Outsourcing the experts
Just months away from budget approval season, with rising costs and increased enrollment in mind, institutions have started to hire consultants to help college and university administrators identify where they can cut back — for some, where they can save hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of those consultants, Bain & Company, recently made recommendations to the University of Carolina’s chancellor that could save the system upward of $150 million dollars, according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times.
Some of those recommendations included consolidating the university’s management (more than half of its managers have three or fewer people reporting directly to them, according to the article), as well as streamlining the more than 100 university institutes and centers, many of which have their own HR, IT and finance departments.
The cost for the analysis is $3 million dollars — a small price in the face of more than $150 in savings.
Some critics told the Times that hiring consultants to deal with university finances was too (dangerously) close to treating institutions like corporations instead of institutes of higher education.
Tanya Smith, president of Local 1 of University Professional and Technical Employees, which represents about 900 Berkeley employees. “What we’re seeing is centralization and treatment of the university as if it were a corporation. And I’m just not sure education and efficiency are on the same page.”
On paper, the idea of a consultant may not be bad — and it looks like UNC saved serious money that way. But you have to wonder how well a firm that deals with dozens of institutions each year can understand what’s important to the campus and what’s not, independent of finances. Cutting a department that isn’t efficient but is a central part of the campus culture could do more harm than good.
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