

Programs in this CGI celebrate disenfranchised and minority groups, indigenous and migrant communities and point to new epistemologies, new practices, new relationtionalities, and new forms of resilience and resistance from the bottom-up. In this, the human condition is seen in its full complexity and interconnectedness. In line with the UN definition and institutional focus on DEI, we consider refocusing this CGI on Inclusivity | Exclusion and the critical praxis of power, context, inequality, and injustice as they manifest in the intersectional space of race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and age. While enrollment on programs in this CGI cluster is overall fair, the review will include revamp of a few programs. It is important to note how enrollment numbers have increased since program revamp in 2018. Also, though the highest enrolled program in this CGI is in the Netherlands, that is the only program in Europe in this cluster.

CGI review will also yield:

• Review of the Research Methods and Ethics course
• Development of CGI core modules across programs
• Clarity in CGI program listing [cross-listing has created uncertainty about program focus]
• Define and determine SIT’s approach to interdisciplinarity

The strategic plan premises a portfolio of dynamic, academically relevant, and financially sustainable programs. A major component of this strategic goal is focus on teaching quality, the quality of adjuncts/guest lecturers, whether assessment and advising for undergraduates is appropriate, and thinking through how to make the undergraduate experience fully student-centered. After a preliminary review from the perspective of academic relevance and enrollment history of programs across the portfolio, we have identified a cluster of programs for substantial revamp. In parallel, we have also identified growth areas especially in Europe, MENA, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. This will include increasing operations in existing locations where resources are available and starting new entities in new countries. The following list provides an outline of the vision for the next five years:

• Austria: Central European University (partnership) (2022)
• Barbados: new entity (can function as back up for locations such as Samoa) (2023)
• Brazil: new entity (will start with IHP) (2022)
• Cape Verde (Geopolitics and Maritime Power in West Africa) (2023)
• Colombia: semester program (conflict transformation and peacebuilding?) (2022)
• Croatia: will make a great addition to Europe portfolio (2023)
• Finland: will explore Finland and Russia program (2023)
• Greece: we have a reliable partner in Athens (2022)
• Italy (Palermo): new entity and semester program (2023)
• Taiwan: will make up for the loss of China programs (diplomacy in southeast Asia?) (2022)
• Thailand: a great addition to Asia pacific portfolio (Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Climate Change?) (2022)
• Turkey: new entity and semester program in Istanbul (2022)
• Poland: interesting country with a strong community in the US, a powerhouse in Eastern Europe (2024)

SIT President defines IHP foundational statements as follows:

• IHP needs to be successful – IHP cannot operate in its ‘normal’ manner for at least the next 1.5 – 2 years
• IHP needs to be visible – IHP needs to operate (and needs some ‘wins’ soon) – this requires changing the model (suggestion: 2 countries not 4, then build back up) (this requires lowering tuition), and lowering the breakeven in the short term (suggestion: 7-8 after lower tuition)
• IHP needs to be known for dynamic/flexible/able to expand/responsive/innovation – IHP has an ongoing difficulty innovating as the present model requires organization to occur within a certain financial structure and so requires high breakeven numbers for a new program (16 students on average required to break-even per program)
• IHP needs to have a reputation for quality – the only permanent IHPers are our PDs and a small group of other staff. We are academically dependent on others even if they are valued partners. How can we merge the best of IHP with the best of present SIT staff (academic synergies) to build the highest possible reputation for the organization whilst also bringing in the wider community IHP has built?
• Recognize and embrace the diversity of IHP students

Recommendation: develop new IHP programs with different financial designs based on SIT expertise while working to build back the existing programs.

IHP Fully Embedded Comparative Model

This model is fully embedded in SIT/WL learning centers and relies on the network of resources available to the regular semester programs. The Cities in the 21 st Century and Human Rights will pilot this model as the programs will be housed respectively at the learning centers in Argentina, Spain, and South Africa and Nepal, Jordan, and Chile.

• IHP Cultural Heritage: Legacy, Identity, and Curating the Future is the first new fully embedded program that will run from the centers in Nepal, Ghana, and the Netherlands (2023).

