ANNEX-1 - SWOT Responses Sorted from Interviews (By Sector)

STRENGHTS (Sweet Spots, Points of Excellence)

BUSINESS SECTOR RESPONSES

1. The system is affordable and accessible
2. Research and development in oceans, volcanology, tropical agriculture, astronomy
3. UH Hilo - bioresearch and aquaculture
4. MAU – food innovation, ag tourism, sustainable tourism
5. KAP – graphic arts
6. HON – media Center
7. Equity of access for local people
8. Inclusionary for rural students
9. Excellent academic programs for Native Hawaiians
10. Shidler School of Business
11. Culinary programs
12. Engineering (pipeline to Pearl Harbor)

GOVERNMENT SECTOR RESPONSES

1. UH is a good “buy” for students
2. Accessibility and affordability
3. CTAHR
4. Oceans and SOEST
5. Culinary
6. UH folks are “keepers of knowledge”. They bring usable data and info to the table for legislature. Legislators see it as “their” university
7. Cancer Center and JABSOM serve their communities in ways Mānoa never will, but Mānoa has great diversity
8. The CCs really represent their communities.
9. Astronomy
10. The military likes UH
11. CCs and trade programs
12. Medical innovations (docs and engineers)
13. Ability to work with local kids and give them the little extra help they often need

EDUCATION SECTOR

1. Excellence:
   • Geophysics
   • Oceans
   • Academy of Creative Media
   • Astronomy
   • UHERO
2. Occupationally:
   • Nursing
   • Law
   • Social work
   • Medicine
   • Arts and sciences
   • Lava lab for visualizations is a real treasure
   • Indigenous languages and people
3. Different colleges have different “flavors”
4. In some areas, UH is already an engine for economic development. SOEST brings in more money than anyone else (“and has its own Navy and Airforce”)
5. It really is a “system” with lots of connectivity, course alignments, strong faculties
6. Lots of upsides for students: variety of offerings and options; good class sizes, access and mobility up to higher levels of education
7. Each of the 10 campuses relies on its own political relationships. Maybe that’s a good thing since it’s a weak system (overall)
8. CCs are really useful on each island. They are truly “local”
9. Some new buildings going up
10. UH is a small college system but “we punch above our weight in research”
11. Hawaiian studies: lots of indigenous innovations going on
12. We are slowly learning about sustainability, i.e., energy, growing our own food
13. We have a few great centers of excellence that keep building through thick and thin
14. Cybersecurity at West Oʻahu
15. Some individuals in the system are “holders” of relationships with their communities
16. Things get done despite the system (not because of it)
17. We have good unions, robust faculty governance, and a lot of accountability
18. The seven CCs are very tied to their communities
19. We get turned to for expertise
20. SOEST
21. Pathways between CCs and Mānoa have gotten much better, though still work to be done
22. Asia-Pacific languages
23. Better articulation agreements across the system
24. We are the only game in town
25. Native Hawaiian culture and language
26. Used to be that applied work at Mānoa was frowned upon. Theory and research were what counted. Now, it’s for the “cool kids”
27. CCs have a certain amount of independence and reasonable allocations of resource
28. CCs are more nimble and much more focused on workforce
29. At times like this (COVID and collapse of economy) “it’s good to be part of a system!”
30. Linkages to DOE are valuable
31. Bright spots:
    • Veterinarian tech training a Windward CC
    • Cybersecurity at West Oʻahu
    • Aviation and pharmacy in Hilo
    • Culinary at KAP and Maui

MEDIA SECTOR

1. SOEST and Astronomy
2. Travel industry
3. Oceanography
4. Hawaiian studies
5. Shidler
6. Law
7. Medicine
8. West Oʻahu has great talent and great collaboration
9. Agriculture: lots of opportunities
10. Sustainability focus
11. ESL

