Monday, October 5, 2009
Cal Spends Millions to Find Budget Savings
Education / People / Politics Robert Gammon — Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 11:35 AM
UC Berkeley has decided to pay a high-priced consultant $3 million to help the campus find ways to cut millions of dollars from its budget. But the hiring of Bain and Company has already sparked outrage among some state politicians and faculty. State Senator Gloria Romero, chair of the Senate education panel, told the Contra Costa Times that the campus has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on administrators who should be able to do the same work. And some faculty members have suggested that the campus turn to experts at its own Haas School of Business for help, according to the Chron.
But in a message to faculty, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau scoffed at those ideas. Not only do campus employees have no time for such an endeavor, "we recognize that 'self-diagnosis' is not always impartial (and) that fresh ideas from outside our campus may have a role in helping us improve," he said. In addition, Boalt law professor Chris Kutz, who chairs the faculty senate, told the Chron that he views the spending of $3 million on a consultant as a good investment.
Comments (3)
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Didn't Mitt Romney start Bain and Company? Correct me if I'm wrong on this one.
Look, Cal is clearly run by out of touch incompetents, but I'm going to half-defend them on this one:
$3 million is probably too much. But at the same time, hiring a heavy hitting outsider like Bain to do this work has a clear benefit. Legitimacy.
Bain makes serious money for serious people. An expensive study carried out by Bain, which is mainly staffed with A-list minds out of Ivy League schools and other top tier institutions - this will be a much harder thing to refute than an internal review.
But $ 3 million is a lot of money. I wonder what kind of man-hours we're looking at here. Particularly, what's the per/hour breakdown. If we're looking at an audit of the entire UC system, that could be a ton of hours. But it's also probably $150-250 an hour in billings to Bain, which is too much for a struggling public institution.
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Broke University to pay consultant $3 Million to help it find ways it can save money
http://unreasonablysafe.com/2009/10/06/universityconsultant/
I think they should turn to those who actually work there every day, like was already suggested in the article, and ask them how to save money. I am sure employees see inefficiency every day and have tons of ideas on how to save and be more efficient. The same goes for students. Perhaps use $10,000 of the $3 million and set up two contests: 1) Faculty write-in and give their best ideas on ways to cut back and 2) Students do the same. Each category gets $5,000 as a reward. For the students the reward can be seen as a "scholarship" and for the faculty a "grant" perhaps.
The school should also call PG&E. I am a bay area native but I currently live in Los Angeles. Our energy company provides a free service to businesses, schools, universities, etc. to bring in an "energy consultant" who evaluates the entire premise and gives feedback on how to save energy. This will reduce the energy bill!
Why don't they implement these two things first and see how it goes for the next 4-6 months. If they do not see any improvements after making the suggested changes, from employees and students, and from saving some on the energy bill then maybe hiring a consultant may be OK.
If the excuse then is that they do not have the time or the budget to do either of those, then I will coordinate both of those suggestions free of charge from my home here in Los Angeles!
Thanks for reading,
Eileen Street
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