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Shared university services ‘snake oil’: opinion
The fashion in universities and other public sector organisations for 'shared services' did not spring from nowhere.
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“The idea of each school or faculty having its own IT department and facilities is simply ludicrous.”
Actually, even this simple assumption on centralization of services is not so clear cut. For example, Computer Science departments greatly benefit from controlling their own IT resources. This allows CS students to hack, attack, and break things as part of their learning that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do in a centralized IT system.
This is a surprisingly accurate assessment of many services at University inlcuding building works where building costs are inflated to the nth degree from they ought to be – any cost savings are totally obliterated altogether and acedmic stff are then asked to make further sacrifies thanks to a urine-weak NTEU…
Two points:
1. Your back of envelope calculation is flawed – unless I work at the only institution where academics work well beyond their reimbursed hours?
2. Even better than shared services are integrated services where teams of experienced and skilled professional staff are replaced by generalists, who are expected to be able to help you find something in the library, help you with your visa application and address your IT questions etc. Good luck with that!