CIVIC SECTOR

1. Sciences, natural resources, SOEST, DURP, Academy for Creative Media, JABSOM
2. UH is an anchor for the state
3. Want to up enrollment and find students? Create night schools
4. Get more usable data and information to more people

WEAKNESSES (Flaws, Faults)

BUSINESS SECTOR RESPONSES

1. UH has to be everything to everyone
2. Degree “creep”
3. Reputation as a party school
4. Lack of hustle
5. Incoherent programs on the same subject
6. UH has been dumbed down by the DOE
7. Shidler hasn’t yet created a world- class business school
8. UH is making a valiant attempt to work on sustainability but doesn’t get enough support
9. More and more balkanization at Mānoa. Professional schools are on their own with their own constituencies
10. We are inward looking, not outward facing
11. No real calculation of ROI
12. We lost our mojo in public health and agriculture
13. UH foundation is a choke point. Takes a big cut
14. Need more power to stand up to the unions and the tenure system
15. Poor political management of the legislature. Legislature doesn’t see innovation coming out of UH
16. Branding, messaging, and public communication are quite poor
17. We keep hiding our lights under bushel baskets
18. Computer center isn’t very good
19. Poor articulation for transfers
20. Constant legislative meddling
21. Lots of people taking advantage of the system and not working very hard
22. Weak counseling
23. Honolulu CC is frozen in its vocational world for the trades
24. Mānoa does not understand the needs of the communities which the CCs do
25. Lots of silos. Its unreasonably “siloed”. People only turn tocollaboration when they have to. It’s not a habit
26. The whole system is broad and thin. Critical thinking, entrepreneurship, basic business skills, teamwork, and problem solving aren’t foundational for many areas
27. As a system, it lacks effective communication, coordination, and budgeting
28. Tourism school really bombed; it may do better at Shidler
29. Engineering and computer science have been lackluster
30. Lack of coordinated R&D. Good work going on but failure to commercialize
31. Much more interested in certificates than degrees
32. UH isn’t a “ripe” asset
33. Vacant, unfilled positions are on the rise, which means they will get lost.
34. Many facilities are run down
35. Distinct loss of public pride in the system. Must be more than a WICHE school
36. Mānoa-centric

GOVERNMENT SECTOR RESPONSES

1. Uneven curriculum
2. System is very disjointed. Not really much of a system; programs aren’t seamless
3. Money: UH system is losing ground. It doesn’t work financially
4. Trench warfare competition between programs
5. Leadership at UH is weak
6. SOEST is overrated because they look like they bring in a lot of research money. A lot of their dough is for ocean buoy maintenance contracts, not research
7. Excessive legal demands to do official things. Easier to go it alone
8. UH has more constitutional autonomy than it admits but is timid about exercising it
9. A system-wide approach to higher ed
doesn’t really work
10. Commitment to Native Hawaiians is uneven across the system, though Bruno gets it at Mānoa
11. Mānoa is a repository for retired civil servants. Someone needs to do a realistic count and publish it
12. We don’t really have a “humanistic” base to everything in the system.
13. Lassner should not sit on the BOR. He should just report to it
14. An aging “professorate”

