I doubt if a "campus wide task force" would have the authority to pull Miami out of the MAC. 

It's similar to Ohio.  You know that any "campus wide task force" at Ohio would call for de-emphasis on athletics.  But, in the long run, it's going to be up to the Trustees and the President. 

Budgetary ills at most if not all universities could be alleviated if presidents would start swinging the budgetary axe.  For example, Rod McDavis could look at EVERY administrative position at all levels and ask one central question: How much value is this position adding to the university?

Unless my experience has misled me, within a month he could eliminate 30 percent of admin positions and the university likely would be operating more effectively.  Remaining admin staff would find themselves taking 5 to 15 percent pay cuts. 

Is such action at universities unprecedented?  In late '08 or early '09 Stanford's Graduate School of Business, seeing its endowment take a significant hit, laid off 20 percent of its admin staff.

Sometimes I see things like this and contemplate the "gamesmanship" involved. For example, when a public school system wants more money, they will often threaten to eliminate the gifted programs. Why? Because they know that the wealthy parents, many of whom may have gifted students, will then find a way to increase the budget so that these programs continue. Perhaps a threat to abandon the MAC is being done as a way of coaxing money out of rich donors who will fight the possible loss of the tradition-rich Division I-A football program by finding enough donations to keep the program in place. Thus Miami could divert money from football to elsewhere, and have that money replaced by donations.

So, is it a genuine possibility? Or gamesmanship to coax money from football-loving donors? I don't know.

Yeah, lay off 600 non-faculty employees and the university will run better.  That's the ticket.
 
If this would work, why hasn't every university in the country done it?  

 

You're thinking far too small. I think moving the University to Calcutta and privatizing would bring even larger savings and growth opportunities. Find a nice tax hideaway in the Caymans, the school would be set.  Jack Welch could take over as President...

Good golly Mr. Johnson.  Not only did you just insult the intelligence of 3 OU presidents, but every single Board of Trustee member in the last 30 years.  

Oh my.

Those Board of Trustees the last 30 years.  Yeah, that's a group of dummies with no business sense.

The Standord GSB is a dinky little place.  The comparison is completely lacking.  Let me know when the Stanford GSB dean has to handle 20,000 students, 11 colleges and 11 deans of those colleges, 42 dorms, another 150 buildings, 1,800 acres of land, HRIS system, SIS systems, unions, liberal arts faculty, 250 undergraduate programs, 150,000 alums, community relations, government relations, media relations, fundraising for those 250 undergraduate programs, and etc.

If only all college presidents spent time on the farm.  They'd know all you need to do to fix academia is give 30% of the staff the axe, the axe, the axe, in the neck, the neck, the neck.

Then, an OU education would be as inexpensive as going to Stanford......

Michael: OU presidents, of course, don't have the option of sending jobs to China and Mexico, as do leaders at Timken. An option they have relied on quite readily in recent years.

As for Charlie Ping's three degrees in philosophy, they helped him save a university mired in financial crisis.

I have to laugh at loud at the concept of threatening membership in this Mid American Conference as a call to action for well heeled alumni to step up financially.

"If you kids don't start behaving, I'm going to turn this car around and cancel this trip to the manure farm!"

In an effort to bring this discussion back to the place it deserves to be...

Miami sucks.

Thank you for this as well Pete!  Quite true my good man...

The problem starts and ends with tenured professors. Why continue to lower the salaries and cut admin staff across the board when all unversities have a certain amount professors who clearly don't provide any positive return or actually do anything. It's the marketing, PR, communications, IT, fiscal, and HR admin groups that keep the university functioning and keep revenue coming in. Is there waste? Sure, every large organization has some level of waste, but universities across teh country, and especially private university as their endowment funds decrease, are cutting admin jobs and freezing salaries, which only makes it tougher to generate revenue in the long run. Meanwhile, there are a certain amount on untouchable tenured professors pulling in salaries higher than what their productivity indicates they should be making. Not only that, but because they are untouchable they can go say and do whatever they feel like causing more work for PR and communications folks.

Let me start off by saying that I run a small engineering/surveying company in northern N.J.
I'm also chariman of Fairleigh Dickinson University's "Indutrial Advisory Committee" for
Civil and Construction Engineering Technology.
Our committee is tasked,in part, with working with the University to improve the quality of the
engineering curriculums.
In conjunction with this,we meet with representatives of engineering and heavy construction
companies to see what they are looking for in graduates.
Over the years we've made a number of suggestions  to improve both the College of Engineering and
Unversity in general.
A number of these suggestions could also cut costs.

1.Reduce the number of degree programs.There seem to be a number of degree programs that,
    based on the number of students,are not "cost effective".Fewer degrees,fewer professors and
    administrators and  degrees that actully "mean" something.

  2.Reduce/eliminate "Certificates".I don't know about other fields,but the engineering companies
    and heavy  construction contractors we've spoken to,don't seem to take them into account in hiring or
    giving raises or promotions.

3.Reduce "core" classes to subjects evey student can actually use like English,basic math and general
    "civics" (U.S. history/government).Then the  students can take more classes in their field of study.
   There's a running joke,that the only reason they keep the majority of "core" classes is to keep
    liberal arts professors employed.
   
4.Counsel students on their degree choice,including,letting them know what their job prospects
    are in their proposed field of study.

From my experience there is also a lot of  "mid management" in academices that either  isn't needed
or duplicate/similar postions that could be combined.

It also seems that a number professors spend very little time actually teaching.While there is
no question that research is important to a University,during the academic year a professor's primary function
should be to teach.Again,if your tenured professors are in the classroom,you don't need to hire as
many adjuncts.

Just my $.0.02