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Erskine Bowles nails it
There was a very encouraging story in today's Raleigh News & Observer, detailing the University of North Carolina's efforts to cut costs. Each of UNC's seventeen campuses must make a ten percent cut to its budget, and system president Erskine Bowles is requiring that the cuts be taken from the administrative side. An e-mail of his speaks for itself; writing to individual campus chancellors, he said, "In the conversations that we will be having with you regarding your 10 percent budget reduction plans, we will be looking for absolute PROOF that you have focused FIRST on administrative reductions and solid evidence that you have taken steps to shore up our academic core." (Capital letters in the original.)
We couldn't have said it better. As the number of faculty as a percentage of total staff continues to decrease, and as program after program is established without eliminating those that are unproductive, it is incumbent upon administrators--and especially upon trustees--to ensure that the first thing to go is not academic quality. Bowles has it right, and we hope more university presidents will follow his lead.
Posted by Noah Mamis on August 31, 2009 at August 31, 2009 04:45 PM
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Comments
It is October now, and sadly, we are seeing the effects of Erskine Bowles's method of reducing administrative positions. I agree with the sentiment of the article, and of Bowles's position, that too many administrative positions can actually make the quality of the system worse, because too many people making decisions leads to inefficiencies. However, instead of doing any sort of study, or asking for justifications from directors and department heads for the administrative jobs under them, Bowles seems to have just gone through the system, and eliminated jobs based solely on title. I work at the College Foundation of North Carolina, and he eliminated a position in my office (my immediate supervisor) without any research into how it will how it will affect our ability to do our job. The position he cut was not of someone who made a lot of money (despite her title of associate director, I would be shocked if she made more than 50,000 a year, and would guess she made between 38-44,000 a year.)
It is one thing to try and cut costs. it is another to go through and fire jobs without any idea of what that would actually do to the universities ability to perform that job.
Posted by: Robert E at October 8, 2009 03:58 PM