Five-Year Review of the Budget Model at Rutgers

June 24, 2021
 
Dear Rutgers Faculty and Staff,
 
Last fall, I charged a university-wide committee to review the effectiveness of the Rutgers budget model, known as responsibility center management (RCM), and make recommendations for areas of improvement.

This RCM review committee, composed of faculty, deans, and administrators, conducted a wide-ranging review that included extensive engagement with shared governance bodies and groups of faculty and staff to solicit feedback and recommendations, as well as a university-wide survey on perceptions and challenges related to the current budget model.

The committee’s report, which you can read here, offers a candid and direct summary of the challenges associated with the budget model. More important, it offers pragmatic, actionable recommendations for improving RCM at Rutgers. In particular, the committee points to critical work ahead to create a more explicit connection between our academic priorities and the budget model and to clarify and reduce the complexity of the model to foster growth in research and interdisciplinary collaborations. To our great collective benefit, the report also reveals an academic and administrative community that is deeply invested in strengthening our institution.

I want to express my gratitude to the entire committee and to the many who contributed to its discussions and deliberations. I want to thank Brian Ballentine, senior vice president for university strategy, Romayne Botti, vice chancellor for finance at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and Ashwani Monga, provost and executive vice chancellor at Rutgers University-Newark, for leading this challenging project. I look forward to the work to come as the university moves to assessing, modeling, and implementing the many outstanding recommendations the committee has produced.

 
Sincerely,
 
Jonathan Holloway
President and University Professor