Newsom's Uncomfortable Interview With Hank Plante
Chilling Account of a Muni Mugging
This Could Be Our Skyline, In a Couple of Decades
-thumb-110x110-460161.jpg)
Cops Get Tough With UC Berkeley Protesters
San Jose Swim Coach Impregnated Girl When She Was 14
Facing a $150 million budget deficit this year due to cuts in state funding and higher operating costs, UC Berkeley has hired Bain & Co., a Massachusetts-based consultant with offices in San Francisco, for a hefty $3 million fee, plus expenses, to help the university find long-term ways to save money. As Fark.com aptly puts, "Somehow, cutting consultant fees from the budget isn't likely to make the list."
After the recent protest over the 32-percent fee hike in tuition, which drew an estimated 5,000 students and faculty a couple of weeks ago, this move has served to boil tempers further. An angry employee told The Chronicle, "It absolutely sickens me that the majority of my 8 percent pay cut is going -- not to protect the core teaching and research mission of the university -- but rather to compensate overpaid business consultants and their multimonth hotel stays and weekly flights home."
As Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee and a frequent critic of UC leaders, explained to the Contra Costa Times, "UC has hired managers at hundreds of thousands of dollars each. They should have the expertise on campus already." The university argues that hiring outside help will provide an impartial view of the situation, as opposed to utilizing their own staff, who don't have time for such an endeavor.
Charles Schwartz, a professor emeritus of physics who carefully watches the UC budget, told the Chronicle that the same consulting firm was hired by UC in 1997 and concluded that UCSF and Stanford University hospitals should merge. The merger proved a financial disaster and lasted just two years.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
It must be awesome to be a consultant. All you need is a degree in any field (Vietnamese art history or some shit) and then you get paid millions for your "management insights." It's a brilliant scam.
UC administrators are remarkably tone deaf are they not?
Excessive budget-cutting consultant fees not on chopping block says handsomely paid consultant- http://wp.me/pBfFK-eO