Balanced Scorecards?

We've been talking about versions of this at JBU more and more in recent years. Richard Light, of "College Success" fame, helped create such an instrument for Wheaton (Mass.) that appears quite helpful. Other IHEs appear to have developed similar methodologies. Here are some sites for "balanced scorecard" information.

The basic conclusion that I drew from these conversations is that this balanced scorecard idea has more relevance to IHEs than do the Six Sigma, Quality Improvement, Lean Thinking, Toyota Way and other business engineering processes, largely because of the emphasis on the word "balance." The Balanced Scorecard doesn't have a great track record of improving business performance, most likely because the attempt to balance lots of competing interests diverts the company from its main focus. This is why, perhaps, the third generation of these balanced scorecards has emphasized the need to define the ultimate goal first before creating the scorecard itself.

Higher Education, however, has lots of competing concerns that are legitimate and therefore need to be kept in balance. Do we emphasize the development of critical thinking, new knowledge, service to the local community, professional training for the marketplace, citizenship for the country, moral guidance for our churches? We want it all, and the balanced scorecard is better at trying to keep all of these various pieces in view than would be something like "The Toyota Way."

http://www.balancedscorecard.org/basics/bsc1.html

http://www.camagazine.com/index.cfm/ci_id/26179/la_id/1

http://www.camagazine.com/index.cfm/ci_id/16066/la_id/1

http://www.odl.rutgers.edu/resources/pdf/score.pdf

http://he-cda.wiley.com/WileyCDA/HigherEdTitle/productCd-0471423289.html

http://www.schneiderman.com/Concepts/Scorecard/scorecard.htm

www.businessintelligence.com/fwp/Designing_Exec_Dashboards.pdf