The Cal Poly Plan offers a model for how the State of California can meet future demand for public higher education from its citizens in a time of dramatic enrollment growth, rising public expectations for quality and efficiency, and limited public resources. Through the Plan, Cal Poly will seek ways to decrease student time to degree, increase student learning, enhance institutional productivity and productivity in teaching and learning, promote the more effective use of fixed resources, and implement comprehensive assessment and accountability procedures. The Plan will support new ways of educating and supporting students, including creative approaches to teaching and learning and their measurement, curriculum design and scheduling, and the application of information technology to instruction. These efforts require multi-year investments in human resources (professional development for faculty and staff) as well as in equipment. Cal Poly's campus academic fee is designed to support these improvements.

The four goals of the Cal Poly Plan all contribute to the end of improving the quality, effectiveness, efficiency, and accessibility of higher education. The following examples illustrate how innovative approaches (noted in italics) complement other more traditional means to increase the University's effectiveness and are potentially transferable quality and productivity improvements.

1) Institutional Productivity

Greater efficiency in the use of physical resources and fixed costs: Expansion of summer quarter, with an eye toward a year-round calendar is one example of using fixed costs and fixed capital assets to educate additional students. Other means include scheduling efficiencies and reconfiguring academic space to meet the needs of new teaching and learning models. Investments in studio laboratory classrooms and advanced computing equipment will contribute toward this objective.

Greater productivity in support and administrative services: Re-engineering administrative processes, using information technology where appropriate, will enable the University to serve present and future students more effectively. Other efforts include an explicit customer-orientation for administrative and support services, and identification of appropriate accountability measures to judge the quality and efficiency in the delivery of such services. The proposed automated degree audit system will improve administrative processes to benefit students.

2) Student Learning and Progress

Improvements in access to classes, academic advising, and other measures to assure timely progress to degree completion. Student progress can be improved in a variety of ways:

Encourage optimal loads -- Curriculum streamlining (total units, prerequisites, flexible requirements);

Improve scheduling -- Across day and week to meet student needs; Implementation of 4-unit module;

Reduce bottlenecks -- Additional sections of high-demand classes; Advising; Curriculum streamlining;

Reduce unnecessary courses -- Orientation; Advising; Curriculum simplification; General Education and Breadth; Major changes; Course substitutions; Articulation; Transfer student evaluation; Automated degree audit;

Facilitate degree completion -- Senior evaluations; Senior project monitoring; Senior project labs;

Use fixed resources more efficiently -- Summer quarter; Year-round operations; Classroom and laboratory reconfiguration;

Reduce time to degree -- Published mutual expectations;

Make student learning less dependent on time, place, and seat time in a classroom -- Advanced placement; Supervised independent study; Curriculum and course redesign; Distance learning; Electronic interaction among students and between students and faculty.

Improvements in access to classes, academic advising, and other measures to assure academic success. Student learning can be enhanced by several means:

Assure quality and currency --Clear learning outcomes;

Improve quality and academic success -- Improved teaching effectiveness; Technology-mediated instruction, including World Wide Web applications;

Increase academic success rates -- Shadow classes,, supplemental instruction, advising, and other academic support services.

Moderate increase in enrollment during the academic year, to return to Master Plan capacity of 15,000 full-time equivalent students during the academic year.

In addition to summer expansion, an increase will enable Cal Poly to meet the needs of more students without over-extending its physical resources. In the future, Cal Poly will focus enrollment growth in high demand programs not generally available at other public universities in California.

3) Educational Quality

Preparation of graduates with state-of-the-art knowledge and competencies needed for life and work in the twenty-first century: At Cal Poly the quality of education is ultimately judged by our graduates, and perceptions of them by their employers, graduate programs, and civic communities. As we move toward the twenty-first century, the University will find new ways to reinforce its hallmark "learn by doing" approach to education emphasizing laboratory activities, projects, field experience, and service learning.

4) Accountability and Assessment

Development of measures of accountability and procedures for assessment that demonstrate the stewardship of the University to both internal and external constituents: Baseline data, performance expectations, and assessment plans that provide qualitative as well as numeric information are central to being able to demonstrate improvements in productivity, student progress, and educational quality. The University will use both statistical records and survey research to assess students' education and satisfaction with it, including surveys of students, alumni and employers. For example, the University is developing a sophisticated student cohort analysis in order to measure retention and graduation rates as well as time to degree.

Three other principles of the Cal Poly Plan also make innovative contributions toward improving the quality and accessibility of higher education:

1) Partnership and Shared Responsibility

Finance and Investment: Early in the planning process Cal Poly identified the following partners in financing higher education:

The CSU will support the Cal Poly Plan by guaranteeing that State appropriations and State University Fees allocated for enrollment growth or quality enhancement will not fall below system-wide averages as a result of the Cal Poly Plan;

The University will reallocate some State General Fund revenues and State University Fees, and develop operational efficiencies in support of the Plan; Specifically, during the first year, the University has committed to reallocate internal resources in order to expand Library services;

Friends and patrons of Cal Poly will be asked to contribute to Cal Poly Plan purposes and goals, including support for need-based scholarships, and industry donations and discounts for instructional technology and equipment; and

Students and their families will support a campus academic fee for Cal Poly Plan projects and activities that directly benefit student learning and progress. (The attached Four-Year Budget Summary shows proposed revenues and expenditures.)

Affordability: The Plan recognizes the need to assure the affordability of higher education. Reducing the time to degree by one academic quarter will save a student more than the cumulative cost of the campus academic fee over four years because that student will not have to pay fees nor living expenses for that additional study time. Additionally, by waiving the campus academic fee for needy students during summer quarter, the University can encourage year-round attendance.

Financial Aid: Further, the Cal Poly Plan provides for additional financial support for needy students to maintain access to higher education. The campus academic fee includes a financial aid set aside. This contribution from the campus academic fee will provide sufficient funding to cover the cost of the fee increase for all students demonstrating full financial need.

In addition, the campus will provide assistance by employing needy students in projects that support Cal Poly Plan purposes and goals. The University will do this by supplementing the Federal Work Study Program with Cal Poly Plan revenues for projects that meet Cal Poly Plan purposes and goals. Further, the campus will increase need-based scholarships from private donors.

2) Expenditure Plan for Investments

Direct, Visible Benefit to Students: A paramount principle of the Cal Poly Plan is that all projects and activities funded by the campus academic fee must make a demonstrable difference toward student progress and educational quality.

RFP: The University adopted a Request for Proposal process to allocate Year One revenues. This procedure was designed to ensure that Cal Poly Plan fee revenues would be allocated based on the purposes and goals of the Cal Poly Plan and to encourage the best thinking campus-wide. As Cal Poly Plan fee revenues are supplemental, campus-generated resources, they will not be allocated by existing procedures and/or formulae for allocating past General Fund revenues.

3) Joint Governance and Constituency Consultation

Steering Committee: The Cal Poly Plan is based on a consensual process integrating campus consultation with the management structure of the University. The deans and vice-presidents consider university-wide issues as well as implications for their colleges or divisions. The Steering Committee represent campus constituency groups - Associated Students, Inc. (ASI), Academic Senate, Staff Council, and California Faculty Association. The ASI representatives exercised de facto veto power during discussions of the proposed academic fee and priorities for Cal Poly Plan expenditures.