EDUCATION SECTOR

1. UH is not a “force to be reckoned with”
2. UH and all other state employed people are just risk averse.
3. We have constant reorganization without an overriding sense of purpose
4. No real business plan and business model is inexplicable
5. We suffer from “system effects”, not individual villains
6. Too many PhD programs
7. System lacks cohesion
8. No deep, embedded and cross cutting values
9. UH doesn’t integrate well with the DOE.
10. Town-gown bridge builders don’t get rewarded. In fact, sometimes they get punished
11. There is no strategy and no North Star
12. Endless paperwork
13. Too many professional schools that are under-supported. For example, med school with no teaching hospital
14. The UH system has gotten more and more “careerist” and students do not really get critical thinking tools and strategies
15. Faculty senates and unions are change “resistances”
16. Mānoa is downright racist towards the community colleges. It’s a cesspool of constant intrigue. Suck in a lot of money but doesn’t really produce applied work that affects the workforce and economy
17. Languages, social sciences, arts don’t generate much extramural funding but seem important
18. Too much micromanaging
19. BOR is not fully socialized to their roles and have an incoherent relationship with the administration
20. Too many small departments that all exercise their own autonomy muscles
21. No one has ever articulated a real vision that begins to unify
22. Lack of coordination across the state
23. Too many administrators and small programs
24. Not enough powerhouse programs with endowed chairs
25. Infrastructure needs better annual funding, remodeling, and repurposing
26. Lots of unfunded mandates both to the UH system and to individual faculty in the form of more and more paperwork requirements
27. Small, obscure programs like Russian and German language. Even American Studies seems redundant with what students can learn in American literature and history
28. Whatever vision and mission we have doesn’t trickle down. “People are yearning for this”
29. A bureaucracy that “grinds” slowly. Takes two years to get a new course in place with lots of approval
30. Bureaucratic meddling
31. The system is not agile like Georgia Tech (“textile engineering”)
32. Not enough focus on data services
33. No real “critique” of the system
34. Competition across silos: jealousies
35. Mānoa is privileged over everyone else
36. Bargaining agreements are overly constraining
37. Very few students or faculty can even name the system’s mission
38. Very poor leadership from department chairs right up to the top
39. Service side of the mission is neglected: we don’t get enough contracts
40. Serious failures to capitalize on federal funding
41. We are losing our ability to work together and get along. Everything is a battle. Seems to be exacerbated by Hawaiian advocacy
42. Poor governance of relationships between campuses. It’s a federalist system but without clarity and definitions
43. West Oʻahu was a mistake. It cannibalized everyone else and further fragmented us
44. System is porous but tangled. There are lots of ways to stop things
45. We dither and never get to decisions
46. We fail to leverage our assets
47. Overlap in programs and competition between them
48. Continues to be Mānoa-centric “Mānoa is the big gorilla”
49. System is very bureaucratic and full of red tape. Movement for anything is slow. Takes ten years to get new programs or substantial projects up and running
50. Too many disciplinary divisions
51. Very heavy course loads
52. For the CCs: campuses have the same or similar certificates but different costs. Doesn’t make sense from the point of view of a consumer
53. High cost of living is off putting for prospective new faculty. Can we offer them other goodies?
54. Too many fiefdoms
55. A “stay in your lane” mentality
56. Union and tenure issues impede change
57. We are constantly catering to Native Hawaiians. There are others that are important: teachers; the military
58. “We do not have a process in place that actually formally ties us to workforce, the economy, and business”
59. Economic development is not really anyone’s real brand
60. The needs of UHH, Maui College, and the seven CCs are different. Each one is unique

MEDIA SECTOR

1. “The legislature gave UH autonomy, then used budget as a weapon”
2. Journalism has declined, but so has the industry itself
3. UH seems to have a toxic political environment
4. Regent selection process is very flawed. It went downhill after they insisted on full financial disclosures which took a lot of the best people out
5. “UH is a Noah’s Ark of special interests and riddled with internal and external politics”
6. Not much focus on ethics anymore, not just in Journalism and communication, but across the whole system
7. Backlog of maintenance
8. “I always wanted to be a little prouder of UH”
9. Legislators and academics are different “species.” The L view UH as a place to get people jobs. Academics view legislators as people who need to be “corrected” and lectured at, UH people seem to think they just want to be educated
10. UH and DOE have pernicious and oppressive bureaucracies
11. Not much real attention to where Native Hawaiians will get jobs. It’s all culture and politics
12. CCs feel like second class citizens
13. Not that much connectivity between UH campuses and business communities
14. Mānoa is especially uninviting to the community. Can’t park
15. Too many schools. UH’s identity is splintered

