Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett
The Ithaca Voice recently reported on an internal memo sent by Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett to leaders of different departments within the University focusing on cutting costs, red-tape, and improving decision-making efficiency.
Specifically, Garrett targeted Cornell’s “Overly cumbersome bureaucracy and unnecessarily complicated decision-making processes” with the overall goal of having each department “eliminate unnecessary regulation, duplicative structures, or burdensome paperwork where the goals of the process can be met more efficiently.” The department heads are to send a report to Garrett by Dec. 15 of their plans to achieve these goals.
Cost-cutting alone won’t reign in the exploding cost of attaining a college degree, but this type of thinking is definitely a step in the right direction, for every penny saved is a penny earned for the University. The real change will come, if it ever does, from changes in government policy–namely, an end to the dousing of the education market with cheap money, which invariably artificially pushes up the price of education (i.e. tuition). Other major changes to the higher education model include a scaling-back of the proliferation of superfluous middle-level bureaucrats at colleges (case in point: Cornell’s new associate dean of students for inclusion, engagement, and community support) and a change to college ranking incentives, where a major ranking factor is dollars spent per student.
Still, this is promising news.
The memo in full:
Cornell University aspires to be a global center for higher education where the very best researchers, scholars and creative minds interweave liberal arts education and fundamental research with practical endeavors focused on challenges of societal significance. To achieve our aspirations, we must rigorously and regularly review our university processes to ensure that they further our values in the most efficient and least burdensome ways and allow us to be nimble and agile as an institution.
Universities tend to make decisions incrementally, often without scrutinizing the effect of past decisions to ensure that time and energy are directed at current priorities. Overly cumbersome bureaucracy and unnecessarily complicated decision-making processes divert faculty, students and staff from activities vital to pursuing excellence in research, teaching and public engagement. They also can reduce transparency surrounding decisions. While there is always some amount of time that should appropriately be devoted to governance and compliance, we collectively have a responsibility to periodically examine our practices and address unneeded complexity.
I am therefore asking each of you to assess processes and procedures within your jurisdiction or throughout the university, and work to eliminate unnecessary regulation, duplicative structures, or burdensome paperwork where the goals of the process can be met more efficiently. While the primary goals of this endeavor are to reduce administrative burdens and simplify processes, these efforts will also likely generate cost savings that can be redirected to our academic priorities.
The approaches that we will pursue include:
I am directing the leadership of each central administrative unit and each college to submit a detailed plan to reduce administrative cost and increase efficiency by December 15, 2015. Vice President Joanne DeStefano, Vice President Mary Opperman, and Vice President Paul Streeter will oversee this effort and keep me informed on your progress; they will also provide input and guidance to you as you move forward and coordinate across programs and divisions. I look forward to reporting to the Cornell community about your plans early in the spring semester and recognizing those who have proposed and begun to implement innovative reforms. Our work this semester will provide a foundation for ongoing, regular review of administrative processes to ensure that our resources are directed to current priorities and we achieve our academic goals without unnecessary administrative burdens.
How could millions of college students have survived, let alone graduate, over the past hundreds of years without having had the benefit of an associate dean of students for inclusion, engagement, and community support to tell us what to do, what to think, and how to behave?
Coming soon to Cornell:
Inclusive Practice: Pronoun Usage
http://diversity.utk.edu/2015/08/pronouns/