UC Berkeley bloated, wasteful, consultants say

[alp227]

For a world-class university studded with Nobel laureates and innovative research, UC Berkeley manages its finances a bit like a sloppy undergrad, a new report suggests.

The campus could save about $75 million a year by streamlining purchases, concentrating job duties and laying off "redundant" managers, according to consultants hired last fall to help the school become a leaner operation.

"This kind of change is hard," said campus Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary, who is overseeing the Operational Excellence Project. "We will get pushback in certain quarters. But the fact that the state has so consistently disinvested in our organization ... most people really appreciate the need to change."

Yeary said UC Berkeley's plan is not only to push the state for more education funding - which has dropped by half since 2002 to $232 million in inflation-adjusted dollars - but to do a better job with the money the university already has.

The campus has five big areas of bloat, according to Bain & Co., the Massachusetts consulting firm being paid $3 million to identify waste.

The biggest, say the consultants, is too many managers. The human resources department alone has one manager per 63 employees, compared with an average of one per 127 employees across other universities.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/13/BAIH1CTI5M.DTL

[dana_b]

1. I work at a UC

not Berkeley though. 1 manager per 63 employees is not much. We have 1 manager per 5 people AND a director! Ridiculous, imo.Other managers I know have 8-15 people in a department. Nurse managers have 10 - 120 (depends on the unit). Maybe the consultants will make it here too.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

2. How about spending 3 million

to find out why and where you are misusing funds? Gawd that's a joke in itself.
One manager for 67 employees doesn't seem excessive to me.
If you are a front line supervisor, having more than 10-12 direct reports is too many to really be an effective leader.
Once again, the 'businessmen' are trying to run an institution of higher learning like its a factory. :shrug:

[exboyfil]

3. Professionals in industry are managed at a lot lower rate

than 1 per 67. Ratio is about 5 to 1, but our managers are also working managers in addition to managing their employees.