Tomorrow’s successful educational institutions will have distinctive brands that reflect their purpose and focus on excellence in select areas.
As an institution, you will need to be as clear about what you don’t represent as you are about what you stand for.
This clear-sightedness of purpose is key to reshaping your institution to be fitter, leaner and more adept at securing the funds and talent you need to provide the services that will be expected of you.
Given this, what do you want your institution to be known for?
What is your promise to students, staff and society?
Research focus
In what areas of research can you exert disproportionate impact, at national and international levels?
Scale and depth in a specialism generate greater impact, which in turn attracts more funding and talent.
Experience and brand
What strengths, experiences and qualities can you offer that have a disproportionate impact on attracting and retaining students and research talent?
Is a student’s or employer’s experience of interacting with your institution consistent with its brand?
Educational focus
What learning and employment outcomes fit with your purpose? What types of students, courses and delivery modes will most effectively meet these goals?
Through smart targeting of resources and avoiding the trap of being all things to all students, your institution will have greater impact in living up to its purpose.
Societal impact
What unique values, qualities or contributions do you want to see your institution providing to your community and the nation?
The challenge
One of Australia’s innovative research universities recognised that COVID-19 presented serious risks to its sustainability, risks for which it would have to make difficult choices. How could it reduce its cost base while preserving and enhancing its reputation in key sectors, where it had a clear lead in the region? From which areas of education and research should it exit, and how could its research investments be optimised for greater impact at a global and regional level?
What we did
We designed a sustainable futures program that balanced the three lenses of academic performance, professional service quality and financial capacity. We leveraged PwC’s Academic Portfolio tool and workforce analytics to determine, school by school, the shift in resource and focus that would be required between education and research in order to achieve the needed cost savings while still protecting areas of innovative research excellence.
The impact we had
The university has a clear plan on how it will achieve a sustainable financial position across each academic school and professional services and functions. The university is confident that by making purposeful choices on its academic positioning, it can maintain its strong reputation for excellence and yet quickly shift its cost base when required.
Contact us