IHP Intra-regional Comparative Model

This model is focused on the comparative study of a critical global issue in a delimited region instead of across continents (as is the regular IHP model). This approach allows for in-depth study of the critical global issue, provides a more immersive cultural experience, and enhances the financial sustainability of the program. Program under consideration in this model include:

• Geopolitics of the Amazon: Capital, Politics, and Indigenous Habitat

                Possible locations: Peru | Ecuador | Brazil (2023)

• Death and Dying: History, Culture, and Rituals in the 21 st Century

                Possible locations: Athens | Istanbul | Tunis or ROME (2023)

• Polar Geographies: Systems, Policy, and the Environment

                Possible locations: Alaska | Iceland| Ushuaia (2024)

• Green Transition: Renewable Energy, Technology, and Resource Economics

                Possible locations: Iceland | Portugal | Georgia (2023) 

• Humanitarianism and Peacebuilding: Conflict, Relief, and Regional Governance

                Possible locations: Thailand | Cambodia | Vietnam (2024)

Build on the path mapped by SIT President’s 2017 vision and which was summed up in:

Identifying new programs and ways of learning:

• Programs with strong academic content and leadership
• Relationship to the job market – locally, nationally, our historic partners
• Synergies: relationship to GDE, relationship to Study Abroad
• Building on our expertise
• Quickly building for success (for Fall 2018)
• Avoid cannibalization where possible
• Strengthening through partnerships

Over the last three years, the Graduate School

Current Programs by Modality  

• 1 Doctorate 
• 6 Global Master 
• 6 Low Residency 
• 3 Certificates  

Current Programs by CGI  

Education & Social Change  (1 D, 1 GM, 2 LR, 2 C)  

• Global Education – EdD (Low Res) 
• International Education – MA (Global Master) 
• International Education – MA (Part-time Hybrid) 
• International Education – Grad Certificate  
• TESOL – MAT (Part-time Hybrid) 
• TESOL – Grad Certificate  

Climate and Environment  (1 GM)  

• Climate Change and Global Sustainability – MA (Global Master) 

Development and Inequality  (2 GM, 2 LR)  

• Development Practice – MA (Global Master)  
• Global Leadership and Social Innovation – MA (Part-time Hybrid) [cancelled?]
• Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management – MA (Part-time Hybrid) 
• Sustainable Development – MA (Part-time Hybrid) 

Global Health and Well-being  (1 GM)  

• Global Health – MA (Global Master) 

Geopolitics and Power  (1 GM)  

• Diplomacy and International Relations – MA (Global Master) 

Identity and Human Resilience  (1 GM, 1 LR)  

• Humanitarian Assistance and Crisis Management – MA (Global Master)  
• Humanitarian Assistance and Crisis Management – MA (Part-time Hybrid)  

Peace and Justice  (1 LR, 1 C)  

• Peace and Justice Leadership – MA (Part-time Hybrid) 
• CONTACT – Graduate Certificate 

We will ensure that each of the degrees is successful and that the global master model is appropriate while planning for incremental growth of portfolio. Over the next five years, these are the priorities:

Develop Five More Master’s Degrees (3 years) 

• MS – Ecology and Conservation Management (Climate | Environment) – Global Master (2023) 
• MA – Social Justice and Advocacy (Peace | Justice) – Global Master (2022)
• MA- Social Work and Case Management (Identity | Resilience) – Licensed Global Master (2024)
• MA – Climate Change (Climate | Environment) – Low Residency (2023)
• MA- TESOL and Second Language Acquisition (Education | Social Change) Global Master (2024) 

Develop 2 More Doctorate Degrees 

• Humanitarianism and Peacebuilding (2024)
• Sustainability Studies (2024)

Program Review (3rd year) 

• Review all master programs from the optic of academic relevance, professional prospects, and financial sustainability

Things to Keep in Mind 

• Solidify funnel: SSA/IHP – Graduate – Doctorate 
• 2/3 of our surveyed SSA alums say they go on to further education 
• Be mindful of which CGIs have the most students and develop a full funnel (SSA-Grad-Doc) with those in mind first.  
• Popular majors: business, STEM, pre-med, psychology, sociology, speech pathology, criminal justice 
• Backbone of the graduate school should still be immersive programs and experiential learning.  
• Other ideas for future doctorate degrees – Identity and Resilience – Humanities and social science, Policy and Advocacy 

Engage in an extensive review of the institution’s academic culture from the perspective of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. SIT’s DEI engagement starts from the understanding of the growing need for a comprehensive review of institutions of higher education’s entire academic structures, course offerings, and intellectual and political traditions that is more inclusive of traditionally underrepresented people. The insights that guide the DEI strategic plan are based on the Diversity Abroad Report, the ODF’s internal assessment, discussions with other units, and data gathered from evaluations and conversations with students, partner schools, faculty, and staff. As a global institution, SIT understands the nuances that foreground the very concepts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion across the institution.

Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion goals are:

• Integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion in SIT’s core academic mission of teaching, research, and community engagement.
• Enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion accountability, effectiveness, and collaboration in all learning centers.
• Develop an inclusive learning environment where diverse needs of students, staff, and faculty are celebrated, respected, and supported.
• Create accessible designs and innovative partnerships to reach students from more diverse backgrounds.
• Enhance an academic culture that centers students of color and other underrepresented groups. This is particularly important as we define Critical Global Issues, design programs, chose center locations, hire faculty and staff, and invite guest lecturers, etc. 
• Establish an intellectual culture that values, represents, and welcomes marginalized knowledges through the topics we teach, the scholars we engage with (readings, guest lectures, etc.), and the knowledge we produce (journals, conferences and lecture series, research groups, etc.) Improve the diversity of our academic engagement with knowledge production and dissemination.

The Office of the Dean of Faculty will oversee and facilitate the process in collaboration with faculty and other units. This will be conducted in two steps.

• Step 1: Review and Assessment
• Curriculum: Do program syllabi reflect diversity, equity, and inclusion principles?
•  Processes of program design as they take into consideration Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles :
• The DA report and faculty and staff small group discussion
• Curriculum:   Do program syllabi reflect diversity, equity, and inclusion principles? 
• References: diversity of representation of references from both local and international contributors to the field?  
• Inclusion of scholars from different backgrounds?  
• Inclusion of readings representative of diverse epistemic stands? 
• Lecturers:   Diversity of lecturer pool
• Are lecturers and guest-speakers representative of local communities?  
• Are we consciously thinking of recruiting a diverse pool of lecturers, guest speakers, and local faculty? If yes, please explain how. 
• Are you taking into consideration local diversity? Are you maximizing use of local knowledge and resources? 
• Underrepresented groups: Assess that programs address or consider the needs and interests of students from underrepresented communities
• Local staff: Evaluate the diversity of local staff members and ensure that they can support students from different backgrounds and identities as they navigate the semester?  
• Propose and agree on an institution-wide definition of Diversity Equity, and Inclusion
• Specify and offer, in collaboration with SHSW, scholarly resources that enable all faculty and students to engage with/in leading and cutting-edge research on issues pertaining to diversity, inclusion, access, social justice, power, and privilege around the globe.
• Organize fireside chats on diversity equity and inclusion.
• Host discussion panels on DEI issues based on real case studies.
• Sponsor lectures on DEI with distinguished scholars or practitioners
• Encourage faculty to participate in conferences and intellectual forums on issues pertaining to DEI
• Program Design
• Student Health, Safety, and Well-being
• Decolonial Pedagogy
• DEI, Well-being, and Resiliency
• Legal and DEI
• Explore innovative ways to collaborate effectively with partner school before students arrive in-country.
• Revisit orientation material.
• Develop training on How to begin conversations on DEI issues among the students and staff at the outset of the program.
• Provide diversity, equity, and inclusion professional development programs by increasing assessment literacy and providing program design and evaluation tools for use across programs.
• Provide seed funding for critical scholarship, curriculum development, conference participation, and faculty development related to DEI
• Establish a fluid assessment process to evaluate the implementation of the process

Timeline & Actions

July- 2021 – Definitions DEI July-December 2021 – Step 1 January 2021-June 2026 – Step 2: Implementation plan

Strategic Partnerships, Professional Development, and Thought Leadership is a major priority of SIT’s five-year Strategic plan. These priorities aim to create an intellectual space that attracts, welcomes, and fosters the academic engagement of faculty and students from diverse backgrounds. We strive to give faculty, students, and staff the opportunities to participate in strong and vibrant communities of thought, network with colleagues and partners from diverse communities and institutions of higher education, and participate in the production and dissemination of innovative and groundbreaking knowledge that ensure and expand SIT’s thought leadership in particular clusters of excellence in the U.S. and globally.

