Wednesday, February 25, 1998
New system makes finance information more visible
FACULTY: Some fear plan will cut budget for small or emerging
departments
By Michael Weiner
Daily Bruin Contributor
Responsibility Center Manage-ment (RCM), UCLAs new financial
information system, has left some professors pleased and others
concerned.
While some professors are optimistic about a budgetary system
that appears to make the universitys finances more visible to the
faculty, others worry that RCM will cause smaller departments to
lose money.
RCM, implemented over the past few years, is meant to make UCLAs
financial situation more visible to deans, department chairs, and
professors through quarterly financial reports and more planning,
said George Letteney, the RCM project director.
It provides a lot of visibility as to the sources and uses of
funds, Letteney said. Its a much more information-rich system than
what previously existed.
Another dimension of RCM which has not yet been implemented
university-wide, but has some professors worried, is a new
budgetary distribution program. Schools and departments within UCLA
will be given more money than before, but will be forced to pay for
certain services which were previously free, like the library.
David Lefkowitz, an assistant professor of music, is worried
that this aspect of RCM will be problematic for the universitys
smaller departments.
Implicit, if not completely explicit in RCM, is that a
department will earn revenue based on its number of students,
Lefkowitz said.
You realize that there are some real problems with this.
Lefkowitz said that RCM could be particularly harmful to UCLAs
emerging departments. He said that if RCM was in place several
years ago, programs such as computer science would not have had the
opportunity to blossom.
If RCM had been in place 20 or 30 years ago at most major
research universities, as a nation, we would not be anywhere near
where we are technologically, Lefkowitz said.
Theres a danger that RCM could stifle curricular creativity, he
continued.
Lefkowitz worries that RCM will cause money to be distributed to
departments based on the number of students enrolled. He is also
concerned that it will hurt the music department because of its
small classes and one-on-one instruction.
A revenue system whereby departments would be paid according to
the number of students enrolled in the courses would be devastating
to fine arts, and music in particular, he said.
Its argued that a department can support one-on-one instruction
by shifting their economic priorities in that direction, but for a
department like music, it is unclear where those priorities would
be shifted from, Lefkowitz added.
But, other professors do not think Lefkowitzs concerns apply to
the version of RCM that has been adopted by UCLA, which differs
from the type of RCM in place at other universities.
The idea of equating budgets with numbers of students was
rejected for this campus, said anthropology professor Dwight Read,
who chaired a faculty committee last year which explored RCM. Reads
committee reported that they were cautiously optimistic about RCM
in January 1997.
English department chair Thomas Wortham said that the type of
RCM which Lefkowitz worried about was not adopted.
What was very clear early on was that an RCM that would drive
the budget was undesirable, Wortham said. What was good about RCM
was to have a budget that was more visible.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale said that policy decisions will
never be based on financial data only.
There were some people concerned that policy decisions might be
based solely on the financial data, but thats easily reduced to
absurdity, he said.
According to Carnesale, if RCM were to lead to that, first Id
just close down the library. They dont make any money. Then the
humanities. Get rid of them.