Wednesday, May 29, 1996
Problems of newly-created allocation process addressedBy Anne
Mai
Daily Bruin Contributor
At the Academic Senate Legislative Assembly meeting Tuesday,
faculty members acknowledged potential problems with Responsibility
Center Management, a newly-created university accounting
system.
In a speech to fellow faculty members, Dwight Read, the chair of
the Ad Hoc Responsibility Center Management Coordinating Committee,
pointed out there could be a few possible tangles in fully
implementing the system, especially in regards to departmental
competition it could create.
"There is a concern of more competition (and) less
collegiality," Read said. "We might be moving to a zero sum game
where the money I get is the money you don’t get.
"There is the potential of having an erosion of academic values
and deterioration of teaching," Read added in the presentation.
A budget tool meant to decentralize responsibility from the
administration in Murphy Hall to the various colleges and
departments, Responsibility Center Management (RCM) will hold
university members more financially accountable, through the
development of budgets and academic planning.
At the Senate meeting, Read called for increased faculty
involvement in the implementation of the RCM plan.
In order to preserve the university’s "perception of (their)
academic mission, qualities and values that (they) respect,"
faculty must be knowledgeable about its implementation, Read
said.
And administrators have expressed support for faculty input into
the development of RCM.
"(RCM) places responsibility closest to people who know the most
about the decisions," said Executive Vice Chancellor Charles Kennel
at a meeting last month. "With responsibility and authority comes
an (ability) to make financial decisions."
By making faculty more aware of funding sources and costs, heads
of academic units will be able to make better decision regarding
their budgets, he added.
"(Regarding) a creative reaction, units have more control of
resources (and) more control over the programs they want to
develop," Read said.
Although university officials recognized the program’s potential
benefits, some were wary of its potentially negative impacts on
smaller departments.
Looming problems seemed even more imminent after an April
Responsibility Center Management conference in Lake Arrowhead,
according to faculty members.
At the conference, concerns mounted after the unveiling of an
original budget allocation "formula," in which the value of
academic units would be judged solely on their ability to raise
revenue.
Academic Senate members opposed the formula because smaller
departments would be threatened.
"The bottom line (is) what the school (would) get (as) opposed
to what it gets now. Calculations were out of sync," said Charles
Lewis, chair of the Academic Senate, citing how low revenue
departments such as the humanities would be stripped of funds.
"The message was ‘go home and teach your faculty what’s going
on,’" Lewis added. "We’re awakened now and hopefully have a
mechanism to monitor what’s going on."
Currently, there are 16 university committees, composed of
administration and faculty, working on RCM, in addition to numerous
technical committees. Faculty members insisted the Academic Senate
should play a significant role in the program’s implementation
process.
"The Council (of Planning and Budget) is taking the viewpoint
that we must take a co-active role in RCM," Read said. "Unless we
engage ourselves, but not endorsing it, it could become something
detrimental to us."
"(RCM) does not yet have a shape, it is more of an idea that is
coming along.," he added.
In addition to issues of faculty involvement, other Academic
Senate members expressed doubts about the administration’s time
line for implementing the plan.
"(It’s) a long, long way to having a system," said Aimee Dorr,
vice chair of the Academic Senate. "I don’t think (the
administration has ) faced up to that yet … I believe that the
administration wouldn’t try to put in place a system that’s not
ready to respond."
Responsibility Center Management is scheduled to be fully
implemented by July 1997, when Chancellor Charles Young officially
retires from his position.