The University of Connecticut is working with a higher education consultant firm to create a new budget model that UConn-AAUP members fear could result in cost-cutting measures including faculty layoffs.
“We are concerned that Kennedy & Company is a part of a higher education consulting sector that is notorious for developing and implementing cost-cutting measures that have had devastating impacts on many institutions, including at West Virginia University, the University of Wisconsin, American University and the New School,” said Jeffrey Dudas, professor of political science and president of the UConn chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
Dudas said at those institutions the outside consultants including those at Huron Education, which formerly employed the founder and CEO of Kennedy & Company, Benjamin Kennedy, have developed “budget transformation plans that have led to fewer classes, fewer majors and fewer academic support services for students; job losses for staff and faculty; and worse job conditions for remaining employees.”
But university officials and Kennedy assert that the idea is to create a new budget model, not to develop cost-cutting measures.
Stephanie Reitz, UConn spokesperson, said while the new budget initiative will provide incentives for UConn to increase revenue and reduce expenses, the “primary purpose is to allocate existing operating funds (mainly tuition dollars and state support) across units in a transparent way based on a variety of metrics.
“It does not solve the structural deficit that the university is facing,” said Reitz in an email to the Courant. The university was able to decrease the budget deficit by $25 million, according to a presentation made to the Board of Trustees last month. The presentation states that deficits are still forecast in future years.
Reitz wrote in UConn Today that the new budget initiative will “enable UConn’s budget model to align allocations more effectively to specific metrics tied to institutional priorities; ensure that centrally managed costs are fairly distributed; and incentivize units to allocate resources in alignment with institutional priorities, rather than viewing funds as exclusively owned by individual departments.”
Kennedy said that Kennedy & Company is helping schools such as UConn “to better understand what their budgets are going to be in the future and how the decisions they make about where to grow and what to prioritize will impact their budgets in future years.”
The consultant contract is not to exceed $750,000, according to a budget presentation presented to the UConn Board of Trustees last month.
“There are highly visible consultant projects that are focused on reducing costs and laying off faculty,” said Kennedy.
“This is definitely not one of those in any shape or form. One of the things that we have seen institutions get out of a budget transformation initiative is it helps all of the leaders understand where the school can be more efficient and in a lot of cases by working together especially at some of these large research institutions,” Kennedy said. “We do not advise institutions to lay off tenure track faculty or to declare exigency or anything like that around their programs. In our experience, budget transformation should not lead to faculty layoffs and staff reductions.”
Kennedy said he left Huron in 2012 to find “Kennedy & Company and forge a different path in higher education consulting.”
Kennedy & Company has worked with 250 universities, Kennedy said.
“I don’t believe there has been a school that has taken our advice and made draconian cuts to faculty and staff,” Kennedy said. “We have worked with a lot of schools around planning for long-term sustainability.”
Dudas also cited concerns about UConn administration’s decision to outsource changes in its budgeting process to “an expensive outside consulting firm without the meaningful input of the broader UConn community.”
“Creating subcommittees that are tasked with gaining ‘buy-in’ after the original decision was made to employ the consulting firm is not shared governance,” Dudas said.
Reitz said in an email that the project is “designed to engage the entire UConn community, including interviews across academic and non-academic units, including regional campuses.
“Working groups are being convened to discuss and assess various options under consideration and provide feedback and recommendations in a group setting,” said Reitz.
Dudas said that the work could potentially be accomplished in house at “a time in which the administration professes to be under unprecedented financial pressure.
“We have reports of departments being denied the funds to provide cookies for students at departmental events; but the administration doesn’t seem to think twice about spending millions of dollars on its own priorities,” said Dudas.
Robert Day, chair of the UConn Senate Executive Committee, said the new budget model gives the university better information about where the money is coming in, calling it neutral.
“It may be positive,” he said, adding that it could help the university grow in the right areas in the future.
