An Analysis of the Teaching Costs and Productivity for Selected Academic Units

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A review of four academic units has been initiated under the auspices of " Stewarding Excellence " at the University of Illinois. The review includes a central set of questions regarding whether the consolidation or merger of small units into larger units would generate increased administrative efficiencies. This report provides a systematic method for answering such a question by comparing four small units with 18 comparison departments over a nine year period. The analysis offers clear conclusions on this matter. The overarching finding is that two of the four small units (Media and Social Work) are presently more efficient than comparable departments embedded in larger units, so consolidation would not be expected to generate any savings; one of the units (Labor and Employment Relations) could generate modest savings from consolidation ($51,000-$92,000) and one unit (Library and Information Sciences) would have no savings associated with non-faculty reductions, but could realize substantial savings in faculty efficiencies relative to other comparable departments by increasing class sizes (a change that could be made without consolidation). The specifics of the analysis are as follows: 1. This report presents the results of a statistical analysis of teaching costs and productivity for 22 academic units at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign for nine academic years beginning with AY2000-2001. The sample of units include four units (College of Media, and Schools of Library and Information Science, Labor and Employment Relations and Social Work) that have been identified as small units on campus that might be consolidated into larger units and 18 departments with connections to the social sciences that are already located in three different colleges (business, LAS & ACES). These 18 departments were chosen because their locations in larger colleges provides a comparison group of departments for estimating what might be saved by consolidating one or more of the small units. The statistical analysis of data from the 18 departments and the four small units is used to derive estimates of the specific economic savings that might be gained by consolidation. Most of the discussion focuses on the cost per "instructional unit" (Cost/IU) and "instructional units" per total FTE, per Faculty FTE and per academic professional and civil service FTE. Most of the data used in the analysis is posted on the "Campus Profile" web page (www.dmi.illinois.edu/cp/) for each of the 22 units. 2. The economic savings to the campus from consolidating one or more of …