CIVIC SECTOR

1. Slow and bureaucratic. “I can get student interns from HPU but it’s much harder from UH
2. UH is a mess. It always is. The leadership challenge is “managing the mess”
3. “Fatally bureaucratic” and tribal
4. Need a much more dynamic BOR and executive group

OPPORTUNITIES (Openings, Prospects)

BUSINESS SECTOR RESPONSES

1. A greater shift from degrees to certificates and stacks
2. We need a serious conversation between the university system and the travel industry, not just love-talk or criticism talk
3. Medicine and biotechnology
4. Space exploration
5. Oceans
6. Island resilience and sustainability
7. Robotics and automation
8. More patents and innovations
9. AI
10. Distance learning platforms
11. Fostering cross-disciplinary work (engineering and computer)
12. Must beef up the core strengths of the CCs and the system
13. Telehealth
14. Cybersecurity
15. Online digital sales
16. Agriculture: food security, food exports, co-packing
17. We should be branding as “We are the Health State” and build UH into it fully. This needs to include energy, renewables, and other sustainability focal points

GOVERNMENT SECTOR RESPONSES

1. Put critical thinking skills into everything
2. Streamline and consolidate. We don’t really need 10 campuses and a few hundred programs and specialties
3. This is the moment for UH to chart a new course, get bold, and set a new course. It needs to find its voice and its legs, decide which disciplines are critical to the future and which aren’t
4. We should be a much stronger “exporter” of education. We don’t have enough local kids or even mainland and foreign students to absorb all our offerings

EDUCATION SECTOR RESPONSES

1. The “Peter Quigley” model of workforce interface: extend, expand, and use it
2. West Oʻahu is a rising powerhouse
3. We have a great moment to think through how to tame tourism and diversify the economy. Who better to help than UH?
4. People love to be in Hawai‘i
5. UH needs to become invaluable
6. We need to think hard and first about where “learning” needs to go, then talk about UH
7. Create resilience “hubs”
8. Distance teaching is just a “base”, not a goal. Distance “learning” is the goal. If we make it work and in consortium with other colleges, students can learn from anyone else in any part of the world
9. Leverage relationships to work with Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, and everyone else’s “best”
10. Informatics? Data mining?
11. Become a demo site for the best AI- based learning system in the world
12. AI can help us get “learner-centered”
13. Form a kitchen cabinet of thinkers to focus on the “new learning”
14. Programmatic connections across campuses: health; education; business; engineering; social work; these all need to be aligned in more singular oversight and management structures without becoming too top heavy
15. AI and machine learning
16. Get the Policy School up and running
17. Native Hawaiian values need to be brought to everyone else. Closely tied with sustainability
18. Conservation science: we could be a leader on monitoring and, management, and natural resource utilization
19. This is a great time to reimagine UH’s governance system
20. Maui: culinary; nursing; dental hygiene; the non-credit program (Karen Hanada)
21. Aligning UH plans with State plans
22. UH can and should be a laboratory for new ideas
23. Aviation, especially drones, aquaculture, science-teacher education
24. Big opportunities in tropical medicine, infectious diseases, environmental micro-biomes, energy, international finance (Shidler)
25. The pandemic will push us into producing greater economic impacts
26. Citizenship part of the mission happens in service work and interdisciplinary learning
27. We need workforce in wastewater treatment; renewable energy; health; smarter agriculture
28. Every campus needs to really focus on its own local workforces and regional economies
29. Digital education and invention
30. Food and ag security
31. Figure out system-wide strategies for being responsive to markets
32. Climate science
33. Find or create a moment to rethink the structures and processes of the whole UH system. Start with a question: “What is the system really good for?”
34. We need to connect Vision, Data, Messages & Marketing

MEDIA SECTOR

1. AI will be a big game changer
2. Need to revitalize hospitality and retail
3. Science hat will actually make a difference in people’s lives
4. A plan to uplift the state
5. Must show how UH can become a real “engine”
6. Ag tourism has possibilities
7. Take education out to malls and community centers
8. We need much, much more emphasis on trades
9. Fewer campuses, more distance learning
10. More international partnerships with places like EWC and DKI Security Center

