UC Berkeley bloated, wasteful, consultants sayMORE EDUCATIONFor a world-class university studded with Nobel laureates and innovative research, UC Berkeley manages its finances a bit like a sloppy undergrad, a new report suggests. The campus could save about $75 million a year by streamlining purchases, concentrating job duties and laying off "redundant" managers, according to consultants hired last fall to help the school become a leaner operation. "This kind of change is hard," said campus Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary, who is overseeing the Operational Excellence Project. "We will get pushback in certain quarters. But the fact that the state has so consistently disinvested in our organization ... most people really appreciate the need to change." Yeary said UC Berkeley's plan is not only to push the state for more education funding - which has dropped by half since 2002 to $232 million in inflation-adjusted dollars - but to do a better job with the money the university already has. The campus has five big areas of bloat, according to Bain & Co., the Massachusetts consulting firm being paid $3 million to identify waste. The biggest, say the consultants, is too many managers. The human resources |
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