This has been a very challenging time on our campus, as we grapple with enormous changes in higher education and our need to keep costs as low as possible. By addressing a wide spectrum of cost containment efforts in business operations, we have been able to protect the university’s academic mission including maintaining salary and hiring programs. At the same time, we have made real progress keeping tuition increases as low as possible and bolstering our centrally available financial aid.
This has not been easy work, but during the past decade we have eliminated $265 million in recurring expenses from the general fund budget. The hard reality is that we will have much more work to do if we are to achieve these two fundamental goals: protecting academic quality and keeping a U-M education affordable for our students.
The Administrative Services Transformation — our efforts to accomplish routine business functions in a more efficient way — must and will continue. The question for me is not whether the university will mount a shared services program, but how to do so in a way that best meets the needs of the Michigan community.
We are listening carefully to the concerns that have been raised. I believe it is very important to pause so we can take more time in the design and evaluation of ways to build a program that provides support for teaching and research while achieving the savings necessary. The consideration of various program approaches must be an inclusive and consultative process across campus based on facts, reflecting the values of our community.
I want to make sure, too, that the staff who will be affected — both those whose roles will transition to a shared approach, and those who remain in the units with reorganized tasks — are supported in the coming months. This has been a particularly challenging time for these staff colleagues, and they need clarity about their future work environments.
We are not immune to the many pressures facing higher education today. A shared services program that creates campuswide efficiencies for human resource and financial transactions is one of many strategies we need to pursue. It is an example of our ongoing efforts to find savings in redundant and routine business processes so that we may keep strategic academic decisions where they belong: in schools and colleges.
Mary Sue Coleman
President
