Strategic Plan 2030
At Perfunctory University, we are proud to launch our Strategic Plan 2030, a forward-looking institutional framework designed to consolidate our existing strengths, repackage our recurring weaknesses, and project the appearance of progress across all key stakeholder groups.
This strategy reflects our enduring commitment to low-friction education, performative accountability, and carefully managed institutional drift. In a changing world, we recognise the need not necessarily to adapt, but to sound as though we are adapting in ways that inspire confidence, attract funding, and reduce the likelihood of external scrutiny.
Our 2030 vision is built around four strategic pillars: Visibility, Alignment, Narration, and Delay. Together, these pillars will ensure that Perfunctory University remains at the forefront of procedural optimism, reputational buffering, and sustainable underachievement.
Our Vision
To be recognised as a modern, flexible, and quietly underwhelming institution of higher education, known for converting potential into paperwork and ambition into manageable outcomes.
Our Mission
To provide an educational experience that is accessible, tolerable, and sufficiently credentialed to preserve the appearance of academic legitimacy, while avoiding unnecessary strain on students, staff, or leadership.
Our Institutional Values
Inclusion: We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to participate in higher education, provided they can navigate the forms, tolerate the delays, and accept that no one will read their emails immediately.
Excellence: We are committed to excellence in the broadest possible sense of the word, particularly where it cannot be easily measured, verified, or compared.
Innovation: We embrace innovation where it is low-risk, externally funded, and unlikely to require major changes to existing practice.
Resilience: We encourage all staff and students to remain positive and adaptable in the face of structural dysfunction, administrative ambiguity, and intermittent systems failure.
Community: We value community as a branding concept and seek to foster a sense of belonging wherever photographs are being taken.
Strategic Pillar One: Visibility
By 2030, Perfunctory University will strengthen its external profile through a more coordinated and image-conscious communications strategy.
- Increase the number of photographs showing diverse students smiling near brickwork
- Publish more news stories about initiatives that have not yet produced outcomes
- Improve our use of words such as transformative, dynamic, inclusive, and sector-leading
- Expand our digital presence through inspirational messaging and carefully framed testimonials
- Ensure all underperformance is visually offset by strong branding
Success indicator: A measurable increase in the number of people who have heard of us without being entirely sure why.
Strategic Pillar Two: Alignment
We recognise that modern universities must align strategy, operations, language, and aspiration, even where none of these are naturally compatible.
- Align module outcomes with assessment criteria, where feasible and politically convenient
- Align committee structures with other committee structures to avoid duplication of accountability
- Align staff workloads with institutional expectations by redefining what counts as reasonable
- Align student experience messaging with student disappointment management systems
- Align leadership narratives with whichever metrics remain least alarming
Success indicator: Fewer visible contradictions in official documents, even if daily practice remains largely unchanged.
Strategic Pillar Three: Narration
At PU, we understand that the story an institution tells about itself is often more important than the institution itself.
- Develop a stronger narrative of progress through reports, dashboards, and reflective summaries
- Frame stagnation as consolidation and decline as transition
- Celebrate participation, attendance, and intention as evidence of impact
- Produce annual statements of ambition with an increasingly polished tone
- Ensure that every challenge is accompanied by a paragraph about opportunity
Success indicator: Stakeholders report feeling reassured by the language used, despite persistent uncertainty about actual improvement.
Strategic Pillar Four: Delay
At the heart of our institutional maturity lies a deep respect for timing. Not everything needs to happen immediately, especially if postponement creates the impression of due process.
- Embed structured delay into all non-urgent decisions, including those originally defined as urgent
- Create additional review points to ensure momentum is appropriately moderated
- Extend consultation periods until interest subsides naturally
- Defer complex issues into working groups, pilot schemes, and future planning rounds
- Preserve institutional calm by ensuring that meaningful action is always one stage away
Success indicator: A stable environment in which very little changes abruptly, visibly, or accountably.
Strategic Priorities for 2026–2030
1. Student Experience Enhancement
We will continue to improve the student experience through upgraded signage, revised email templates, more accessible disappointment, and occasional improvements to rooms that appear in marketing material.
- Review feedback turnaround targets without necessarily meeting them
- Enhance the visibility of support services with clearer posters
- Simplify online systems by renaming existing confusion
- Offer students more opportunities to express concerns in monitored formats
2. Academic Quality and Standards
We remain committed to academic standards that are rigorous in principle, flexible in practice, and survivable under pressure.
- Maintain grade profiles within acceptable reputational margins
- Support academic staff in the efficient use of generic feedback
- Review assessment strategies to maximise pass rates without inviting discussion
- Ensure moderation continues to function as a symbolic safeguard
3. Research and Impact
By 2030, we aim to increase the visibility of our research outputs and further strengthen our culture of publication, citation, and conference photography.
- Encourage staff to submit papers to journals with reassuringly long titles
- Increase the number of internal seminars attended by the speakers themselves
- Promote interdisciplinary work by placing unrelated academics in the same room
- Expand our definition of impact to include online impressions and panel invitations
4. Staff Development and Wellbeing
Our staff are our greatest asset, particularly when they continue working despite clear signs of depletion.
- Provide resilience workshops during the busiest teaching weeks
- Encourage line managers to check in using approved wellbeing language
- Develop guidance documents on balance, boundaries, and optimism
- Continue to celebrate staff commitment as a substitute for adequate resourcing
5. Estates and Campus Environment
We are committed to creating a campus that is functional, welcoming, and mostly operational.
- Prioritise cosmetic improvements near reception areas
- Invest in furniture that photographs well
- Address maintenance concerns according to visibility and complaint frequency
- Improve room booking systems in ways that generate hope
Key Performance Indicators
To ensure accountability, Perfunctory University will measure progress against a range of robust and carefully selected indicators, including:
- Percentage of students who describe their experience as “fine”
- Proportion of staff who still open emails marked urgent
- Average time taken to convert a problem into a policy discussion
- Number of strategy documents published per actual improvement made
- Social media engagement with posts containing the phrase exciting new chapter
- Graduate outcomes framed positively enough to avoid follow-up questions
- Committee attendance rates relative to decision quality
- Percentage of institutional issues successfully reclassified as sector-wide challenges
This strategy has been informed by extensive consultation with students, staff, leaders, and other individuals whose views could be summarised selectively. As we look to 2030, we do so with confidence, caution, and a realistic understanding that most universities now survive not through excellence, but through competent narration, controlled expectation, and the strategic management of decline.
Perfunctory University will continue to meet this challenge with the same values that have brought us this far: modest ambition, administrative stamina, and a deep institutional faith that saying the right things may yet prove almost as effective as doing them.
Perfunctory University: Planning tomorrow’s mediocrity, today.