Inside Higher Education wrote today about how one public university in Wisconsin is coping with budget cuts. The reductions are mostly due to a statewide $250 million cutback but a small decline in enrollment also contributed. Specifically, says IHE, the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire is facing a deficit of $12.3 million or 13.5 percent of its operating expenditures.
I don’t want to minimize the impact of the cuts, which will be significant. But they should make the school operate more efficiently. Like many universities, Eau Claire probably hasn’t faced much cost pressure. To illustrate (quoting from IHE):
[Chancellor James] Schmidt says he’s “trying to flatten the structure and break up a lot of silos that naturally exist in any organization.”
And:
… as he and his staff considered ways to reduce costs, they encountered redundancies that had gone unquestioned for years, such as several layers of administrative approvals required for catering at a meeting.
And:
“We don’t often sit back and say, ‘What can be eliminated?’ We don’t step back and say, ‘How does this form or this signature affect this process?’” Schmidt said. All that is changing at Eau Claire….
In the private sector, competition forces companies to think this way. Schools should, too.