• Ensure SIT’s national and international thought leadership in a set of areas
• Expand networking opportunities for faculty, students, and staff
• Attract, shelter, and nurture the success of students, faculty, and staff from diverse academic backgrounds
• Increase faculty’s visibility in the U.S. and at the international level
• Provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff
• Establish a strong research culture within the SIT
• Strength and Potential: review areas where SIT is already a thought-leader (International Education, Second Language Acquisition, etc.) and develop areas with strong research potential (centers of excellence in research).
• Research Culture: Determine SIT faculty’s interest in research, development of research groups, journals, lecture series, conferences, and symposia.
• Partnership Opportunities: review and assess the list and characteristics of major partners and sending schools
• Funding Opportunities: identify funding needs and opportunities with the Office of Research

Timeline and process

The Office of the Dean of Faculty will oversee and facilitate the process in collaboration with faculty, CGI chairs, and other units. This will be conducted in two steps.

• Academic diversity of students and faculty body
• Types of institutions (state schools, majority minority institutions, community colleges, etc.)
• Potential to develop partnership in terms of diversification of students, academics, and program design, etc.
• Potential to collaborate (research, lecture series, etc.)
• Create a list of areas where SIT already is a thought leader
• Create a list of areas where SIT can develop clusters of excellence based on current faculty strengths.
• Review strength and reach of existing research engagement (lecture series, faculty forum, guest lectures, etc.)
• Review and brainstorm with the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs on funding needs and areas of priority
• Work with University Relations to develop a list of new strategic partnerships that expand and diversify our current network in light of the findings in step 1;
• Develop clusters of excellence based on current CGIs and faculty strength;
• Develop and expand research engagement in light of the findings in step 1;
• Offer trainings and professional development opportunities;
• Lecture series
• Academic Journals
• Research groups
• Conference and symposia

Timeline & Key Actions

• July – December 2021 – Step 1: Review and Assessment
• July-December 2021 – Develop an online academic journal and a research group
• January 2021-March 2021 – Step 2.a: list of new partnerships; 2.b: list of clusters of excellence; 2.c: develop an action plan for research engagement 2.d: list of training and professional development opportunities; 2.e: list of lecture series, academic journals, research groups, etc.
• March 2021-June 2026 – plan Implementation

The aim of this strategic goal is to increase streams by diversifying program models and contribute to the execution of the institutional vision of integrating World Learning programs within key learning centers. This goal is based on SIT President’s strategic vision and includes:

• Growth of EIL portfolio
• Growth of WL Centers
• Growth of virtual internships and language programs by 60% by 2025.

The ODF will oversee the implementation of the academic components of this strategic goal including leveraging resources at learning centers, designing programs, developing syllabi, and overseeing APA approval process.

Strategy: Cultivating Well-being as a Priority Practice

Mounting evidence from neuroscience research shows that mindfulness practices can be taught to have a wide range of measurable benefits. Practitioners of mindfulness proactively increase their capabilities of managing stress and overall mental health through self-regulation. Mindfulness can prime students’ minds to understand and integrate cross-cultural immersive experiences more successfully. Non-judgmental self-inquiry assists us in developing a combination of multidisciplinary social, interpersonal, and positive behavioral soft skills that nurture and balance personalities which promote competencies such as problem-solving, leadership, creativity, communication, social consciousness, and confidence. These are all skills fundamental to modern work and life. Meditation research has been steadily increasing over the past decade and studies point to mindfulness as a practice that can rewire the neural networks of the brain, improving memory, learning comprehension, and cognitive functioning all while areas of the brain responsible for stress and anxiety become less active. The conscious practices of being present, kindness, gratitude, compassion, and the creation of a space to explore the building blocks of what makes us human, cultivates self- and societal- introspection, priming the mind to do the difficult work of recognizing bias and inequities more successfully.

“Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” Jon Kabat-Zinn.

We will make a junior version as a core component of SIT First.

