Among tuition raises and state funding cuts, Ohio University is following in the wake of others throughout the country by transitioning to a more decentralized form of budgeting.
During the next five years, individual colleges at OU will begin to take more responsibility for the funding of their own programs and expenditures, with the goal of creating an environment that is “more innovative,” said Becky Watts, chief of staff to President Roderick McDavis.
In two open forums this week, university officials rolled out a more detailed plan for the transition to Responsibility Centered Management, a new budgeting strategy that will give colleges control of the revenues they produce.
The forums, held Monday and Wednesday, provided an opportunity for students, faculty and administrators to learn about what the switch to RCM will entail.
David Descutner, dean of the University College, and Howard Dewald, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, presented at Monday’s forum.
Almost 50 people were present at the Wednesday forum to hear a presentation from multiple administrators, including Stephen Golding, vice president for Finance and Administration; John Gilliom, chair of the political science department; Scott Titsworth, interim dean of the Scripps College of Communication; Hugh Sherman, dean of the College of Business; and John Day, associate provost for Academic Budget and Planning.
“We’re really moving in this direction because we want to rationalize our resource allocation to projects. … Over time, we want to promote growth, and we want to incentivize growth,” Golding said.
The presenters laid out the specifics of RCM, including a transition plan.
“We’re looking at basically a five-year implementation phase, where after that period, I would say we were running on (the RCM) model fully,” Day said.
Under the new plan, colleges and other revenue-generating units would be regarded as “responsibility centers.” Those units would then take a proportional amount of their revenue to pay for “academic resource centers” such as Alden Library or WOUB, and “cost pools,” such as Student Affairs and the Office of the President, which have limited or no ability to generate revenue.
In the development of an RCM system, the university is working with Huron Consulting Group.
In the transition to RCM, OU is trying to avoid a situation in which colleges just look at the financial bottom line. To prevent that, the RCM Steering Committee developed 11 academic indicators to maintain academic quality, Titsworth said.
“This is a diverse portfolio of metrics to look at, but they’re ones that we think need to be looked at,” he said.
Although this fiscal year will be spent further developing the model, the steering committee will hold more forums to update interested parties on the progress of the transition.
bv111010@ohiou.edu
