Boston University Offices of Enrollment and Student Affairs sent an email survey Monday to students requesting feedback on the possibility of combining five important university services into one.
The survey asks questions about current access to the offices of Financial Assistance, the Registrar, Student Employment, the University Service Center and Admissions and whether combining those offices into one ‘single office or point of contact’ would be helpful.
BU spokesman Colin Riley said the survey is meant to evaluate how to improve the student experience and use of the services they provide.
‘This is a process that’s been in place for a while,’ he said. ‘[The survey] is to get student input and to provide that information to the group looking at these issues.’
President Robert Brown said in a Nov. 16 interview with The Daily Free Press the administration has tried to do everything possible to protect the quality of the university and enhance programs.
‘If the economy requires us to continually balance cost verses our programs, we’re going to do everything we can to protect the academic quality of the programs,’ he said. ‘And we’re doing that. We still have task forces out working on . . . backroom administrative functions, things that hopefully you don’t see.’
Brown emphasized that the goal is efficiency.
‘What does efficiency mean?’ he said. ‘Try to do what we need to do in a more cost effective way.”
Brown first mentioned administrative re-organization in a Jan. 12 letter to the BU community, in which he addressed actions BU was taking to reduce expenses and balance a predicted $10 million budget gap for fiscal year 2010.
In the letter, Brown said expense reduction efforts are focused on decreasing funding for inessential activities and reorganizing key administrative services to increase efficiency and remove redundancy.’
‘We are examining many services that have been organized traditionally unit-by-unit, but for which there are significant synergies from having more centralized organizations,’ he said. ‘Such services include publication and web-based production support, alumni and event functions, research administration, general financial administration, and information technology and desktop computer support.’
In a May 7 update letter, Brown said the task forces recommended changes in the model for delivering administrative services.’
‘They recommended that we explore the idea of reorganizing and clustering these and other services into specialized service centers that would be prepared to work with faculty, students, and staff across traditional departmental, school and college boundaries,’ he said.’
While these administrative clusters will not have a huge impact on the fiscal year 2010 budget, Brown said he expects a bigger effect in future years.’
‘I believe that administrative clusters offer a substantial opportunity for sustainable efficiency and expense reduction,’ he said. ‘As a result of these recommendations, this summer, we will launch several large-scale experiments to test the service cluster model.’
Students had mixed views on the potential changes.
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Jielin Yu said she thinks the consolidation is a good idea.
‘I think the university should go forward with it,’ she said. ‘[The surveys] are a good way to reach all the students.”
She said the different offices can share ideas and their interdependence would grow.
‘It would in turn provide a better experience for BU students,’ she said.
School of Management sophomore William Mancia disagreed.’
‘It’s a bad idea,’ he said. ‘The offices now are specific to each thing, but if you make them all one office, it takes away from their helpfulness in their respective areas.”
CAS junior Julie Liu said she thinks the motivation behind the change is mostly financial.
‘With all the recent economic frustrations and along with the increase in tuition every year, it’s harder,’ she said. ‘It all points in that it’s more financial than making it more convenient for us.’
However, she said, the change could have benefits.
‘If you were to combine all five of them I think it would be beneficial because you would have immediate access from one to another,’ she said. ‘I kind of have mixed feelings about it because while they are separate entities, they could benefit in that they’re all interrelated.’
Staff reporter Doug Odell contributed to the reporting of this article.
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