On "Deliverology," in Highlander, UC Riverside's Paper

State universities to adopt 'Deliverology'
By: Shawn Bakshi
Posted: 1/19/10

CSU Chancellor Dr. Charles B. Reed announced earlier this month that the CSU system has adopted a plan to close achievement gaps and raise graduation rates through a system founded and coined by Sir Michael Barber of England: Deliverology. Deliverology was first introduced by Barber during Tony Blair's second term in England in order to improve performance and goal-meeting in the UK's public sector.

This new system focuses on an apparently simple approach to managing accountability and reaching goals set by education officials in the CSU system. In essence, Deliverology seeks to improve education by forcing educators to clarify their goals through identifying problem areas, developing a strategy to improve those areas, and setting up benchmarks in order to monitor their progress.

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The system is termed Deliverology as the perceived end result of the system is to deliver results on a scale which can be constantly measured.

In England during what some Britons have called "the reign of Sir Barber," Deliverology seemed effective in increasing literacy rates of children 11 and younger. Proponents of this new system also claim that Deliverology will work in the CSU system in the same fashion it did in England's public sector as a main impetus for the program centers on the idea that people want better public services but are rarely willing to pay more for them.

Not everyone is on board with the Chancellor, however, as some CSU professors have voiced their concerns with what they feel may be an arbitrary change to a system which has been in place for so long.

"Deliverology would be a disaster for the CSU… We are coming up with a counter-plan to that of the Chancellor for the CSU system that goes beyond just a critique of Deliverology; a Master White Paper that will set forth, among other things, a very different vision for the CSU system," said California State Polytechnic University, Pomona sociology professor Dennis Loo, according to The Poly Post.

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