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Many of the achievements of the Institute are due to the importance we gave to the planning of a strategy to make the organization educationally useful, economically viable and politically acceptable to the policy makers of Hong Kong. If we had not met these objectives we would have had to face the threat of an early demise of the OLI The OLI conceived its business strategy based on the following premises:
- We are a service industry and our clients i.e. the students have the right to expect, both as tax payers and fee payers, products of high standards backed by support services of impeccable quality.
- We had to provide education of internationally acceptable standards and award credits on the basis of transparent and rigorous exit standards.
- As developers of educational products we had to be sensitive to the wants
and needs of the end user, and
- As a not-for-profit "business" enterprise we had to be financially viable to sustain ourselves in perpetuity and in a highly competitive and market our fees had to be within affordable ranges to "sell" our programmes.
Planning considerations
It is fairly well known axiom that planning is not about the future; it is about understanding the impact and consequences that decisions made today may have on the future. Providers of part time adult education such as the OLIHK have to come to grips with this fundamental yet subtle message-ours is an industry that requires long term commitments not only at the production and presentation end but also at the users end. A decision to launch a new course today requires resource provision for the next three, four or five years in the form of materials, space, and people to supply and support the learners of the course.
Our strategic planning therefore was not meant to be a paper exercise full of platitudes, it was an exercise that clearly and unambiguously stated the nature, types and names of courses we intended to offer during the plan period, the number of enrolments we hoped to achieve, the level of fees we wished to impose, the number of hours of tuition we planned to provide and the income we had to generate in order to support the level of anticipated expenditure.
Our strategic planning
therefore was not meant to be a
paper exercise full of
platitudes
We avoided developing a strategic plan based on the personal vision of the Director or the Council of the OLI, to the exclusion of the Institute's external and internal environment such as the market, the nature or vitality of the economy, the ability of the students to pay tuition, the political climate and Hong Kong's educational tradition, in which we operate. In fact, all of the major stake holders [representatives of academic staff, deans, senior administrators, some members of Council] of the Institute contributed to the formulation of the plan and in so doing buy a subscription into the harsh world of academic business management.
The OLIHK is made up of five academic units and eight other administrative and academic support units. Rather than compile each unit's individual plan into an institutional one we plan for the institution as a whole when departments have or are ascribed a role. It is neither a "top-down" nor "bottom-up" process. Functional managers regardless of the level they are in are asked to contribute to the formulation of the plan. It works. The questions we ask as part of the strategic planning include the philosophic and the pragmatic. The following are a few that feature extensively in our discussions:
- What perceptions of the institute should we create in Hong Kong?
- What are the markets for adult higher education?
- Who are the competitors?
- In a highly sophisticated city state like Hong Kong, how can we deliver our courses, successfully?
- How can we respond to Hong Kong yearning for and traditions of learning and still benefit from all of the advantages that distance teaching and technologies offer?
- How can we recruit, train and retain good full and part-time faculty and administrative staff?
- How can we support learning and scholarship without having to carry all of the baggage that our conventional counterparts do?
- How much risk should we take with a venture and what are the consequences of failure? Risk is a part and parcel of any innovation including educational services. For us, planning is not about removing risks altogether, it is more a case of measuring the levels of risks and taking steps to reduce or even eliminate its impact.
- What political and legal changes can we expect in the run up to 1997?
- What resources of the community can we tap at no cost at marginal cost
and at full cost?
- Will there be social and cultural shifts, in the teritory, will English continue to be the main language of commerce, government, education and what of the Chinese language?
- Will the level of migration following Tiananmen continue and what impact will it have on our catchment?
Main features of the OLI strategic planning
If we had been established as an enterprise heavily subsidized by the public purse our decision making would have been different, We are not - the Institute was expected to move towards financial sufficiency in forty-two months. We therefore had to be active in carving out a role and a presence for ourselves in Hong Kong in order to make our products appealing, appropriate and useful. We have had to shape our own destiny, rather than allow destiny to shape our behaviour. In that process we have had to compete with other local institutions that are publicly funded, overseas tertiary institutions that are also publicly funded and seeking adventure and fortunes in Hong Kong, private educational enterprises that are run for profit and in the typical Hong Kong laissez-faire culture of doing business, are not required to subject themselves for external audits and therefore indulge in educational practices verging on the cheap and often criminal.
We have had to shape our own
destiny, rather than allow
destiny to shape our behaviour.
The successful marketing of education to adults is dependent on a number of environmental variables such as the nature, strength and shifts in economic activities, demographic patterns, the political climate, population movements, government policies, regulations and support for the development of the human resource, capacity of the infrastructure to support new forms of educational delivery. Sensitive planning does not acquiesce to temporary changes in fashion, rather it uses current information to plan longer term trends. Our strategy was to foresee at least three to six years ahead in terms of human resource needs and shape our curriculum accordingly. Hong Kong society starting with the mid eighties had been undergoing a continuous state of flux in almost every environmental variable and the challenge to the Institute's management has been to monitor these shifts, and use the flexibility of a modular system of educational delivery to make curricular adjustments as we went along. Short and long term know
ledge of the market is crucial.
One [of a few] of the OLI's major threats is the competition in Hong Kong. Our strategy takes into account this competition, both local and off shore; we have some advantages we exploit including our very unique mode of delivery, our liberal credit transfer policies, our quality control mechanisms and not the least our open entry and multi-exit points.
Our strategy was to foresee at
least three to six years ahead in
terms of human resource needs
and shape our curriculum
accordingly.
Finally, our planning has to come to terms with our own organization, its strengths and weaknesses, the development of its traditions, its leadership and its aspirations. In the highly elitist and educationally sophisticated society we work in, the OLI is innovative in challenging certain long held traditions of access to higher education. It is also shifting the centre of knowledge from that of active teacher/passive learner to active learner/supportive tutor. These considerations form the conceptual framework to our planning. The challenge, as we plan, is to link our institutional framework and its direction to the forces within our environment. Internally the organization has to understand the benefits and dangers of an open access and student centred culture, it has to prepare itself for the demands and vagaries of adult learners and their learning behaviour. Externally we have to position ourselves to sell our unique blend of opportunities, innovations and benefits both to the individual and the commu
nity, to a dynamic society that is in transition in more than one way.
The next five years will tell us if the judgements we are making today are the right ones.
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