"It is my job to make sure we operate these campuses as efficiently and effectively as we possibly can," Bowles said after meeting with the campus heads this week. He went on to cite their obligation "that we reduce our administrative overhead and that we reallocate those funds into the academic core of the university to make sure that we provide our students the knowledge and the skills they need."
The university system finds itself in the same position as countless private businesses these days. With revenues tanking and pressure to perform with fewer people escalating, many businesses and institutions have found their bureaucracies had ballooned in good times.
That's not to say there is anything evil about the ranks of, or certainly occupants of, those legions of assistant and associate vice presidents, vice provosts and other administrators. No doubt each job satisfied a specific and clear-cut need when it was created.
But the ride is over. Levels of administration that may have seemed not just defensible but important when the money flowed more freely won't stand the downdrafts of straitened finances.
So Bowles is right to be pressing his campus leaders to prune the administrative kudzu. Better to put scarce funds where they count, into the instructional and student-support areas of campuses. As they say in Hollywood, best to put the money on the screen.
Even as that happens, we hope that top officials exercise care not to trample truly needed posts that serve long-term strategic needs, or develop areas of knowledge that might not be immediately cost-effective.
And we must acknowledge there is something slightly disingenuous about the president's assertive commitment to administrative bloat. It is true he has talked about efficiency since taking office, but he has headed the system long enough for, as he acknowledged, the "buck to stop" at his desk.
Still, his blunt message to his colleagues is the right one. As he put it in a letter to chancellors two weeks ago, "any further delay in reducing senior and middle management positions would jeopardize our credibility and standing with the General Assembly and the taxpayers of North Carolina."
He was right on target.
