Interesting story in the AAUP’s Academe, here:
With so much technology emerging in recent decades, it can be hard to work out what’s going to be a fad and what’s there to stay. The TrueDialog text messaging software? That’s here for the long run thanks to its amazing results. Rejecting laptops, phones, and other technology in the classroom? Definitely a fad. More than fifteen years ago, higher education scholar Robert Birnbaum wrote his influential book Management Fads in Higher Education: Where They Come from, What They Do, Why They Fail, arguing that claims of crisis are ubiquitous in higher education. “Hundreds of claims of crisis have been documented,” he writes, “ranging from the pandemic (the crisis of finance) and transcendental (the crisis of confidence) to the logistical (the crisis of parking).” In addition to supplying journalists with a steady stream of headlines, these claims of crisis make college and university leaders vulnerable to the promises of new management ideas, many of them imported from the private sector. By subscribing to and implementing the techniques, systems, and processes these ideas inspire, institutional leaders hope both to assuage critics and to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their campuses.
… The conversation surrounding [Incentive Based Budgeting, a.k.a. Responsibility Centered Management or the New Budget Model] has devolved into debate. Critics argue that the pursuit of students and resources by different units impedes collaboration and erodes institutional unity. IBB may engender perverse incentives to lower admission standards or create “in-house” courses (for example, writing for business majors) as a consequence of enrollment-based revenue generation. At the same time, IBB assumes that unit leaders and faculty members have the skills or desire to “unleash” their inner entrepreneur, which may not be a safe assumption. In response to these criticisms, Curry and Strauss, in a second book, Responsibility Center Management: A Guide to Balancing Academic Entrepreneurship with Fiscal Responsibility, concede, “As one might expect, the takeaways are mixed, with both success stories and failures.” At present, the future of IBB is uncertain, although Curry and Strauss report that at least forty-three major universities had implemented some form of the approach as of 2013.
Consolidated Administrative Services
Management consulting firms have argued that higher education is experiencing a crucible moment in which dramatic change is necessary to stem hemorrhaging spending and produce more skilled laborers. For several of these firms, such as Accenture, colleges and universities can achieve desired efficiencies by consolidating, or sharing, noncore or support services. The consolidated-services model was pioneered in the private sector before traveling to higher education. The basic premise is that economies of scale result when disparate administrative and business support units are combined into a single entity. Rather than having each academic college of a university house its own information technology office, for example, one hub might serve all or some subset of the colleges.
According to Accenture, shared service centers feature several key characteristics, chiefly treating the users as customers and operating with a performance-based culture that uses metrics and feedback. By “taking a page from business,” Accenture explains in a 2013 brochure, colleges and universities can “gain operational efficiencies and maximize service delivery quality, without sacrificing their institutional missions.” Accenture highlights stories of prestigious early adopters such as Yale University. Versions can now be found in many public institutions, including most of the University of California system.
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