Opportunity Costs Knock

Charging the School of Education for offices is a good first step;

however, we can pick up the pace.

.............

Upon learning that some creative accountant was dunning the School of Education for square feet assigned to faculty offices, many colleagues were

briefly awakened from their campus comas

as affronted as they were taken aback. These colleagues err. Accountants and the administrators who direct them reveal to the university a cunning conceit tantalizing opportunity.

Opportunity is knocking in the form of charging for opportunity costs, so don't knock opportunity costs or Ebeneezer Scrooge’s demeanor beforehand. Embrace the horror opportunity costs. Opportunity costs are ways in which to screw over our friends.

No more than a A moment's reflection will suggest the genius behind assigning opportunity costs to the Ed School to make the Ed School seem less profitable, hence more harvestable to suit the economic well-being of the remainder of the campus, and costlier. Administrators and accountants concoct wholly fictitious recognize hitherto unsuspected debits that they then assign to targeted unitsof what more than once has been called a community. [Of course, calling a corporate entity a community does not make a corporate entity a community. Indeed, that one must invoke the meme signals that one knows that little or no actual community exists.]

Crass as it is, the This accounting fantasy practice does not go far enough. We are missing opportunities! Let’s get to it!

First, let us consider opportunities to

imperil inform

every department, program, school, and unit:

1. For example, why settle for two-dimensional opportunity when three-dimensional opportunities lie about like full professors? Every member of the faculty and staff should be debited for cubic space assigned to him or her. If I were paying to the ceiling tiles, I’d use at least seven vertical feet of my office. Let’s give me some incentives to maximize productivity. Whether I move in suspended work stations or not, my department should be billed as if spammers and telemarketers were working in the lofts.

2. And what of my office phone? While I am bloviating captive audiences in lecturing my classes, a telemarketer could be turning my office telephone to profit. Bill me for the revenues I deliberately forego by leaving my office fallow when I leave my office! If I do not pay up, bill my department.

3. Most faculty get to their offices after 9:00 7:00 a.m. and leave before 4:006:00 p.m. Some faculty do not visit their offices at all from Friday through the ensuing Monday inclusive. Assign departments the revenue that they could make from subletting offices when faculty are not occupying them. Indeed, departments should encourage all members to secure carrels in Collins Library so that faculty offices may be sublet 24/7.

4. Harned/Thompson faculty must keep their laboratories active. Charge science departments for times during which labs are not used. Apply a rate commensurate with a meth comparable labs.

5. Whether departments are soliciting kickbacks for grades and honors or not, departments should be billed at a standard rate for grades above C and for anything that ends “cum laude.” Departments should auction grades and honors to instruct undergraduates in the glories of the free market.

6. Naturally, the newer the building the higher the room rate should be. Denizens of McIntyre cannot be expected to pony up at the same rate as those who work in newer facilities, even shoddier facilities like Wyatt Hall. Charge departments for all upgrades and improvements.

With the above and other charges, each unit of the university may be driven to bankruptcy on paper disciplined by fiscal realities. Then administrators and accountants may shed any units they do not care for quietly, civilly update various university subdivisions. Garnish some wages for noisy faculty and those Most faculty will go quietly for dimes on the dollar doubtless appreciate and profit from the information.