Dartblog

The NY Times reports on the engagement of my old employer, management consultants Bain & Company, to ferret out cost-cutting opportunities at educational institutions. You will recall that the Wright Adminstratin had McKinsey & Co. come to Hanover a few years ago to evaluate the size of Dartmouth’s adminstrative arm. At that time, McKinsey was explicity told not to suggest ways to cut expenses, and its full report was never released — as Dartblog pointedly noted.

The Times article suggests a place where President Kim could start his own cost-cutting:

David J. Skorton, the president of Cornell, said he was using the financial crisis as further motivation to grapple with administrative costs. “We know we have had too much of a proliferation of assistant deans and assistants to … ” Dr. Skorton said. “And this crisis has stiffened my spine about it. My office has gone down from seven to five [emphasis added], people I’m never going to replace, and that has to trickle down.”

During Jim Wright’s years in the Dartmouth presidency, the Office of the President grew from 6.5 to 10 employees — twice as many people as Cornell’s newly cost-conscious President now has in his office. But note: Dartmouth has one quarter as many students as Cornell, and the College’s overall expenses were also one quarter the size of Cornell’s total.

I’ll leave the rest of the math to you.

ADDENDUM: In the D today, Isaiah Berg ‘11 illustrates the folly of a position recently articulated by Professor Donald Pease and other members of the faculty: that Dartmouth has a social responsibilty to create jobs for the “most vulnerable” in an economic time of need. Berg’s reference to the Schumpeterian creative destruction inherent in an ever-evolving capitalist economy is sure to bring gasps from faculty members whose political sympathies lies elsewhere — a posture most easily maintained when one has job-for-life tenure.