A round of small-group brainstorming sessions produced a wide range of budget ideas, including many around the themes of shared technology investments, collaboration across programs and disciplines, and eliminating redundancies. Some ideas included:
- Conduct an internal audit that would be designed not to be punitive, but to identify resources that might be shared across campus for greater efficiency.
- Focus on the bigger picture of helping grow the Wisconsin economy, which in turns improves the state revenue picture.
- Take a bigger-picture look at all of the costs facing students. For example, if tuition is increased, are there ways to reduce costs in other areas such as housing?
- Communicate more effectively to Wisconsin residents that UW-Madison’s work matters to the overall well-being of the state.
- With regard to faculty and staff retention, find other ways to help people stay here beyond salaries, such as providing domestic partner benefits.
- Avoid “LTE abuse” — that is, don’t create more limited-term employees to reduce costs — and treat employees fairly through any budget cuts.
- Review purchasing patterns to reduce overall expenditures in areas such as printing and copying, and make the transition from a paper-based to a Web-based community.
- Create a fund to support faculty who are willing to create textbooks and learning materials that may be distributed in the public domain.
- Look for more collaborative and centralized approaches to Web technology, software and distance learning that can save departments money.
- Partner with the City of Madison to protect and promote the things that contribute to a great quality of life in the city, which is a big factor in faculty and staff retention.
Let us know what you think of these ideas or share one of your own.
11:54 a.m.
Re-invigorating the Wisconsin Idea means that the University, in addition to telling our story more effectively, needs to do a better job of listening across the state — something more along the line of what Kathy Cramer Walsh has done recently.
Serving the state effectively requires that the University engage in more robust conversations with communities about what the communities perceive as their needs.
The University could incorporate this effort into the instructional program, by using the state as a laboratory where students could initiate or participate in projects (supported by some sort of Wisconsin Idea grants) that help them develop their research (data gathering and analysis) skills.
Plus, by directly connecting students to communities across the state, we can encourage more to pursue careers in Wisconsin instead of going elsewhere.
1:44 p.m.
I would suggest that Union South not be torn down.
I would suggest that more of the athletic dept income come directly
to the the university coffers. I think this must be the most powerful lobby in the university community and i think they should help more.
3:59 p.m.
Great ideas so far. One idea that works very well in corporations when cost control is a major goal is ‘gainsharing’. The organization sets specific targets such as maintaining certain expense levels as a percent of total revenues or total costs.
When the actual cost reductions are measured, a percentage is returned to the workers as part of their reward structure. For instance, assume that we set a goal of printing costs at 3% of total revenues. We then compare our actual printing costs to the budgeted and if savings occur, a percentage of that savings is given to workers as part of a bonus pool. An alum of this university, Ed Rogan, applied this in his corporation , Rogan Corporation and his company saw incredible results.
While I realize that this may not be possible at a public institution like UW, I firmly believe that setting a certain target can provide great motivation to the UW work force and I bet they achieve it.
7:24 p.m.
Instead of creating long-term LTE positions, establish an in-house “Temp” agency.
We already get considerable value from people who transfer within UW-Madison, in that they get a bigger picture of the overall University and how its mission is pursued by very different constituencies. The “cross-training” and enhanced networks of people who know each other and how the place works are invaluable. Why not gain this same benefit from more short term assignments?
People could sign up to work within this “Temp agency” on short term stints both to help out their colleagues in other parts of the University who need short term help, and to gain a broader set of experiences of this place, its people and our mission.
It could be a sort of internal professional development opportunity. Think of it as the professional development version of “service learning.” People taking part in this service could also help identify and share BEST practices occurring throughout the University.
10:18 a.m.
The ideas listed are good ones. I especially like the idea of telecommuting. When I worked in the private sector, the human resources department and my boss wrote up a set of rules for my working at home 1 day/wk. We agreed on what type of projects I could do, what hours I would keep, how I would communicate with the office, etc. I would think that anyone that wants to telecommute can determine which portion of his or her job can be done away from the office, and with the guidelines, the boss and coworkers should feel comfortable that this person is working when not on site.
I also like the idea of focussing on what we can do for the state/country so that the public does not only hear the vocal few in the legislature that are against all the university does. If the public is behind us and what the university stands for, we stand a better chance of providing education, skills, research for all.
10:58 a.m.
First, whatever happens with Faculty Staff pay it should be done in unison. Too often over the last 10 years there has been an uncoupling and the Staff have gotten a significantly smaller share of the pie in name of Faculty recruitment and retention. This need and argument for faculty has been used for the last 30 years and will be used for 30 years in the future. Anyone who takes a job here knows up front that they will never get compensated to 100% the rate of peer institutions.
Second, the University really needs to look at consolidation of Departments and Research Units. There are too many duplications in Office Staff, IT Staff and overhead. Although it might be nice to have a “Center for Research on the Left Handed Yellow Jellyfish”.
Third, the University should not continually view itself as only a money making fundraising machine. It seems that 3/4 the new buildings on campus are for Biotech. Which might be a great long range focus. But there are other great areas of study and research that this University has been known for, Earth Sciences and History are two that come to mind.
2:57 a.m.
I feel that students and staff can work in unison to provide free, open source, instructional material. In today’s society, there’s no reason that classes can’t come with podcasts (talking over lecture slides, basically an electronic copy of an in class lecture), free electronic text for the class (preferably material that extends beyond the class, much like a textbook), and even evaluations can be done largely electronically. I understand that it’s frequently more convenient to have paper copies of assignments and textbooks and exams, but it would save a ton of money if we just digitized everything. On top of that, it’s obviously going to happen in the future anyway and is already happening as is. I feel it would be an excellent opportunity for UW-Madison to pioneer digital schooling by developing new software, free resources, and an improved communications network.
4:19 p.m.
When using web technology to lower administrative costs, the faculty get discouraged because there are so many procedures to remember (WISPR, WISDOM, effort reporting, IRB etc, animal handling, conflict of interest, etc) and entering all the data takes so long.
Simplify things by using the Apple model (few well designed choices where you dig deeper to find less used options). If not, increased use of the Web is only going to discourage people further. In my opinion, we are too far into the PC model.
3:13 a.m.
In the current economic situation, the benefits of incorporating new technologies to lower costs and increase the streamlined nature of the information distribution process probably outweighs the inconvenience of societies adaptation to new technologies.