Friday, November 7, 1997
Justifying putting price tags on education
RCM: Management offers efficiency in fiscal plan, but with
money, not quality, prioritized
By Andrew J. Westall
RCM … Responsibility Centered Management … the debate:
fiscal over academic priorities. Being a part of one of the largest
public institutions in the world, the University of California,
sometimes we forget that our insulated version of life is still
affected by the economic, developmental and migratory processes of
our region, state, nation-state and globe. This is reiterated in
the rich history and culture of academia as a human phenomenon of
institutionalized learning.
Beginning in the ’70s, new processes of industrialization,
technological growth and international migration have created a
newly restructured society in the United States, revolving around
information, finances and services. This society has made growing
areas of the world more competitive with the "first world,"
creating a greater inter-dependence among public institutions and
their partners.
Economic changes hit California hard after the end of the Cold
War, and the state government slashed programs and funding across
the board, especially for higher education, during the 1991 budget
debates.
Seen again in 1992 with a two month stalemate and continuing
until 1996, the state government has drastically reduced funding
for the UCs. California provides only 20 percent of the funding for
the UC system, a far cry from the days of my father, and a couple
of hundred dollars for fees and books. Within this economic
reality, UCLA and its sister campuses, along with the rest of the
state, were forced to adjust from the outlook since World War II:
only growth.
While the draconian budget cuts at the UCs and other public
colleges in California were necessary even if abhorrent, UCLA and
Chancellor Young decided that sound fiscal management would protect
the campus from similar financial decisions in the future. The
Academic Senate and the faculty felt otherwise.
Academia has always been concerned with two things, teaching and
research. Some would say UCLA only believes in the latter, but we
can save that for another time. These two functions of academia
benefit a society of students and professors, providing
apprenticeship for young adults, cheap labor for research projects
and paperwork related to teaching responsibilities.
Unfortunately, this and all functions of the university involve
transacting money, goods and services to these two populations,
formally known as administration, in the interest of balancing an
annual budget, preserving the professionalization of the
bureaucracy (their jobs) and even making a buck or two. Not to say
that the administration is inherently evil, but it is a necessary
middle-man, providing students and professors the ability to
interact and function within a community of over 55,000 people of
all ages, though primarily 18 to 28 in age.
Within this university culture, most faculty were accustomed to
being provided for in terms of research funding, student help and
administrative support. Unfortunately, fiscal management was not a
priority and even seen as contradictory to the system. That was the
job of administrators, deans, provosts … those who manage the
staff.
Accountability was unnecessary in terms of costs-benefits. The
only accountability was to mold young minds and distinguish
yourself as an intellectual through research. As our society has
changed on the outside of our insulated world, so has the realities
of administrating a university such as UCLA, and this conflicts
with the principles of academics.
Responsibility Centered Management, or RCM, is a financial
strategy to provide a cost-benefit analysis at a micro-level, that
is, down to departments, units, staff divisions and even individual
professors. Ultimately what this means is that the administration
can make decisions related to academic priorities on the basis of
numbers without quality control. While this cuts down on the waste
and mismanagement among the various academic entities, the priority
is no longer with how to best educate the people, but instead what
does it cost to educate people on various subjects and is it worth
it?
Is it worth it? How can a manager or administrator put a price
on education, no matter what the subject? Who is to say that
germanic languages are less important than earth and space
sciences, or that political science is superior to urban planning,
or architecture more efficient that engineering? These are not
decisions to be made light of through financial analysis and
decision-making. Decisions affecting available classes, number of
Teaching Assistants (TAs), research opportunities, tenured
professors over instructors, etc., are now based on RCM.
Disproportionately, this benefits the larger departments, the more
distinguished staff and marketable sectors. Students and professors
become discriminated against financially because they are based on
the needs and goals of the larger society. Although protection of
quality and the diversity of academic freedom to conduct research
should be protected from any outside forces, financial management
has brought some sensibility to the institution, although others
consider the outgrowth of a business mentality as detrimental to
learning.
What RCM has done well is provide some efficiency throughout the
administration, although the balancing of cost is passed on to
students emotionally and financially. Strangely, Murphy Hall is
much better than it was 5 to 10 years ago. At the same time the
burden of budget gaps falls on students in the form of increased
and newly implemented fees, associating cost with every aspect of
UCLA.
If expansion or growth is considered, the number-one question
is, "who is going to pay for it?" Everywhere you go, things cost
money. Photocopying, transcripts, use of the Wooden Center,
athletic games. And when things don’t cost students money, such as
the new BruinCard re-carding, students and faculty have to put up
with corporate logos like AT&T on their identification cards.
Emotionally, this affects the academic performance and self esteem
of some students who cannot make it through the less confusing
bureaucracy, while the rest of us attempt to understand the nature
of bureaucratic institutions and the change in public entities from
mission-oriented to fiscally-oriented. We can achieve both without
inflicting a corporate mentality on the entire student, staff and
faculty populations.
Academic priorities are the nature, culture, and core of UCLA.
Fiscal priorities are the nature of government, and they come
together in a public institution. For us, it is easy to find the
things wrong with RCM. It is not part of our core principles of
academics. It won’t be, it shouldn’t be and the state government
should protect these principles and preserve the public’s interest,
learning for learning’s sake. Fiscal management should be
emphasized in the administration’s role as middleman, ensuring that
the transactions between faculty and students, and ultimately the
staff, are neutral financially, while productive and beneficial to
the institution as well.
The problem is, who defines "productive and beneficial?" The
Academic Senate or Murphy Hall. The need for continued shared
governance cannot be better illustrated.