Actions 

• Pilot foundational Well-being and Resilience course to a focus group of staff and faculty. July – October 2021 (25 hours total).
• Focus group participations assesses curriculum and recommend if this course should be implemented as an optional foundational non-credit pre-departure course for all students. Course should also be open to all World Learning and SIT staff as a personal wellness development option. November- December 2021
• Update curriculum with suggested modifications. Updated sessions will need to be recorded to build online course up for asynchronous users. Spring 2022
• Launch course for students. Fall 2022

Strategy: Anti-Oppression and Implicit Bias Training as a Priority Practice

The Well-being and Resilience foundational course can prime learners to successfully engage with the difficult work of anti-oppression and implicit bias reflection and training. Once practitioners of mindfulness can non-judgmentally observe their own actions, words, and thoughts, their capacity to gain a meaningful perspective shift and generate compassion for others increases. A primary outcome of mindfulness work is to generate a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006), which views abilities as something you can change and improve through practice. Participants are more responsive to exploring their own bias openly if they know they can 1) become aware of them and 2) can transform them with conscious effort. People with a fixed mindset see critical feedback as a personal attack rather than as a chance to improve or develop new approaches and perspectives which can make implicit bias and anti-oppression training less effective.

“Sometimes one of the most subversive things you can do is to actually speak with people you disagree with, and not simply at them. Empathy is not an endorsement; it just means I am acknowledging the humanity of someone who was raised to think very differently from me.” Dylan Marron

If we can first build the skills in our students, faculty, and staff to have humility with ourselves and each other, mindfully observe our thoughts and actions, better manage our stress and mental health, and realize we have the ability to change, we can then begin the challenging work of building diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.

• Form committee of faculty representatives that want to develop a foundational course focused on anti-oppression and implicit bias training. July – October 2021
• Pilot developed course to volunteers. October – March 2022
• Review curriculum and update as needed.  March – May 2022
• Launch course option for students. Fall 2022

Strategy: Redesigning Undergraduate Orientation and Re-Entry Seminars

Program launch and orientation are important components that set the stage for the learning experience we provide to students. Faculty have developed successful components and activities for orientation that can be more successfully shared and implemented with the wider community.  With the assistance of faculty, staff in the field, the office of the Dean of Faculty, and the office of Student Health, Safety, and Well-being we can collaboratively design new models for both orientation and reentry.

• Form committee of faculty, local staff, ODF, and SHSW representatives to develop research and collect various creative orientation and reentry modules from wider program community. July – August 2021
• Identify specific orientation and reentry components that need improvement and design new content. September – May 2022
• Pilot new orientation and reentry on key identified programs. Fall 2022
• Monitor and evaluation (feedback from students and staff), redesign as needed.  Fall 2022 – Spring 2023
• Launch new model for all programs. Fall 2023

Strategy: Updating New Undergraduate Faculty Training and Onboarding

How can we improve new faculty onboarding and training to be more concise and effective? In the past we heavily relied on brining all new faculty to the Vermont campus to participate in face-to-face onboarding. Immersive in person training is still a very important component to successfully onboarding new faculty, preparing them to run programs, and introducing them to the organization and the community that will be supporting them, but how can we improve? Can we separate review of policy and process from the more experiential and non-formal components of training new staff? Can we create a platform that allows for 50% of the training to be conducted online asynchronously? Face-to-face training can be shorted and reserved for the development of soft and specific skills needed to run programs abroad. Various modules could be developed not only for new faculty or staff, but as professional development options for existing staff.

• Form committee of new and experienced faculty, local staff, ODF, SHSW, and operations representatives to identify areas for improvement with new faculty training/onboarding. July – August 2021
• Identify which components of new faculty training can be turned into an online course. September 2021
• Part of the committee may want to branch off and develop the online course material. September – May 2022
• Develop creative modules to build capacities and skills of new faculty to be delivered face-to-face. Identify module topics of desired and required trainings for existing faculty for professional development. September – May 2022
• Develop professional training modules that meet identified needs along with yearly schedule for implementation. May – December 2022
• Pilot new faculty training and professional development trainings. Spring 2023
• Monitor and evaluate – redesign as needed. 

• Faculty & Staff

Sustainable Academic Business Plan

The Sustainable Academic Business is the cornerstone of the UW’s strategic framework to maintain excellence in teaching, scholarship and research in light of financial realities. It outlines the goals and related activities that will keep the UW strong and well-positioned for the future.

For more information on the origin of the UW’s SABP, see the  Evolution & Archive and  About pages or download a high-level overview of 2y2d and the UW strategic framework .