CIVIC SECTOR

1. Need to anticipate where the jobs will be and plan for future markets
2. Separate all the CCs from 4-year programs
3. We should be at the forefront of sustainability. It should be a main mission
4. UH could help Native Hawaiians define themselves. Blood quantum is a diminishing criterion for being Hawaiian. Many focus on language but that’s insufficient; Must evolve a new idea. Where is UH in doing this?
5. CTAHR can grow if it focuses on controlled ag, green housing, water management
6. UH could create a downtown presence
7. Move fast to distance learning and save Mānoa for labs

MISCELLANEOUS

1. UH might create a Center for Mindfulness Research, Education, and Training. Like other major universities, UH could have a center to further the effort to build a mindfulness foundation for Hawai‘i. Also, being in the Pacific, it could be a leader in the east/west/north/south connection point for mindfulness and building a science/spirituality intersection. Dr. Karl Minke, Retired Chair, UH Psychology is our point on this effort. (sent to me by Jimmy Toyama)

THREATS (Dangers, Vulnerabilities)

BUSINESS SECTOR RESPONSES

1. Hawai‘i continues to be an educational “backwater”
2. Our best people get poached
3. Insufficient state funding
4. Loss of educational foundations in the liberal arts. We need people who are good at:
   • critical analysis
   • questioning and framing
   • problem solving
   • sorting facts from fictions
   • grounding ideas in evidence
   • argument and deliberation
   • self-questioning
5. The state lost a lot of money when we raised the tuition on foreign students
6. Lack of federal funding
7. Competition from major on-line schools
8. Scientific and technical competition from other places
9. Exemplar schools that beat us out:
   • U of Minnesota (multiple campuses, high level themes
   • Waterloo
   • San Diego (“Connect” model)
   • UNC
   • University of Rochester (STEM + Humanistic education)
   • ASU
   • Stanford
   • U of Toronto (in technology)
   • U of Arkansas (telehealth and digital health)
   • MIT
10. Failure to secure TMT and get more Native Hawaiians through PhD programs
11. Roadblocks to getting patents and inventions
12. Federal Reserve study suggests BAs don’t really make more $ as opposed to industry credentials
13. Unsteady leadership and inconsistent over time. Cyclical leadership challenges: Dobell followed by McLain; Lassner following Greenwood. Risk taking followed by management followed by risk

GOVERNMENT SECTOR RESPONSES

1. Governance by BOR and president
2. Legislative oversight is necessary but fails when it falls into micro- management and personal baggage
3. Not enough real practical data produced for downtown agencies
4. “Even after the current COVID/business crisis, the protectors of the status quo will win again”

EDUCATION SECTOR

1. Daniel Susskind’s prediction: 40% of the current jobs will disappear in 10 years.
2. Continuously trying to be and do everything which thins us out.
3. The Native Hawaiian mission is not viewed positively by many others, in part because of activism and the TMT issue
4. There is a climate refugee crisis coming. Hawai‘i will become a tourist mecca for the rich and a “lifeboat” community
5. UH is simply not nimble the way great universities are
6. Higher education is in a major crisis as revealed by COVID
7. UH crowds out other universities but that could change now
8. More layers of bureaucracy get added, few get taken away
9. Slow drift towards educational homogenization
10. If we don’t create clearer pathways to employment, we will become increasingly irrelevant
11. Refusal or inability to thinking about unconventional futures for the University

MEDIA SECTOR

1. Legislative oversight and budgeting are fine but the kind of personal meanness we saw from Kim and Choy was embarrassing

CIVIC SECTOR

1. ASU sees something here that UH simply doesn’t
2. UH is not “leading” in big conversations about technology, creative job sharing, and hard and soft skill development. Therefore, it will get led
3. MBAs from HPU and UH are equally valuable downtown. That’s a problem

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