Why Universities Do Not Make Strategic Cuts

In a Chronicle of Higher Education opinion piece, The Unkindest Cut of All, Idaho State provost Gary A. Olson argues against across-the-board cuts when managing state-mandated budget reductions. “The unkindest cut of all” he writes, “is the one that slices evenly and indiscriminately across all programs without any attention to priorities.”

I agree completely with Dr. Olson. However, as legions of battle-scarred provosts and deans can confirm, uniform cuts to academic budgets are both the easiest to implement and also those least likely to raise a campus outcry.

Any senior academic administrator can attest to the challenges of eliminating or merging weak academic colleges, departments, programs and centers, or even to changing their reporting relationships. Faculty and students in targeted areas can be counted on to resist strenuously any potentially threatening administrative action.

Experience shows that those whose ox is about to be gored are likely to complain they were not adequately consulted. They will call for more deliberation and debate, will want to audit the impending decision by challenging its premises (e.g., whether the financial crisis is real or contrived), and will want to explore other options.

It is also typical for affected units to voice their complaints publically, hoping to garner support from campus legislative bodies, alumni, students, and perhaps even trustees and elected officials. In academia, prolonging a controversy and stretching out debate for many months can be effective ways to forestall an impending administrative action, however much that action may serve the larger interests of the institution.

While protracted campus debate about retrenchment strategies may be theoretically desirable, it is simply not practical during a fiscal crisis. Thus administrators are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they act decisively to make selective cuts, they will be accused of autocratic behavior that violates principles of shared governance. If they make unselective generalized cuts, they damage their institution.

In this environment, it is not surprising that many seasoned deans and provosts simply throw up their hands and take the expedient way out, knowing full well that doing so is ultimately harmful to their school. Shared governance may be effective at ensuring that all voices are heard, but it is very bad at bringing closure to difficult and controversial issues that require a timely solution.