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BERKELEY — UC Berkeley will hire consultants to help cut tens of millions from the campus budget.
Bain & Co. will spend six months guiding Berkeley leaders through a study of campus finances, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Thursday. The university, which had its budget cut by $150 million this year, will pay the Boston-based firm $3 million plus expenses — half this year and the remainder next year.
The Bain collaboration will be part of an effort the university has named "Operational Excellence" and is modeled after a Bain partnership at the University of North Carolina, which is starting to implement 10 changes recommended by the firm. Cornell University also is working with the company, said Birgeneau, who spoke to the leaders of both schools.
"I became convinced, based on those conversations, that it had gone very well in both places," he said.
At North Carolina, administrators needed to overcome opposition by suspicious professors, who worried cutting supporting staff and outsourcing some administrative operations would harm the university's academic reputation. More than just teaching goes into a school's academic strength, said Cat Warren, a North Carolina State University professor and a leader of the state's chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
"It's a slightly cynical ploy to tell faculty, 'This isn't going to affect you,'" she said. "I don't think faculty are naive enough
In Berkeley's case, campus leaders also are telling faculty the Bain study will not affect academics. For the most part, instructors seem to be accepting that, said law professor Christopher Kutz, chairman of the campus Academic Senate.
"We were really impressed by Bain," said Kutz, who was involved in choosing the company. "They said the right things, and they understand their limits."
A Bain spokeswoman did not return a phone message Thursday.
The project is already raising questions among some who say the university should not being hiring outsiders to do work that could be done by existing administrators. Although the Bain money will be taken from a fund used for campus infrastructure, it could be better used to make up for state budget cuts that have been covered primarily through student fees, furloughs and layoffs, said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.
"UC has hired managers at hundreds of thousands of dollars each," said Romero, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee and a frequent critic of UC leaders. "They should have the expertise on campus already."
Hiring outside consultants is more likely to lead to an objective look at how UC Berkeley is run, said Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary, who last year left his job as a top executive at Citigroup to return to his alma mater.
"Self-diagnosis is not always the most beneficial method," he said. "And the intensity of the effort does not lend itself to asking our faculty to go offline for six months to help us."
Administrators say they expect the study to lead to more centralized operations on campus, and they hope it will help improve areas that already have been hit hard by budget cuts.
Criticism of the North Carolina project died down as professors started to understand what Bain was doing, said Joe Templeton, the North Carolina professor who was campus faculty chairman during the study. Academics were untouched, he said.
"They took classroom activities completely off the board," said Templeton, who has taken charge of implementing Bain's suggestions. "The Bain people were smart. I thought Bain did a good job."
Matt Krupnick covers higher education. Reach him at 510-208-6488.
