The University currently uses several related processes and techniques to perform program reviews. These processes encompass academic, financial, and management reviews at both the collegiate and department level, and for both academic and administrative units. All of our program reviews, regardless of focus, level, or type of unit, concentrate on one or more University review criteria. These criteria are:
Quality: Inevitably subjective, this measure includes the quality of the faculty (in teaching, research, and service) as reflected in peer national ratings, publications, outside funding, the quality of students and staff, library collections, and other indices. Consideration of diversity in our programs, in our hiring, and in our student recruitment must be included in judging quality. Administrative units are often evaluated on their quality of service.
Centrality: Each program should be evaluated in terms of its contribution to the mission of the University of Minnesota. Centrality of research, instruction, and service represents a program's contribution to a coherent whole which helps to sustain and stimulate related work elsewhere in the University. With respect to instruction, centrality also addresses the degree to which a program is an essential component of a challenging education that taken as a whole is intended at the undergraduate level to communicate an understanding of the major ideas and achievements of humankind and a sense of the values of different cultures and ages; at the graduate and professional levels, centrality in instructional programs extends this commitment beyond communicating the major ideas and achievements of humankind, to an expansion and deepening of knowledge, and to furthering its utilization for society's welfare.
Comparative Advantage: What are the unique characteristics of each program that make it particularly appropriate to this University? It is not sufficient that programs meet an important local or national need or that they are unique within the state. Many important programs can and should be the responsibility of others, in Minnesota or elsewhere. What is the rationale for the program at the University of Minnesota?
Demand: The direction of change in demand for each program, in both the short and long term, will be considered. Other indicators that might be considered include number of applications, quality of acceptances, services performed in support of other programs, degrees awarded, instruction of students, or research undertaken for the solution of pressing problems of society.
Efficiency and Effectiveness: Because aspirations are always limited by the resources available, programs must be continually examined to see if more economical or more efficient ways are possible to accomplish the same ends. Yet, cost alone must not govern the decision; the effectiveness of the program must also be weighed. When taken together, efficiency and effectiveness provide an important measure of whether funds are being put to their best use.
Growth and Leveraging of Resources: Requires evaluation of priorities and related, internal shifts of resources to areas of higher priority from areas of lesser priority. Resources needed to support academic research, education, and outreach are derived from a wide range of public and private sources. An important aspect of evaluating new and current programs is the potential to leverage existing resources and to expand new resources.