It’s a good time to take a second look at how you’re diverting your resources.

Universities find themselves with an imbalance between their resources and what students (and governments and employers) are asking for. It’s not that what is being offered is of poor quality — it’s that, especially after the tumult of the last few years, university resources aren’t being utilized in the most optimized way.

This is now the rule, rather than the exception.

Currently, the division of labour in a faculty can be lopsides: some groups of professors, TAs, etc are run ragged because their courses are so popular and oversubscribed while others have very light workloads due to a lack of course popularity.

But for institutions that can revitalize and strengthen their programs, there’s an opportunity to attract more student interest, deliver greater value and achieve a better balance between staff and workload. And notably, there’s a chance to avoid the dilemma of having overly large classes or classes that are smaller than they need be (and are likely economically unviable).

So, what’s getting in the way?

Too often, when solutions are sought internally, many of the ideas end up being someone’s favourite hobby horse. Professors dig their heels in, change means re-doing syllabi, preparing new lectures and notes, tests, handouts and all the rest. The notion is justifiably unattractive. Why risk ruining something that pays $140,000 a year for an added 6 hours work a week? Plus, there’s a good deal of bias in the solutions brought forward and generally, there’s no unbiased environmental scan to identify options that don’t fit the hobby horse models. 

That’s where CRi’s program revitalization process comes in.

It starts with a deep listening to key stakeholders within the faculty, an environmental scan to identify innovative programming that is being well received around the world, a synthesis to pick acceptable options from internally and externally identified options, a quantitative study to measure the demand for the range of options as well as establish the competitive position of the Faculty or program being studied. Ultimately a final report with concrete recommendations.


The payoff is programming that truly meets today’s demands, a better use of existing resources, increased faculty revenues from higher direct enrollment and from increased numbers of students in other faculties wanting to include these courses in their program. 

It simply works.

Want to learn more about revitalizing your programs?

Call us at (514)-250-4495 or leave your details and we’ll reach out.