The board that governs the three state-supported universities has approved spending $2.5 million on an efficiency study. The Board of Regents met via telephone today and chose Deloitte Consulting of New York to conduct the study.
Regent Larry McKibben of Marshalltown, explained the goals of the study.”Compile a list of opportunities that could be implemented to reduce costs, increase revenue and improve service within our universities across the system. And then, collaborating between the board and the consultant, we will list, prioritize that list to identify the opportunities to which we will be moving on in phase two,” McKibben says.
He says the final product will be a plan for operating the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa. “We are gonna create the business case for high-priority opportunities. Development of a high-level future state operating model for the Iowa system,” McKibben explains. “And as you know, this is not only the current operations that we are looking at for efficiencies, but we’re developing a long-term operating model for the system. That is our hope and goal to come out of this.”
McKibben says the consultants all believe the new plan should allow the state to recover 6 to 10 times the amount of money spent on the study once it is implemented. “I am hopeful that it will be significantly more than that, but let’s reign in the optimism here,” McKibben says. The money approve by the Board of Regents does not cover the cost of implementing the final proposal. McKibben says they will negotiate a separate contract for implementation based on the number of recommendations they plan to implement.
The spokesperson for the board says the study will start once the contract is negotiated and signed — which could be by mid-March.