making the most of economic scarcity

These are dark days for most public educational institutions, and Sierra College is no exception as we struggle to identify ways to cut our expenses in light of our funding reduction. Although we are probably in for a two or three-year period of belt-tightening, and I do not want to understate the genuine human toll that the current economic crisis is taking, I also think there will be some value gained from this harsh moment.
To begin with, it is natural for all organizations---from the smallest family unit to the largest for-profit corporation---to become complacent and less efficient in flush times. I suppose it is regrettable, though perhaps it is simply a product of human nature, that it often takes a financial crisis for us to take a hard look at our spending and our operations. Nevertheless, we need to see this crisis as our opportunity to become even more efficient and better at what we do. Specifically, our goals in overcoming this crisis should be to:
1. take a hard look at our programs, eliminate the ones that no longer serve a viable purpose, and bolster the ones which need to be revitalized. This is not as easy as it sound, of course, and I know that eliminating programs comes with a very real human cost. We should approach this task as humanely as possible, but we should not avoid it altogether. In the final analysis, it is inhumane, in my opinion, to keep programs on life-support which have outlived their purpose;
2. focus much of our energy on rigorous human resource optimization. That means, in plain English, eliminating positions which do not contribute to the college's core mission. I am not advocating wide-scale layoffs or terminations, but we all know of people in large organizations who have lost their enthusiasm for work, and get by doing as little as possible. This is exactly the time to identify them and let them go. If the organization has done a good job of human resource management, those employees will have received plenty of notice that their performance is lacking, and plenty of opportunity to turn things around;
3. scrutinize all of our business practices to make our organization as energy-efficient and sustainable as possible. This runs the gamut from eliminating paper and energy waste to encouraging car-pooling and public transportation. I would appoint a task force comprised of representatives from all significant segments of the campus to aggressively identify such opportunities, and I would act on as many of their recommendations as we could;
4. emphasize frugality in all things, and eliminate the practice of roll-over budgets, moving closer to a zero-based budgeting model;
5. look for ways to increase educational efficiency by increasing class-sizes, consolidating sections, and eliminating classes which do not directly contribute to the core mission of the community college;
6. seek opportunities to partner with other community organizations serving synergistic purposes as ours. For example, instead of having three or four high schools and colleges in the area teaching automotive technology, I would attempt to consolidate those programs into a single center, thus reducing the cost and increasing the quality of a valuable educational program;
7. aggressively pursue alternative revenue sources, including grants, endowments, and intellectual property royalties. To do so, I would seek ways to promote the alumni association, and encourage student and faculty projects which have potential commercial application.
I am sure that there are other options I have not included---but these would be, in my opinion, a good start toward making lemonade from the economic lemon.