Institutional changes are generally announced in public.
However, when they would warrant concern, they’re revealed through omission. Examining changes to Colorado Mesa University’s (CMU) recent Strategic Plan in comparison to previous ones reveals an insidious announcement through omission.
CMU outlined specific goals and improvement indicators last year; this was the first major strategy update since 2015. The 2023 strategic plan covers many elements of student life and education. However, the most important factor for students is alarmingly absent: cost.
Revenue is heavily emphasized, specifically through stakeholder partnerships, Hotel Maverick and CMU-hosted creative ventures. CMU didn’t avoid discussing finances in this document, but it appears maintaining an affordable status isn’t as critical this time around.
The second page of the 2023 document summarized character traits like courage, curiosity and dignity that the university is now adopting as core values. So what do these do? The short answer is nothing, really. The core values are mostly a decoration for outsiders looking in. That’s why they’re the first thing you see when you look up the strategic plan before reading the actual document.
For context, CMU’s 2005 strategic plan boasts affordability as its second most prominent strength and notes that CMU occupies a strong middle ground between the most affordable and most academic school in the region.
The 2010 plan emphasizes efficient use of funding for financial stability to keep tuition low despite a lower budget. The 2015 progress report has a passage discussing the positives of the school which reads as follows:
“Educational affordability. The University has prided itself in consistently having one of the lowest rates of tuition and mandatory fees among Colorado’s four-year public institutions. For FY 2014-15, CMU ranked 10th out the 12, as a result of the low annual rates of increase.”
Note that the paragraph above is a direct quote, so the typo is in the official paper. Compare this to the strategic initiative closest to committing to affordability in the 2023 plan:
“Communicate the unique value proposition of CMU using points of differentiation that provide both the financial return on investment and personal return on investment.”
The 2023 plan lists affordability as a goal in a single line and says the best route is to convince people that the costly education they’ll be receiving is a good return on their investment.
CMU’s 2005 plan has 32 pages and 10,359 words. The 2010 plan has 40 pages and 8,290 words. The 2015 progress report has 112 pages and 32,499 words. These documents all consist of black-on-white text and charts. CMU’s 2023 plan is covered in snazzy graphic design and sits at 9 pages and 2,497 words.
Core values do serve a purpose in CMUs plan: they take up the space that would normally be used to clearly and specifically summarize the goals for the coming decade.
There are obvious and direct paragraphs on CMU’s affordability in the first few pages of every prior plan despite their greater length. In the current plan, one must learn how important power and resilience is to Mavericks before searching for anything resembling a commitment to affordability on page seven.
The window dressing and the emphasis on shiny new values conveys a clear message: where past plans emphasized CMU’s strength in affordability and focused on managing resources to keep expenses low, the 2023 plan suggests “market research analytics” and seeks to emphasize the return on investment. Where strategic plans of the past were true strategic plans, the 2023 document is an advertisement.
According to collegetuitioncompare.com, CMU’s tuition increased at a rate of 43.34% from 2014-2024, more than double the state average of 19.44%. In 2023, CMU was fined $50,000 for raising tuition costs over the allowable amount in a year.
Compared to the strategic plans of the past, the 2023 plan seems to be decorating the fact that the school is gradually abandoning its role as the best affordable option.
CMU leadership has turned a regularly-updated executive plan important to the school’s future into another advertisement for another expensive school. Core values are a ceremonial convention adopted by seemingly every organization in the United States.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with deciding on a set of qualities to emphasize in a school, though they may be generic and meaningless. There is something wrong with using core values and distracting graphics to avoid saying outright that the school no longer intends to be an affordable option for students.
