Consultants (BCG) will study UNC prior to Spellings start, thanks to anonymous $1.1 M donation

[mnhtnbb]

Boston Consulting Group was hired in December through the UNC Foundation, with money from an anonymous donor. Work got under way in earnest this week, as consultants began interviews with more than 100 people, including UNC Board of Governors members, chancellors, financial officers, faculty leaders, student leaders and legislators.

“Like any new leader, I want to make sure that if we’re going to play NFL ball – it’s the term I keep using – we need to make sure we have the best players fielded on the team, internally,” Spellings said in a telephone interview Friday.

According to a contract released to The News & Observer, the eight-week study will be an in-depth examination of the UNC General Administration – a 200-employee operation that handles budgeting, human resources, academic affairs and other functions for the 17-campus system. Consultants will assess the operation against legislative mandates and strategic priorities for the state’s public university system. They will then develop a “high-level plan to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in each core General Administration function,” the contract said.

The study was Spellings’ idea. The first step, she said, is to get input “from our various customers and users,” including campuses, legislators, the business community, boards of trustees and others.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article53812025.html



Here is the comment I posted in response to the article:

Boston Consulting Group is where Mitt Romney got his start. It's all about business strategy. This is the problem with Republicans: they think everything needs to be run like a "business" rather than understanding that education (and health care) is not all about the bottom line.

The only way to stop the dismantling of the UNC system that this Rovian/Bush bot has been hired to do is to get out and VOTE in 2016. Change the composition of the NC Legislature, which will in turn eventually change the Board of Governors and ultimately get rid of Spellings. If we don't get out and vote, we can kiss the UNC system good-bye. Sad times coming.

[unc70]

1. Spellings is a disaster; so is BCG

And she is so tone death. NFL analogy?! After all the scandal involving the UNC football team? Really? Really?!

[appal_jack]

2. Exactly. K&R, nt.

[mnhtnbb]

3. I'd like to tell her to STFU and BTW, go see Concussion.

NFL is all about making money for owners. Screwing local taxpayers to foot the bill for stadiums for the owners.
Use up and throw away players (mostly men of color) all to make $$.

She probably thinks that's all terrific. Republicans only want to use government to fund their pocketbooks: privatize profits
and socialize costs.

[mnhtnbb]

4. This is not a smart woman. I used the term "bot" for a reason.

She's been programmed to do the bidding of the $$/power cabal of NC.

Typical, too, that the $$ donated for the BCG group was done anonymously. Coward(s).
Art Pope? Or a Koch brother? Or someone with a vested interest in grabbing some kind
of lucrative contract from the UNC when some function is privatized?

Scum. Just scum. She and her handlers.

[zazen]

5. I suspect they've splendidly over-reached, because you can't fire student protestors

I'm around here too and have been very involved with GA and the research universities for awhile. Maybe it's better that academic capitalism is becoming, finally, so inescapably overt.

I think she's grossly underestimating the depth of power of a university system. Unless they disband it and/or actively arrest students (and I don't put fascism beyond the maniacs here), she will face protests day after day after day from people she cannot coerce with vindictive compensation structures and constantly threatened program cuts.

Professors aren't going to "grade down" the undergrads. Grad students may face some pressure from funding cuts to their faculty advisers. I can even imagine grad student tuition and fellowships being contingent on not participating in something "political." But they can't directly harm, any more than they already are with tuition and fee hikes and program cuts, the tens of thousands of UNC students who will protest her every where she goes.

And they don't have a lot better to do . . they might have jobs, but they aren't grad students. The entire system is set up such that it enables ongoing protest by students who are living together and are better organized than any other interest group.

From a better organized student protest movement in North Carolina, aligned with Moral Mondays, may come much deeper grass roots changes.

The faculty are in for hell, of course, as are many valuable research agendas and outreach programs. That's a different matter.

[mnhtnbb]

6. I just sent this LTTE of the Raleigh News and Observer

"A $1.1 million, privately funded study by a management consulting firm will analyze the UNC system’s administrative operation before UNC President-elect Margaret Spellings arrives in North Carolina."

Anonymously funded. Really? What a coward. Follow the money. Who has what to gain from this "study" from a well known management consulting group that is devoted to analyzing business strategy? Since when is the "university of the people" all about business? Is that what the people of North Carolina want? To transform the oldest public university in the country into the University of Phoenix? What a sad day.

The only hope to save the UNC system from this Rovian/Bush bot imported from Texas is to get out and VOTE in November and send the Republicans responsible for hiring Spellings packing.



I'll post if the letter gets published. I'd give it a 50/50 chance since I've had a fair number of letters published, but it really goes after Spellings and the anonymous
donor (who is probably Art Pope).

[Ford_Prefect]

7. If past practice is anything to go by they have already decided what they will do.

The research is just to identify specific programs and names of professors and others to eliminate or suborn. They intend to make over the UNC system along the lines of Liberty University. Art Pope has been trying to subvert UNC for decades. If they can it will be a very cruel effect. They will find ways to bind students and faculty in some kind of loyalty oath similar to "honor codes" of the 1950's.
They will be especially ruthless with programs that pursue "non-traditional" values and ideas, even though UNC has a very long tradition of exactly that kind of liberal arts tradition.

This is Art Pope's personal vendetta and he is one mean asshole. He has already succeeded in closing a range of nationally important research programs dealing with social justice and poverty. 1984 has arrived and "christian" newspeak will become the language and culture of UNC academics if he is not stopped.

There is a certain degree of independence within the system. Unless the voters turn enough tea-thuglicans out of the legislature and the state house it won't matter enough, that is unless the alumni start funding lawsuits along with football teams.

[mnhtnbb]

8. I'm sure the Rovian/Bush bot already has an agenda: she was hired for a reason--

and it wasn't her academic credentials--since she doesn't even hold a master's degree.


We have to get people out to vote here in 2016. It's the only way to stop the destruction the Republicans are
doing to the entire state.