NMC braces efforts to improve budgeting, planning decisions

CNMI’s lone college has taken yet another stride in pursuit of the institution’s enduring goal for college improvement.

During the past three days, Northern Marianas College officials tapped expert assistance to re-orient themselves of the intertwined concept of management planning and budgeting.

In a bid to pick up essential pointers to better synchronize its planning and budgeting decisions, over 32 NMC faculty and staff took part in the two-part seminar facilitated by an expert from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

NCHEMS is a private non profit policy center for improving college management.

According to NCHEMS Senior Associate Aims C. McGuinness Jr., linking planning and budgeting works for the benefit of all institutions.

In a time of fiscal constraint, Mr. McGuinness indicated that the challenge of providing quality programs requires the development of a process which redistributes resources in line with critical decisions about desirable future directions for the institution.

“This seminar is a major complement to NMC…that it is constantly interested in improving itself. The college has developed a very good reputation, with the recent accreditation. One of the areas they feel they should continue to improve on is strengthening their planning in relation to their financing policies,” said the expert from Colorado.

The seminar, conducted from March 19 to 21, was targeted to help participants learn how to implement a rational decision making process within an annual cycle of activity in order to allocate resources in support of their academic plans.

College participants were given the opportunity to analyze and discuss case studies of institutions which have successfully linked planning and budgeting.

After the three-day seminar, participants will have the chance to apply what they have absorbed and begin developing a process for linking planning with budgeting at NMC.

“NMC is an excellent and remarkable institution. I have visited 10 to 15 community colleges over the last three weeks, and this college is doing a better job on its planning, based on the master plan. But of all, I am very impressed with the commitment of the institution to quality and improvement. It’s Spring break and yet the turn out of the participation is very high,” he said.

Mr. McGuinness has worked with community colleges all over the United States as well as in the eastern and central parts of Europe. He is author of several papers on university systems.

Over the past 15 years, he has advised many of the states that have undergone major restructuring of their higher education systems. He currently serves as a consultant to a number of international agencies including the World Bank.