Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/11/22/mckinsey_to_probe_college_bureaucracy.php
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
In his October 31, 2005 address to the General Faculty, President James Wright announced a wide-sweeping and long-overdue external review of the College's administration. To that end, the College has contracted management consulting giant McKinsey and Company to "help us see what we can do better, how we can break down silos, address redundancy, how we can improve services for students and faculty and strengthen internal coordination." In short, the review will nominally seek to halt and reverse the explosive numerical and financial growth of a clumsy, top-heavy administration through an objective eye.
Though in his speech Wright claims to have initiated the project himself, with the assistance of other senior administrators, such a contention is dubious at best when coming from an administration best known for creating program after office after council after unnecessary center, often at the expense of far more fundamental and visible facets of the Dartmouth community (Exhibit 1-A: the Swimming and Diving program). Wright's assertion collapses altogether in the face of a recent conversation with a Trustee of the College who admitted bluntly, albeit off the record, that the initiative came to life only at the suggestion of and after significant prodding by the Board. But so what? The Board of Trustees seems to be on the right track with this project, and with their weight behind it, the half dozen McKinsey consultants—three working here in Hanover, and three more doing analysis work in Boston and New York—should be granted unfettered access to the areas that most need evaluation. Even more encouraging is that the Board's backing of the review represents a tacit acknowledgment that the explosion of administrative spending in the past decade is both unsustainable and unhealthy for the College.
Though the review will nominally evaluate whether the "administration is effective in both the ways in which it communicates across the institution, in its use of resources, and in the way it delivers services that support the academic and residential mission," one can only imagine that the net result of the audit will resemble that of any other management audit: trim the unnecessaries, consolidate what remains, and generally streamline the administration of the College. While Provost Barry Scherr and Executive Vice President of Finance Adam Keller will lead the project, Deputy Librarian of the College John Crane will serve as the College's liaison to the consultants. Mr. Crane feels well-suited to this task, citing his decades of experience at the College, which have allowed him to get to know "a whole lot of people." This designation also seems to indicate that McKinsey's consultants are working relatively independently of any internal influences of the College, with Mr. Crane there simply to point them towards and introduce them to the right people. As he explained, the administrative review acts as a complement to the periodic reviews of the academic departments by outside or peer evaluators. The administration has been visibly and organically growing unhimdered by similar scrutiny for some time now. As the need or demand arose for a certain program, coordinator, or office, it was simply added on—Mr. Crane likened the process to the "growth of a coral reef." And with this numerical growth has come increased financial demands. Although the College's annual budget is held private—wait, let's stop right there.
You read correctly: the annual budget of Dartmouth College is private, off the public record, and unknown to but a few eyes. By comparison, all state universities, most major private universities, and a handful of other Ivy League universities all have budgets open to the public. The striking lack of transparency in the College's finances has certainly aided the unabated growth of administrative expenditures, as it destroys nearly all accountability to students, faculty, alumni, and even lower-level administrators. Anthropology Professor Hoyt Alverson noted a few years ago that in his more than thirty-five years at the College, he does not remember the faculty ever having any input in planning the budget (see TDR 5/12/03). He has characterized budget planning meetings between faculty and administrators as "announcements, not consultations." The secretive nature of the College's budget preparation provides an excellent shield against the barrage of questions that the administration has endured.
Although this secrecy also makes it difficult to quantify the exponential growth of the administration, one figure does stick out and is very telling: non-faculty (read: administrative) salaries increased 40.2% between 1999 and 2002. Qualitatively, we know that in the same period, the swimming and diving program was cut entirely, Sanborn Library came to the brink of closure, and course offerings decreased markedly, yet the administrative budget grew recklessly. A coral reef indeed. The challenge for the McKinsey auditors is to objectively mold these bloated administrative units, which were created ad hoc over the past several years into a cohesive unit which can efficaciously serve the needs of students and faculty alike.
The auditors are working with very few specific instructions. Nothing about the audit was pre-judged, explained Mr. Crane, for fear of narrowing the lens of inspection too much; a targeted audit could cause the evaluators to miss something important. Accordingly, there exists no targeted dollar amount to be cut, nor will any offices or organizations receive closer looks than others—despite the fact that some, such as the Office of Student Activities and a number of Residential Life programs, are universally cited as less than useful. Perhaps as a result, the survey has thus far garnered very broad participation from most administrators from all walks of the College. There have been no notable objections to the audit, but Mr. Crane says he does his best to eliminate any lack of understanding about the project that may exist amongst College employees. The most common misconception is that the current survey is an academic review; to the contrary, academics, course content, and faculty governance are just about the only things not under review by McKinsey & Co. In addition to the broad response by administrators, the consultants will be soliciting input from faculty and selecting students in the coming stages of the project. However, there has not yet been any word regarding which students or student groups will be asked to contribute.
No time horizon has been set for the final report, but senior administrators expect an initial assessment at the end of December—a testament to the furious pace at which the project is moving. McKinsey should issue a final report sometime during the Spring term of 2006. Because such an audit has not been undertaken by the College recently, there are not any expected outcomes. The College hopes that the assessment will point to ways to improve the services it offers for faculty and students, but does not know exactly what the form and content of the report will be. The report will certainly be reviewed by the Board of Trustees and senior College administrators, who will decide upon a course of action at that point.
A common complaint of several members of the Board of Trustees is that information about the College that reaches them is heavily filtered by President Wright and Dean Larimore. This trend is slowly changing, and one can only hope that McKinsey will also perceive an honest picture of the state of the College, as unfiltered as possible, so that it will effect administrative changes many years overdue.