The excellence in higher education model: A Baldrige-based tool for organizational assessment and improvement for colleges and universities

The Baldrige Excellence Framework is one of the most prominent and well-regarded instruments for integrating organizational assessment, planning, and improvement. Although it is potentially applicable to academic as well as business environments, the language and approach of the standard Baldrige model may impede its use within colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education can benefit from a framework tailored to their unique culture and requirements. Developed in 1997 and revised in a number of subsequent editions through 2016, the Excellence in Higher Education model builds on the criteria of the Baldrige framework to capture best practices from other organizations while focusing on the particular dimensions of assessment and improvement most common in higher education. Refined over time, the model has been used at more than 100 educational organizations. As these experiences have shown, this framework collectively engages colleagues in a thorough organizational self-assessment that creates a shared sense of strengths and areas for improvement, identifies top priorities, and energizes members at all levels of the organization to engage in focused improvement activities to address those key concerns.