Developing Strategy for MacEwan

Since mid-2019, MacEwan University (MU) has faced a challenge: The new provincial government cut back on the so-called Campus Alberta Grant, i.e., its financial contribution to post-secondary education institutions. MU was subject to the highest reduction among other universities: a retrospective 7.9% budget cut in 2019, equal to about $9.5m. In Winter 2020, it was announced that the budget was reduced further by another 2.2 per cent for 2020 and the reduction will continue in coming years. In the meantime, the government allowed the higher-education institutions to increase their tuition up to 7 per cent on average.

The university's income sources are currently three-fold: Campus Alberta Grant (about 45.5%), student tuition, and selling some external services such as renting out the university facilities. Given that increasing student tuition is neither a desirable solution nor can it fully recover the budget cut, the university seeks alternative sources of revenue, such as providing new academic services. MU is not legally allowed to provide graduate and post-graduate degrees, but other solutions are not legally prohibited.

The issue in hand is how MU can generate revenue to overcome the financial challenges without compromising the quality of education. Use your knowledge of strategy and explain a process to develop strategies by which MU can tackle this challenge. Your answer should include these elements:

It should explain the steps that can help MU to analyse the situation and generate strategies. You may want to draw on your learning from various modules of the course to propose the relevant tools that can help in a particular step. Drawing upon your general information about MU and its environment, support your arguments by providing example/evidence that show how each step is supposed to generate solutions for the overall problem. Make sure that this process can ultimately tackle the given issue.