Following a year in which the
of
the UC Office of the President, was made impotent by operational
disorganization and managerial confusion, there is no better time for
spring-cleaning. Earlier this month, UC
Provost Wyatt R. Hume proposed to broom out 20 percent of the office’s budget
and 23 percent of its workforce in the most sweeping reorganization of UCOP in
recent history. The effort was a long time coming, signifying the start to a
coda that will hopefully end the years-long saga that exposed management,
compensation and administrative scandals.
Ducking criticism is only part of the university’s incentive
to rework UCOP; the state’s glum budget picture is pressuring every public
entity to slim down their staffs and setup. With a $14-billion deficit, and
$330 million less in state support to the university, any breathing room
helps. Hume’s proposal creates that
much-needed breathing room to the tune of over 400 full-time staffers and $50
million. Cleansing UCOP of positions that are not based in the department will
trim a large amount of fat; Hume found that only about 20 percent of staff
under the UCOP umbrella is directly involved with the office.
Employees who are on the chopping block will be thankfully
eased out of the office, as UCOP will aid them in finding another job. The
courtesy signifies the university’s errant priorities: UC executives are often
offered “golden parachutes,” or ridiculously large severance packages. But at
the very least, the transition efforts are a polite parachute out of the
office, indirectly acknowledging UCOP’s errors in developing in such a
haphazardly large fashion.
Beyond saving money, Hume proposed to also shuffle UCOP’s
service programs out of the department and into campus-specific
management. It is a smart move, swapping
UCOP’s convoluted structure for more streamlined campuses.
UCOP was originally conceived as a support tool for the
president, but the office has since splattered its influence systemwide, also
offering supporting programs that stretch across campuses. Although form and
function are executed at the campus level, the top administrative control of
such programs still belongs to UCOP. Gaps in communication and management bred
perplexities and cloudiness — downsizing and downplaying UCOP management of
campus-oriented programs is the only solvent.
But the most relevant student-related question still stands
tall: In this stormy budget, will UCOP’s downsizing save enough money to spare
students increased fees? Talks have
already been initiated at legislative and regental levels, some proposing fee
hikes of up to 10 percent to blunt the fiscal damage of the state deficit. With
such a hike, accessibility to college for the underprivileged will shrink and
students will bear the bulky brunt of the state’s financial problems; it’s
shameful to see revenue problems so heavily weighed on students’ shoulders.
Financial responsibility needs to be applied from the
top-down. The consolidations and trimming within UCOP will make the office more
efficient, but more importantly, the move will save nice chunk of change that
has become so valuable against the bleak backdrop of the state’s financial
standing.
