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executive suite) and placed – at least
electronically – centrally. If an academic
or researcher needs admin help – let’s say,
booking a lecture theatre, or perhaps a
trip for a research meeting, or preparing a
research grant – then instead of asking the
(previously) ever-present and reliable admin
or research support person in the school/
faculty/unit, one has to send an email into
the maw of shared services and log a job.
Someone will eventually read the email and
reply. Most often, the reply is little more
than directions to a web page where the
academic/researcher can do the booking
or prepare the grant him or herself.
Now, if you are in a lecture and the
battery runs out on the remote control,
there is no-one to ask about how to replace
it – except via online, of course. Little help
when one is in the middle of a lecture.
If there is so little respect for universities
as repositories and generators of
knowledge, it is unsurprising that there
is a concomitant lack of respect for the
academics who try to generate and protect
such knowledge.
There seems to be no end to the appetite
of university executives for more shared
services. Why would there not be? Shared
services holds out the near holy grail
promise of reducing costs, with the added,
if never-to-be-spoken of, advantages
of centralising executive power and
dismantling all of these troublesome loyalty
citadels of schools, faculties and groups of
academics and local admin staff. All over
Australia, we follow the global pied pipers
with university after university announcing
exciting ‘new initiatives’ that will ‘reduce
costs’, ‘transform services’ and, of course,
free up more resources that somehow
will magically trickle down to all of those
resource-starved academics. If only!
Universities have become the victims of
an army of big and small consulting firms,
IT companies, accountants and others all
out to ‘partner with’ (read – make money
from) them. Among those ‘partners’
are PwC, Kennedy Cater, Deloitte and Huron
Consulting Group.
You will struggle not to glaze over as
every ‘thought leader’ reiterates their mantra
about shared services, of ‘transformation’,
‘innovation’, ‘maximising resources’,
‘creating sustainability’, ‘disruptive thinking’,
‘unlocking efficiencies’, ‘driving growth’,
‘business impact’, ‘increasing integration’,
‘maximising revenue’, ‘greater agility’,
‘competitive advantage’, ‘forward-facing
business ecosystem’, ‘cross functionality’
and, of course, ‘delivering greater customer
value’, ad nauseam.
At one university in the US, the move
to shared services was even badged as
‘Operation Excellence‘. Unbelievably, the
university leaders who buy this snake oil
are often experienced academics raised on
principles of critical reading and thinking,
and trained to smell such rats at 100 paces.
EVALUATING THE MODEL
There are profound problems associated
with shared services. However, they
have some advantages, but they
depend very much on which definition
or understanding of them you accept.
If we are talking about a university
having a centralised transport facility, or
university‑wide IT department, there would
be few arguments that these should be
shared. The idea of each school or faculty
having its own IT department and facilities is
simply ludicrous. But is this new centralised
model making anything better?
We believe it has made things worse, at
least for academics and researchers, who,
after all, generate the knowledge and pass
it on to students – the university’s reason for
existing in the first place.
Shared services is happening in many
universities in many countries. Some places
have evaluated this new model and the
evidence about how it is working shows that
the jury is, at the very least, out.
We have done our own ‘back of the
envelope’ calculations about the costs
of the model, based on the enterprise
bargaining agreements (EBAs) at an
Australian university. Given that, under this
model, all academics basically do their own
administration, such as entering marks into
spreadsheets, checking their own grant
proposals and so on, we took the hourly
rate of pay for a Level E (professor) and
compared that with the same level for a
mid-range admin person who would, under
usual models, do the same work.
Under most Australian EBAs, a Level E
works 48 weeks per year, and 37.5 hours per
week. That works out at $97.23 per hour.
If someone employed under a mid-range
professional staff agreement works 48
weeks per year and 35 hours per week,
then that is $42.99 per hour. In other words,
under this model, the university is paying
over double the rate for administration
work. And, of course, if the academics were
supported and did not have such a heavy
admin load, then they would be freed up
to do what they are meant to do – research
and teach.
A brain drain is developing from this
misguided attempt to save money. We
have many anecdotal reports of senior
academics moving from universities with
‘shared services’ to institutions which do
not, who say that the shared services model
is a major push factor influencing their
decision to leave.
In addition, the promotion and career
advancement prospects of junior
academics and early career researchers are
being compromised because of the large
amounts of time they have to spend doing
administrative tasks that would be better
done by persons qualified and employed
for those functions.
INCREASING CENTRALISATION
While education ministers are hell bent on
reducing funds to the higher education
sector, we will see other instances of
university executives scrabbling to keep
their places running.
But such ill-judged models from the
world of managerialism are doing nothing
but causing dissatisfaction and staff attrition
at quite alarming rates.
We will see more and more calls to
introduce shared services and all will come
with the same seductive Siren promises,
and quite possibly with the same lack
of evidence. University faculty will be
pressured into following the shared service
parade, lest they too are deemed ‘resistant
to change’, silo thinkers, opposed to
modernisation, dinosaurs and more.
Academics continue to look for the
slightest benefit or advantage of shared
services in their everyday work, but are
unlikely to see any. What they will see is
increasing centralisation, decreasing power
and influence within individual faculties
and schools, and more and more everyday
administrative work stealthily devolved to
individual academics so that they may not
have time to see how the bigger picture of
our universities is changing, so drastically
and so disturbingly. ■
Philip Darbyshire is director of Philip
Darbyshire Consulting Ltd.
Linda Shields is a professor of rural
health at Charles Sturt University and
an honorary professor in the School of
Medicine at the University of Queensland.
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