How to take the bloat out of universities

That is why it is so refreshing that the University of Manitoba has embarked on two massive projects -- one to address administration, and the other to address academics -- aimed at optimizing resources. The first phase is to be reported on at next month's board of governors meeting.

Eliminating duplication in course offerings, centralizing purchasing and removing barriers between departments that limit student choice, are necessary and long overdue. However, and I stand to be corrected, it is doubtful that the practices that led to the U of M's status as a big, bloated bureaucracy will be meaningfully rectified.

In a paper presented at a conference on Manitoba politics in fall 2008, education professor Rodney Clifton argued that the U of M needs to recognize students are "price-conscious customers" and should be treated accordingly.

Between 1998 and 2005 (Clifton's time frame) the U of M's operating expenditures rose 43.1 per cent. The budget for administrative and support staff grew 57 per cent, while expenditures on academic staff, including new hires and salary increases, rose 36.7 per cent. Yet the number of students graduating from the university increased by only 13.5 per cent.

For Clifton, "there is virtually no relationship" between the rising cost of academic staff and the number of students actually educated.

The budget for academic and support staff in the faculty of agriculture increased by 24.3 per cent between 1998 and 2005 but the number of degrees awarded actually decreased by 38.4 per cent. Similarly, engineering saw its staff expenditures rise by 38.4 per cent while the number of degrees awarded declined by 19.7 per cent. In contrast, the faculty of arts saw its staff costs rise by only 17.5 per cent (roughly the rate of inflation) but the number of students graduated increased by 30 per cent.

What this suggests, Clifton argues, is that deans and department heads of favoured faculties have been very successful at "rent-seeking." They are able to secure a disproportionate level of funding from the university central administration, compared to less favoured faculties, in order to reduce their student-teacher ratios and put more resources into teaching graduate students.

Clifton's principal solution is for the university to remove faculty administrators from the various financial committees tasked with making budget proposals to the board of governors.

This is a wise policy proposal that would upset everyone, and so is unlikely to ever be taken seriously. The notion of self-governance is so entrenched in the university "ethos" that to limit the role of faculty administrators in resource allocation would be obscene to the cloistered culture of academe.

Clifton also advocates the heretical notion that students be "empowered" and pay the proportion of their tuition that goes toward teaching directly to their own faculty, rather than to the central administration. He proposes that students in every program pay 40 per cent of the cost of academic and support staff in that program, the percentage of a professor's time purported to be devoted to teaching.

Tuition charged in professional faculties would rise significantly, but it would effectively end the wanton cross-subsidization that sees tuition paid by arts and science students transferred to other programs in "ways that are unrelated to the cost of their education."

Finally, Clifton suggests that block funding from the government be contingent on both the number of students a faculty graduates, as well as on the cost of their tuition. Higher tuition would net a lower grant.

While Clifton places a little too much emphasis on graduation rates -- they point to the quality of student as well as to the quality of education -- his proposals would be effective at giving faculties incentives to reduce costs and improve educational practices. They would also be transparent and allow students to easily compare programs.

The problem is that few at the U of M would ever stand for such a dramatic restructuring of academic governance. There is too much special treatment and too many egos at stake.

Still, the various university committees working on optimizing resources could do much worse than to consider Prof. Clifton's analysis. Of course, that would require they take their task seriously, and not as a simple exercise to get through the recession, only to fall back into old ways when the economy improves. My breath is bated.

Carson Jerema has an MA in politics and is a past editor of The Manitoban.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 22, 2010 A12