Dear colleague,
What will President Holloway and the administration do about Rutgers’ broken budget system? In June, a committee stacked with top administrators finished its five-year review of Responsibility Center Management (RCM) and summed up its damning conclusions in a 121-page report. The report exposed major flaws in a system that our union has long criticized for the burdens it places on our departments and programs and its lack of accountability and transparency.
If you didn’t hear about the RCM review, that isn’t surprising; it came out to little fanfare in mid-June. Our union’s University Budget and Priorities Committee read the report, and they’ve put together a “review of the review” to help us better understand how and why RCM is inadequate for Rutgers’ academic mission and downright harmful to critical parts of our university.
You can read “Reviewing the RCM Review” online here and in a format for printout here. For a preview, here are the six takeaways:
- RCM prioritizes revenue generation over the academic mission.
- RCM concentrates power in an unaccountable central administration.
- RCM imposes a metric-driven process that disguises administration control.
- RCM penalizes Camden and Newark by creating perpetual austerity.
- RCM discourages collaboration across disciplines and departments.
- RCM causes confusion and inefficiency.
Thanks to our Budget Committee for this valuable resource for understanding a budget system that undermines our university’s mission of teaching, research, and service.
The university’s five-year review makes dozens of recommendations for significant changes to RCM. We want to know from President Holloway what his administration is doing to implement those recommendations. In our contract campaign next semester, we’ll be organizing to implement our recommendations.
In solidarity,
Becky and Todd
Rebecca Givan, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Todd Wolfson, General Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
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