The Consultants
You know that the higher-education consultant has entered the zeitgeist when a higher-education consulting firm puts out a report that assesses, yes, the effectiveness of consultants in higher education.
Perhaps only because of the rancor that often arises when their proposals hit campus, their names have become familiar: Accenture, Bain, EY (formerly Ernst & Young), Huron, McKinsey, and Pricewaterhouse Cooper. And let’s not leave out the Education Advisory Board, the firm that produced the report assessing consulting firms’ work. Its conclusion? After looking at nearly two-dozen “engagements"—excluding its own—EAB found that the hired guns all seemed to be working from the same playbook and that the results of their efforts—for all the millions expended by their clients—were at best “mixed.”
If that is indeed a fair assessment today (the report came out in the spring of 2014), more’s the pity. Because it’s hard to argue that colleges and universities still don’t need the help. Faced with cost-conscious students, flagging state support, and challenging student-demographic trends, just about every college leader in the nation is searching for the miracle cure-all that will reduce spending and open up new streams of revenue.
Or several, in the case of an institution like the University of Kansas at Lawrence, which is now in various stages of instituting nearly a dozen major organizational changes recommended by its consultant, Huron.
Yet seemingly more often than not, when the consultants from these national firms show up promoting money-saving approaches—like a “shared services” approach to administrative management (Accenture at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Texas at Austin), a restructuring of human-resources operations (Deloitte at the public universities in Iowa), or an academic reorganization (McKinsey at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system)—their proposals are met with resistance and distrust. In Minnesota, tensions ran so deep that two unions representing faculty members voted in October to discontinue working with McKinsey on the system’s “Charting the Future” plan.
One area where consultants do seem to be making clear impact is with recommendations concerning purchasing, but that’s probably only because most colleges are so far behind in their procurement practices that even the consultants’ standard suggestions, such as centralizing purchases with preferred vendors, can quickly pay off with demonstrable savings.
Consultants are hardly new to higher education. Some of them have been in this market for decades. What is new may be the extent to which colleges are turning to them for advice. Enrollment management, student services, research administration, international-student recruiting, marketing, even libraries—they are now all fodder for the consultants’ makeover. Recently, two firms, Huron and the Advisory Board, have moved beyond giving advice to delivering more core services by buying part or all of companies that specialize in student recruitment.
And if the moves by Deloitte and EY are any indication—those firms have recently beefed up their higher-education practices—the consulting activity is only likely to intensify.
As Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a Cornell University higher-education scholar, has noted, college leaders hire consultants when they “want someone to take the heat.” Considering the challenges ahead, the need for those services isn’t likely to cool anytime soon.
—Goldie Blumenstyk
