UMass Resource Allocation

Since I arrived at UMass Amherst, it has been confronted with stark choices in the face of dramatic budget cuts several times. People still talk about the cuts in the late 80s, before I arrived. And I still vividly remember Chancellor Lombardi describing how he planned to minimize the damage of the cuts he was compelled to make in 2003.

We are not today faced with such stark choices. Instead, we have an opportunity in a moment of relative calm, to reflect on how resources are allocated on campus and what system should be put in place going forward.

Prior to this process, I had little understanding of how resources on campus are actually allocated. That is, I understood that the campus receives revenue from various sources, like the "state allocation" and "tuition retention" and "grants and contracts". And I understood that my department received funds in the form of GOF and faculty lines. In between, were shadowy figures like deans and the provost, who were important somehow, but their actual roles were mysterious to me. And I had little or no knowledge about how my department compared with other departments. Or how the activities of any department connected with those sources of revenue.

After completing the first phase of building a strategic plan for the campus, the chancellor began to lay the groundwork for moving to a new model for resource allocation. Now the Joint Task Force for Resource Allocation (JTFRA) is issuing their report, after several months of work and weeks of public feedback. Their current recommendations are that we continue the process and begin testing "an alternate resource allocation model". This new model will provide a lot more information about how funds are allocated.

There is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about this new model. People worry that this process will inevitably lead to everything being monetized and all decisions being driven by bean counting and the bottom line. That might be true, except for the Strategic Plan we've been building.

Through the strategic plan, we know what we want to do and where we're trying to go. Now we need to figure out how to get there. If all we had was a resource allocation model, we might be tempted to use it to establish our goals. But we already have a plan, well elaborated, that charts the path we want to follow. And the resource allocation model can help us identify the means.

Several years ago, I was in a conversation where one person said, "I don't like to play politics" and another said, "Ah, but that's still playing politics -- that's just playing politics badly." I think the same is true here. Defending the status quo means defending a situation in which you have almost no knowledge of the actual financial situation of the University or the consequences and implications of our actions.

We need to monitor the exploration of resource allocation systems closely. We need to educate ourselves. And we need to ensure that whatever system we put into place provides the information we need to make decisions effectively: this probably means we need more than purely financial data. We need to become and remain engaged in the process. And that is, I think, a key goal of the whole exercise. If we have more information, we can make better decisions.