Introduction
A university’s transfer student enrollment policy plays a great role in determining the number of students enrolled in the university. However, most university stakeholders involved in developing the policy seem to forget that without students, a university becomes inexistent and loses its value to the students and the community at large. A poorly-structured student enrollment policy that does not incorporate students and the community results in a decline in student enrollment. For instance, Apex State University is currently experiencing a tremendous student enrollment decline particularly in terms of the number of students transferring from the university.
As a result, revenue derived from tuition has also drastically declined. Just like Apex, most institutions are experiencing an uncontrollable decline in transfer student enrollment. Fincher points out that cohesion between the stakeholders is necessary to ensure that people can work together and develop a policy that can be mutually beneficial to the students and the institution. Just to have an overview of the cohesion that should exist within the stakeholders, we are going to carry out an analysis on how Apex State University policy can be used to bring cohesion among the stakeholders and increase the number of transferring student enrollment.
Apex State University Stakeholders
The stakeholders’ impact on the university’s goals achievements is, therefore, an important component of the university structure. The Department of Admission and Enrollment Services plays a major role in transfer student enrollment. The office, which comprises a director and his/her assistant, works closely with the admission staff to ensure that the applicants enrolled can work independently and collaboratively with the admission office. They identify and also recruit transfer students for university programs through attending transfer events, private visits, and community college transfer fairs. The Arts and Science departments are each headed by deans. The dean’s major role includes ensuring that quality assurance procedures in teaching and learning are applied in regard to subjects to be covered by the faculties.
Additionally, they are involved in transfer student enrollment by issuing oversights and have ultimate power in making decisions regarding student progress. This implies that they affect the externalities involved in transfer student enrollment in order to ensure that quality assurance in teaching and learning is maintained. The faculty members play a major role in research, teaching, and service to the institution. The members address the centrality issue in education, disseminate applied and basic knowledge to the students and also assist students in their learning process. Therefore, the faculty members are the content experts of the university curriculum. They create new developments in teaching and help in academic researches. The decline in transfer enrollment at Apex is attributed to the university’s policy that barely grants credit to courses taken in other colleges. Course structure and fundamental decisions in regard to course development are made by the academic departments (members of the faculty). This clearly shows that the faculty owns the Apex curriculum and the first step towards solving this problem would be to gain the faculty support.
Gaining the Faculty support
Faculty members should note that the main focus of the faulty is training students in their professional training and should therefore disseminate knowledge and teach it. However, the faculty members should know that the diffusion of goals is necessary to ensure that it meets its objective successfully. The main reason why students study in universities is to contribute towards an economic and social change of their local community and the nation. This implies that there should be fluid participation by the faculty in the region where the university is located and good relationships should be maintained with the surroundings in order to enhance organizational learning. However, the policies put forth do not grant credit to courses from other institutions, and this simply means that there is no fluid participation within the university. This has weakened the relationship between the potential students and the institution hence resulting in a decline in transfer enrollment. Hence, the institution’s subsystem and the environment should be put into consideration. While the technical subsystem well helps the institution transform inputs to outputs, the environment will help the institution respond to different political, social, and economic values. For instance, research, service, and teaching involve different technologies whereby a student might need advice, classroom instructions, and communication with fellow colleagues. The distinctive technologies imply that there is a need for managerial levels that will focus on intermediate goals.
Conclusion
A cybernetic institution will enable successful integration of anarchical structure, cognitive limits of students, biases, and contending preferences and hence, the institution will be able to accommodate courses from other institutions in their policy. A cybernetic institution will be directed through self-regulation whereby cybernetic controls such as monitoring of the organization functions and self-correction mechanisms will provide attention cues that will make the institution deal with its limitations effectively.
References
Birnbaum, R. (1991).How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership. New York: Jossey-Bass.
Fincher, C. (2003). Administrative leadership: in academic governance and management. New York: University Press of America.
Mainardes, E.W. (2010). An Exploration on the Stakeholders of a University. Journal of Management and Strategy. Vol. 1(1). 76-88.
Tierney, W.G. (2008).The Impact of Culture on Organizational Decision Making Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Virginia: Stylus publishing.