Publications

Social mobility and the graduation rate paradox: Can you advance one and avoid the other? (2022)

By Roy Mathew, Elsa Bonilla-Martin, Luis Aguirre, and Naoko Tsuboi

Social mobility is an emerging area of focus for higher education institutions. In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of measures related to social mobility produced by publishers, scholars, think tanks, and foundations. However, it is still unclear which social mobility measures to advance, or when to intervene to improve social mobility outcomes. We rely on a century of literature from economics, sociology, and policy analysis to identify an appropriate framework to understand higher education’s contribution to social mobility. Using the metric-based planning framework, we identify areas for institutional intervention to enhance social mobility outcomes.

Who are our planners – and what do they read? (2022)

Blog by Roy Mathew for SCUP’s Planning 50^th Anniversary Blog Series

After reading many articles and books related to organizational planning, I have come to appreciate the importance of SCUP’s Planning for Higher Education journal; it’s likely the most comprehensive resource for literature about higher education planning. In this post, I make the case that planning practitioners, planning analysts, and planning theorists would benefit from reading Planning. I also describe planning insights that would benefit each group of higher education planners.

Untangling the history and procedures of strategic planning: We review a century of literature for answers (2020)

By Roy Mathew, Elsa Bonilla-Martin, Daniel Santana, and Erick Gonzalez

Is a strategic plan necessary for institutional success? In preparation for a new strategic plan at UTEP, we reviewed literature and found many publications that described the procedures of plan making and also case studies of how plans are produced. We also found substantial literature that questioned the value of strategic plans. These findings prompted us to think about the historical and theoretical basis for strategic plans: How did they emerge, what is their theoretical value, and is there a right way to do them? In our article we offer surprising answers to these questions based on a review of a century of theory and planning literature.

Using big data: How Moneyball and an ardent baseball fan shaped successful metrics-based university planning (2019)

By Roy Mathew, Elsa Bonilla-Martin, Daniel Santana, and Erick Gonzalez

Big data and analytics are promoted as an approach that can improve educational quality, student success, strategic and operational decision-making, and knowledge discovery. Over the last three decades, the University of Texas at El Paso has refined its planning system and integrated metrics within a comprehensive planning framework—to produce dramatic outcomes. The article describes the institution’s metrics-based planning approach and the context that produced it.