Goals of the strategic framework

• Academic excellence and mission
• Financial stability
• Attract the best students, faculty, and staff
• Increase and diversify funding
• Embrace technology and interdisciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of a diverse and dispersed student body
• Invest in people and infrastructure to meet 21st century challenges
• Increasing revenue
• Decreasing costs
• Investing in people
• Investing in infrastructure
• Increasing access

A flexible framework

The Sustainable Academic Business Plan serves as the UW’s strategic framework and is updated every two years. Initiatives update annually.

Delivering near-term impact through initiatives

Since 2011, the focus of our implementation has been at the initiative level. Based on a gap analysis, a number of initiatives have been launched to date on themes including student success, organizational effectiveness, our physical and virtual campus, program evaluation, innovation and assessment. Some are ongoing, while others have been integrated into the work of relevant units.

Education Services Business Plans

Aircraft rental instruction business plan.

Lansing Aviation, LLC is a start-up company for aircraft rental, flight instruction, and aviation consulting services.

Children's Play Program Business Plan

Bees' Circus is a children's play and music program that offers a series of parent/child programs.

Online College Bookstore Business Plan

The College Cafe is a start-up online marketplace, auction site, text book exchange, blogger host for university students.

School Fundraising Business Plan

Catholic School Development Foundation is a not-for-profit fundraising and development foundation supporting parochial schools.

Stained Glass Gallery Business Plan

Glass Dreams is a stained glass art gallery, studio, and retailer of stained glass tools and supplies.

Teachers' Employment Agency Business Plan

Teacherafterschooljobs.com will provide a website for teachers to access a source of part-time or seasonal employment to supplement their income.

Tutoring Service Business Plan

Bryan's Tutoring Service is a tutoring service that offers private and group tutoring in a wide range of academic subjects.

Weight Loss Seminars Business Plan

Brushy Mountain Retreat offers a series of workshop programs teaching a practical, livable, healthy livestyle approach to weight management.

Education is seeing a gradual transition and expansion to online services. That being said, there’s still a place for innovative and fun educational experiences. Whether you’re inspired to develop efficient online courses or an engaging art or children’s museum, you’ll need a business plan to do it. Check out our assortment of education services sample plans and start your business today.

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• Youth Program
• Wharton Online

Our strategic plan guiding us towards greater influence, innovation, and engagement for the advancement of business, education, and society at large.

Created to serve as the world’s first, finest and most influential business school, Wharton is an academic institution full of potential and without equal. Joseph Wharton’s founding vision of using analytical expertise to produce well-rounded leaders to drive societal progress remains our ethos. As we continue our quest for positive global impact, the Wharton Way serves as our philosophical North Star – rooted in our history of distinctive contributions while also highlighting our immense potential towards an endless pursuit of excellence.

The Principles

From our genesis, Wharton has been grounded in ideals that guide our efforts. The Wharton Way continues these ideals, referencing them as foundational principles underscoring our many efforts. We honor our analytical roots by applying a data-informed perspective to identify underlying causes and possible answers to pressing questions. We leverage our breadth and depth of knowledge to reimagine possibilities of a local nature, then go further by scaling our solutions for entities and communities far beyond campus. And we lean into our reputation as a leading global institution to unite different perspectives to champion equitable outcomes and far-reaching change .

Our storied history, substantial knowledge, and successful graduates mean Wharton’s ability for global impact is limitless. The Wharton Way is how we will direct that limitless potential for meaningful progress. By identifying three areas of focus, or lenses, our strategic plan points our resources, talent and attention in ways best capable of catalyzing change. Through the elevation of our research , we will disseminate new ideas to the business community in places where it is needed most. In keeping with our legacy of pedagogical innovation , we will reinvigorate the learning experiences of our students, reaching K-12 youth to C-suite leaders in the manner that best serve their needs. And from our firm belief in the power of collaboration across divides , we will remove limiting boundaries by convening experts from an array of disciplines to ideate holistic solutions for global success.

A Letter from Dean Erika James:

“ How can Wharton leverage its strengths as a research powerhouse and leadership training ground to benefit more people and answer more questions to advance the world? ”

That was the question I found myself asking time and again during the early listening tour in the beginning of my deanship. Upon hearing about the expertise of our faculty and accomplishments of our graduates, it became apparent that Wharton’s ability to deliver global impact is limitless. We need only to train our talents and attention on the most pressing topics to drive valuable and lasting change.

