Informational Report
Dear Mr. Shipley,
Physical infrastructure of the Tulsa University is very similar to the one of Harvard and Tulane Universities. The comparison, provided for this document reveals some of the potential opportunity improvements that could be incorporated to TU website, based on the comparative analysis and contrast with its competitors.
TU as well as Harvard and Tulane Universities are selective independent research universities with very similar operational structure and school rating among some of the core disciplines and faculties. The scale of operations on campus varies significantly between the universities in terms of campus territory as well as scale of educational programs. Whereas TU counts with just about 4,000 students enrolled in TU courses, while Harvard and Tulane count with 26,000 and almost 13,000 respectfully, the comparison is viable due to the similarities of the physical plants and services provided by the administration and actual campus size of 209, 110 and 209 acres respectively for TU, Tulane and Harvard University.
TU University operates on the basis of high centralization of administrative function under that umbrella of central office, whereas students enrolled in any educational undergraduate program benefit from registration and report to the College as main authority. The same structure can be observed in Harvard and Tulane Universities. The same concentration is observed in on-campus planning that allows effective control of budget and installations of the university as well as can benefit from cross-use of campus facilities and joint project operations between schools for campus planning. It is evident that hierarchical structure within TU Operations Management is significantly smaller and leaner than the one from Tulane and, especially Harvard University. At the same time, such structure and variety of the educational services offered on campus place a lot of emphases on effective utilization of the physical plants as well as master communication and presentation of the facilities to the students.
Online Platform
Brief overview of the website operations allows concluding that all three internet sources on physical plants are built as informative platform and meet the core objective to provide basic information on the built environment of the university, projects and contact information. The comparison of the information reveals several strategic capabilities of the website of physical infrastructure at Harvard University that place this university´s website ahead of both, Tulane and TU Universities.
With that in mind, it is important to outline the competitive advantage of the Harvard University only:
- Interactive, rather than purely informative structure of the website.
- Information on physical plants is linked and integrated into the critical data about on-campus services and installations.
- Provides basic information on general responsibilities of the plant administration.
Overall analysis of the physical plants websites suggests that the objectives of the TU website are limited to basic information that does not contribute towards the internal marketing of the university services and installations. The example, provided by Harvard university alternative demonstrates that physical plant website could benefit from surrounding the core data, such as contact with information on potential use, expectations and project responsibilities of the administration.
With regards,
References
Tulane University (2013). ‘Tulane University’, TU Official Website. Retrieved 18 January 2014, http://tulane.edu/academics/departments.cfm
Harvard (2013). ‘Harvard University’. Harvard University Official Website. Retrieved 18 January 2014, http://www.harvard.edu/faculty
TU (2013). ‘University of Tulsa’. University of Tulsa Official Website. Retrieved 18 January 2014, http://www.utulsa.edu/about-TU/TUFactSheet.aspx
Thomson Reuters (2014). “The World University Ranking’. Reuters. Retrieved 18 January 2014, http://us-universities.timeshighereducation.co.uk/
