Before boosting Penn State funding, cut administration: PennLive letters

[Keyser Soze 16801]

LINK

Penn State President Eric Barron wants taxpayers to provide Penn State with more funding.
But given the university's dubious financial track record, Barron needs
to convince legislators that he will manage money wisely. Here are
three straightforward steps that could build confidence....

 

[psu00]

Yep. I can think of 1 big salary to cut- Dave "Judas" Joyner. Talk about a complete waste of money for a few years now done to buy off his actions by the BoT. I'm sure there's plenty more. Frankly, PSU has never been good on 'controlled spending' side- just always asking for/ demanding more money.

 

[psuguy04]

PSU has an opportunity to reduce admin costs

Project LionPath is going to replace the current student/administrative information system on which nearly everything at the university runs. The old system is out of the Stone Age, and many administrative "work arounds" will be corrected.

Couple that with the large number of employees who may retire in the next 3-5 years, PSU could be looking at reducing costs by a substantial margin.

Will they do it, or will they hire more associate vice assistant director provosts? Who knows.

 

[Keyser Soze 16801]

Re: PSU has an opportunity to reduce admin costs

Originally posted by psuguy04:

Will they do it, or will they hire more associate vice assistant director provosts? Who knows.

My money is on hiring more associate vice assistant director provosts

 

[martypsu]

Demand refunds from Freeh, Mitchell, Davis etc

Stop pissing money away on settlements

 

[PhillipintheValley]

Re: PSU has an opportunity to reduce admin costs

LionPath is only the student system. The HR system and financial system will also be updated over the next 5 years. You are right, there is an opportunity to find efficiencies. I'm a member of a F&B strategic plan committee that is doing just that.

 

[dwiz]

Agreed. Joyner is a failure in his profession, as an acting AD and

in life. Cut him off the payroll immediately. Why should we have to pay into his pension for the rest of his life because he was the only loser on the BOT who bankrupted himself and unemployed when the shit hit the fan? Freaking sleeping on Lubert's couch one day and penn state athletic director the next? With zero qualifications? Yeah psu, send me more donation requests...

 

[psuguy04]

Philip, question for you

How are your unit(s) planning for the LionPath and other changes with regards to staffing?

I've worked with this vendor's software before and it's far from a Panacea. With that said, getting rid of ISIS/IBIS/etc. will help a lot of things with regards to staffing.

Some units seem to be genuinely concerned about "too many" people retiring and having to replace/manage that loss of knowledge. Do you see things as evening out, do you see layoffs in places, or do you see a need to hire more people in some areas to replace those who retire? I heard a stat from someone connected to central HR that as much as 25% of the administrative staff across PSU is looking at retirement.

 

[Keyser Soze 16801]

Re: Demand refunds from Freeh, Mitchell, Davis etc

Originally posted by martypsu:
Stop pissing money away on settlements

The party line of course is that insurance will reimburse PSU but anyone with a half a brain knows this to be false

 

[PhillipintheValley]

Re: Philip, question for you (long)

LionPath won't affect the F&B side of the house as significantly has the HCM and new IBIS systems will.

The HCM system is being implemented around a huge HR transformation effort that will centralize a lot of the HR functions that are being preformed de-centrally. I believe they expect to find efficiencies in doing so, but it remains to be seen if the HR transformation project will actually result if reducing positions. The IBIS replacement is also going to be done in conjunction with a transformation of business processes effort. That process is at the very beginning stages, and I don't know if it will come with an expectation of reducing positions. Instead, it is more likely that the focus will be on creating more efficient processes that may result in needing fewer people.

One o the benefits of enterprise systems is that are to be the repository of corporate knowledge, at least that is a sales point. It is very hard to institutionalize in an IT system the accumulated knowledge of your staff. There is hope that the newer systems that we implement will help to do that.

You are correct that a large percentage of PSU employees will be eligible for retirement in the next 5-10 years. I'm in that group myself. It is a significant concern. Penn State can't compete on salary with private industry, yet in many areas, mine included, we are competing for staff with the corporate for profit world. The University has relied on people wnating to work at PSU for quality of life issues and for the great benefits. However, those advantages aren't as great as they used to be and we are finding it becoming harder to attract candidates to positions. I've had a manager's position open in my area for almost a year whcih I have been unable to fill, in part due to salary.

Originally posted by psuguy04:
How are your unit(s) planning for the LionPath and other changes with regards to staffing?

I've worked with this vendor's software before and it's far from a Panacea. With that said, getting rid of ISIS/IBIS/etc. will help a lot of things with regards to staffing.

Some units seem to be genuinely concerned about "too many" people retiring and having to replace/manage that loss of knowledge. Do you see things as evening out, do you see layoffs in places, or do you see a need to hire more people in some areas to replace those who retire? I heard a stat from someone connected to central HR that as much as 25% of the administrative staff across PSU is looking at retirement.

 

[bmusser24]

the benefits definitely aren't as good as they used to be.