Reengineering Higher Education

T he higher education field encounters similar challenges as the manufacturing industry. Today’s most important challenge encountered by the manufacturing industry is the “rapid fulfillment of customer’s requests in agile networks” to be more competitive (Wiendahl and Heger, 2011.) Similarly, higher education institutions (HEI) are to keep up with short life cycle of some of the degree program offerings. Every year, new areas emerge in the market, needing qualified workforce. Universities, in turn, are expected to respond to this newly created need. As the rate of newly created products and paradigms increases rapidly, HEIs need to be equipped to respond to this challenge as effectively and efficiently as possible. In order to accomplish this task, HEIs need to become “learning organizations”, where organizational structures and organizational culture are totally different than today’s archaic management approaches at HEI’s. Furthermore, as Calantone et al. (2010) state, “it is critically important to understand the relationship between new product launch strategies and their interaction with the competitive environment.” In their report on the future of higher education, Newman et al. (2004) claim that not only US institutions, but also universities in several other countries, such as Denmark, Australia and China, are moving towards new approaches for university governance for greater level of competition and responsiveness. In this article, we propose a new approach for managing an HEI based on the reengineering principles of Hammer and Champy (1993). We believe that, as enterprises transformed themselves using these principles to become more agile and responsive to the needs of the marketplace while maintaining cost efficiency, HEIs can also greatly benefit from similar restructuring. We totally agree with ‹fl dünyas›nda de¤iflim mühendisli¤i devrimi hakk›nda Hammer ve Champy’nin orijinal kitab› (1993) ile birlikte birçok makale ve kitap yaz›lm›flt›r. Bu yaz› bir yüksekö¤retim kurumunda de¤iflim mühendisli¤i uygulamas› için gereken de¤ifliklikleri aç›klamak için Hammer ve Champy’nin kitab›n› esas almaktad›r. ‹lk olarak, makale de¤iflim mühendisli¤i uygulanan bir üniversitenin nas›l olmas› gerekti¤i aç›klamaktad›r. Daha sonra, olmas› gereken de¤iflimler listelenmektedir. Yaz› gelece¤in üniversitesi için gereken flartlar›n bir özeti ile sonuçlanmaktad›r.