A Study on the Study of Studies
The leadership of the Commission on the Future is made up of two co-chairs who bring a particularly invigorating perspective to the table. One is the president of the university system, Mark Yudof. The other is the current chair of the Board of Regents. You can already feel the fresh breeze of the new! Onward!
So now the Commission on the Future has offered its first set of bold new ideas for the university. You can read their entire report here. Scroll down to page 80 for my favorite:
"Design and implement a system to identify, promote, and adopt the best administrative practices within the UC system."
Read through to page 82 for glorious payoff, appearing under the"Next Steps for Implementation." Here we close a perfect circle of bureaucratic legerdemain:
"Appoint a small staff to quickly identify best practices in UC and among other large universities."
The commission of administrators formed to identify more efficient ways for the University of California to function in a harsh budget climate has recommended the appointment of a small group of administrators to identify more efficient ways for the University of California to function in a harsh budget climate. The commission wants to appoint a committee.
Now scroll back up to page 81, because here comes the punch line:
"We must follow through. We recognize that many of the administrative efficiency initiatives called for in this recommendation have appeared in previous UC white papers...While we excel at producing reports, we have not excelled at implementation."
Flawlessly executed. I'm almost proud of them.