ABSTRACT
While many day-to-day decisions made by administrators have quantitative elements (dollars spent, students served, staff hired), the solutions evaluated in case study analysis tend to be qualitative. What makes an incident a case study is that it presents a problem with no clear-cut solution. In other words, the issues fall between the cracks of regulation and expected campus behaviors. The broad campus issues presented in a case usually entail emotional involvement of the actors and conflicts in values that must be taken into account in the resolution. From a range of solutions that can be generated for a case, some will be more feasible than others. This feasibility can be ascertained through consideration of numerous factors including costs involved, ease of implementation, availability of resources, personalities of key characters, and fit with the mission of the college. While many of the elements for weighing the feasibility of a solution have no fixed numerical value, they can be evaluated against the similar elements of an alternative solution for the same case.