The Wharton Way is our philosophical North Star, guiding how Wharton drives greater influence and collective progress in the world. It boldly declares our intention to focus our expertise on issues of critical importance to our students, our faculty, and our society at large.

The Wharton Way is our commitment to wielding our heft for the greater good of people around the globe.

Wharton is an institution full of potential and without equal. We’ve evolved from educating our first dozen undergraduate students in 1881, to providing the most expansive array of programs to learners ranging from pre-college to the C-suite. Over our 142 years, we earned our substantial reputation for the discovery and deployment of novel, evidence-based knowledge. And we’ve actively sought out interdisciplinary experts and partners to convene on—and provide answers to—timely, worldwide issues.

Simply put, our heritage of preeminence is what propels the Wharton Way —and our endless pursuit of excellence. 

With academic foci ranging from legal studies to finance, ethics to operations, and analytics to healthcare management, our faculty produces more research-backed solutions than any other business school. Technology has opened up new opportunities to expand access to a Wharton education. And our partners play a critical role in fueling our contributions, bringing perspectives that expand our thinking and outcomes. But I am challenging Wharton not to rest on the laurels of our innumerable successes.

We must disseminate Wharton insights beyond the academy and our campuses . New ideas and concepts emanating from our institution will have the biggest and most immediate impact in the real world. The Wharton Way is our pledge to ensure more people and organizations can access our scholarship to navigate day-to-day decisions.

We must leverage our storied history to lead innovation in business education . As we equip current and future decision-makers with the knowledge to affect policy, economies, and industry, we are also thinking about ways to reinvigorate traditional pedagogy. Innovation not only increases Wharton’s reach, but also evolves the very ethos of how we engage with our students. The Wharton Way takes our pioneering learning approach and promises continued progress for the next generation.

Finally, we must bridge the divides that hold us back from holistic progress . Whether real or manufactured, certain boundaries limit our ability to collaborate effectively on problems that affect us all. Wharton’s existence within the University of Pennsylvania and our many relationships mean we can activate the broader business community as partners on a quest for collective advancement. The Wharton Way illuminates our plan to expand collaborations with industry, nonprofits, and other academic institutions to further generate groundbreaking ideas.

Taken together, these foci bolster Joseph Wharton’s founding mission to advance society by creating wealth and economic opportunity for all people.

The Wharton Way directs our steps by highlighting the priorities we will pursue for maximum impact. We are confident this approach will empower more people to succeed—and lead—wherever they are on their educational and professional journeys.

No institution is better poised or committed to uncovering the insights that drive perpetual progress. I look forward to living out the Wharton Way in practice, together. I invite you to join us.

Sincerely, Erika H. James Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Wharton’s legacy as an analytical research powerhouse is undisputed within academic circles. So how can we leverage that reputation to ask and answer the questions most salient to the broader business community? Elevating our research impact means wielding our influence to benefit more people in more places for more outcomes .

OUR SUCCESS WILL ALLOW US TO:

Set the standard for the application of business research to drive positive change in the world.

Draw the world’s best and brightest minds to the beacon of our ever-inquiring community. 

Deliver multifaceted solutions infused with data-informed insights for immediate deployment in the modern world.

As the original authors of business education, Wharton is best equipped to lead innovation for the business school of the future. From our unmatched programs for high school youth to our unparalleled experiences for global executives, our knowledge of what’s next lets us teach for the needs of tomorrow. Innovating through our pedagogy means being the catalyst for perpetual progress in academia, business, and beyond.  

Position Wharton as the leader of perpetual progress with new and emerging student audiences.

Develop communities and spaces that foster engagement and facilitate new learning experiences.

Commit to continuous improvements to the content and communities we create.

Throughout our 140+ year legacy of success, Wharton has pursued outcomes where the sum can be greater than its parts. From this perspective, we’ve built an array of multi-faceted partnerships spanning academic backgrounds and industry foci. Collaborating across disciplines and divides means serving as the primary convener of thought leaders to share perspectives, tackle challenges, and produce solutions that benefit us all.

Invite and cultivate collaboration with others to nurture a global exchange of information that helps better the world.

Champion an innovative engagement model in which industry, non-profit, and academic alliances foster the exchange of information and insights.