The story reporting that Rutgers has hired Huron Consulting is in northjersey.com, but behind a paywall. I was looking up something else when I saw the headline.
SIAP -- Rutgers has hired consultant on boosting athletic revenue
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northjersey.com and nj.com should hire them too to boost their income.
There are two "investigative" reporters who seem to be on schedule to "report" the wasteful spending and inequitable spending for male/female sports at Rutgers every 2-3 months. I have detailed their track record of shoddy "investigative" reporting in other areas. The story on inequitable spending was laughable. They seem to forget that football and men's basketball makes the large majority of revenue for athletics in both ticket sales and the large sums of money coming in through the media rights deals. The media rights deals are not driven by volleyball, women's rowing and other Title IX sports, which would not be funded but for the media rights money. This is not a statement against Title IX, it is a simple reality. But these two investigative simpletons leave out inconvenient facts to continue to do what NJ reporters love to do- bash Rutgers.
And then Jerry Carino, the hoops beat guy, will lash out at people on Twitter when they complain that many of his stories are behind a paywall. I will pay nothing for the media "exposure" of the NJ rags. They could all go out of business, and nobody would notice.
She's nuts. Met her at a political event.
Maybe she would understand better if we give the coaches tenure instead of contracts.
Usually businesses pay these consultants 6 or 7 figures to tell them to raise prices and cut corners. I'll do it for a lot less.
Ooooohhhhhh the money we would have if we never used any of these consultants.
I say this for not only RU athletics but in our business lives as well.
I say this for not only RU athletics but in our business lives as well.
winning solves everything - do I have that motto correct? I've been attributing that wisdom to this board.
I would be impressed if the hire was a social media consultant whose job is to get the boards to offer free advice.
I would be impressed if the hire was a social media consultant whose job is to get the boards to offer free advice.
If it's just for the recently announced KOR campaign none of those firms would handle anything that small. I google them and they seem to have some experience in that area.
https://www.huronconsultinggroup.com/insights/5-actions-universities-can-take
I was working for Coopers & Lybrand when they merged with Price Waterhouse. They paid some consulting firm in Chicago $16 million to come up with the new name of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
It's reasons like this that make me not want to donate to RU athethics. It's hard to claim poverty and beg for donations when you're going to pay some overpriced consulting firm hundreds of thousands to figure out how to ask for even more donations or how to raise prices.
The fee structure could have been negotiated at $1M per letter which might have been a good deal at the time. Just think, the consultant let them keep "oopers" in there gratis. They would've otherwise stopped at the catchier PricewaterhouseC. 😊
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This is great news.
At least it shows the AD recognized it needs to get their shit together.
Clean up the wasteful spending and inefficient processes so we can start competing with the rest of the league (specifically in football).
To quote "Margin Call" there are 3 ways to win:
We need to be (and spend) smarter than everyone else in the Big Ten.
At least it shows the AD recognized it needs to get their shit together.
Clean up the wasteful spending and inefficient processes so we can start competing with the rest of the league (specifically in football).
To quote "Margin Call" there are 3 ways to win:
- Be smarter
- Be first
- Cheat
We need to be (and spend) smarter than everyone else in the Big Ten.
Funny enough - we could have been one of the first to adopt an open, fast pace "Big 12" offense over a decade ago but refused ("we need a slow conservative NorthEast football team!!!")
Huron is specifically called out in the OP.
Not saying a top tier (or even next tier) management consultant wouldn't take this assignment but I think Huron is a previously retained consultant by Rutgers and they might be engaged under a master agreement. IIRC, Huron may have been the consultant that provided a strategic academic peer assessment for Rutgers several years ago and/or an athletic facilities assessment to supplement the B1G build campaign.
You do when your goal is $1 billion or more and your development office only recently entered the Post-WWII era. Has nothing to do with raising prices. And unless it's part of a larger contract than KOR, I hardly think the price will be hundreds of thousands. Hell, Harvard and Yale still retain consultants for large campaigns. They just do more in-house than in the past.
What I've learned over the years is many times the consultants will just tell you what you want to hear.
Think of all The Synergy though.
Plus, they'll teach fancy new phrases for doing the same ol same ol.
Just having them in the building raises credibility.
Oh, I thought I said. It's Huron Consulting. I've never heard of them before.
You are exactly correct. I googled Huron and found they have a master agreement with Rutgers. I'm not sure about the academic peer assessment, but you could be right. Rutgers did do an assessment comparing it to other Big Ten schools, and used it as a basis for its master plan (which basically funds what the administration wants to fund).
I play crappy music over the sound system, and once in a while a Nittany Lion roar!!!
Consultant- that entity you hire when your management is incompetent, and/or doesn't have the brains or the guts to make hard decisions. Then, they can point to the consultant report that they followed when things blow up. The managers and consultants win, while everybody else loses. Glad I left big corporation life.
Couldn't agree more. 90% of consulting is a total waste of company money and is used by management to justify their decisions when they turn out terrible in the future.
Consultants themselves some of the most egotistical as well. Few have actually worked at or ever ran a corporation they claim to be able to offer advice too. No one cares you can put together a porter 5 forces model and state the obvious.
A large majority of the problems in corporations and corporate entities like Universities revolve around:
1. Lazy employees who need to be fired.
2. Entitled employees who need to work harder to get ahead instead of whining about their lot in life
3. Scared employees and managers who are afraid to speak their mind or identify the real problems out of fear that doing so will offend someone's notion of fairness or some new, evolving protected group or societal norm.
4. Inability of employees and managers to confront someone else with even the simplest of problems, and spending time and effort causing distraction, division and rancor complaining over the problem.
Knight Shift consulting is available to solve these problems. Our four point plan will eliminate all four problems and set your organization on a path to excellence.
You gonna fire Pike who brought RU back from the basketball wilderness? You gonna to fire Brecht, who took RU men's lacrosse to the NCAA quarterfinals and Final Four Weekend in successive years? First time they had made the tourney in a decade. You gonna fire Hobbs who has moved RU up to respectability in the D1 overall rankings? And that's not even going into the success of the women's sports outside of hoops?
But never let facts get in the way of a good rant.
“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.”
W. Edwards Deming
I'm a huge fan of W. Edwards Deming, and he is correct. I should have a #5:
Ineffective management and systems and managers who are only interested in their own advancement instead of advancing the interests of the organization and the employees they supervise.
And as a union president, she only cares about lining her pockets with as much money via union dues as possible.
No need to hire a consultant. Just read these message boards.
Large organizations hire a ton of ppl and spend a lot of money to paper over the shitty processes they have built over the years. Instead of taking the learnings and insight that they can get from other successful organizations, management wants consultants to point the finger at anyone but them. So... the consultants do it... for a very significant fee of course.
