University Management and the Dilemmas of Strategic Development Planning : A Case Study

The importance of university and college strategic planning has been well established. This paper is addressed the experience of a well known university in Iran with its five-year development plan. In spite of the fact that case university has a long history of strategic planning but at the beginning of 1998 faced with a number of serious problems. This case study seeks to provide an account of this university experience, to show an evaluation of the experiences of those involved, and to make suggestions that will be of assistance to other institutions, which may decide to embark on a similar program of evaluation. The results indicated that: University policy making mostly was based on a top down-policy making; Input indicators improvement were not fit with the university needs; Frequently substitution of university Chancellors and Boards of Directors created serious problems for university development. However, the problems and issues we reached and presented in this case university represent warning action-driven points that may be useful and successful in helping other universities and colleges in developing, implementing and evaluating of their strategic planning