Book Review of "Reengineering the University: How to be Mission Centered, Market Smart, and Margin Conscious"

Massy, William F. (2016). Reengineering the university: How to be mission centered, market smart, and margin conscious. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pages: 288. Price: 41.34 CDN (hardcover).It is my opinion that the single most important issue facing universities, nay, higher education, in North America, is the of cost. From escalating salaries, driven by inflation, to increased pressures to replace reductions in funding, from endowments and government, the balancing of the post-secondary budget has become exceptionally complex. This would be a daunting task if each institution were made up of a single academic unit. of managing institutional budgets when faculties inside the university are varied and unique, is tortuous (Aziz, Shuib, Aziz, Tawil & Nawawi, 2013). William Massy, in his book, Reengineering the university: How to be mission centered, market smart, and margin conscious, approaches this head on.Massy has done an excellent job of explaining the interaction between the university budget, which creates the margin, or the financial return on investment, and the role of teaching and learning being core to the university mission. He spends considerable time helping integrate and resolve the two dimensions of mission and margin. This is not an easy read. technical details are rich and there are many financial concepts that, although Massy takes the time to explain, are complicated. To follow his arguments requires the reader to pay close attention to some very complex financial and higher education concepts. This said, the work is tantalizing in the approach towards improving the university.Reengineering the university is five chapters, plus a conclusion. These six chapters provide the reader with a toolkit that may be used to examine the academic work, primarily teaching, that occurs in post-secondary. Massy is not unfamiliar with the dynamics within a post-secondary institution. Working at Stanford University, he is a former pro- fessor and dean, and served as the chief financial officer. These various experiences provided him with the knowledge and experience to provide an informed analysis that seeks to teach. He states early in his preface:I have tried to combine my analytical knowledge as a microeconomist and management scientist with my many years of experience as a professor, university officer, and consultant to produce a work that is both analytical in approach and intuitive in delivery. (p. ix)The first chapter, Understanding the traditional describes the need for reform due to escalating costs, especially the increased cost of instruction and the reduction in confidence in higher education by the public. Massy explains how universities are different from private enterprise and how the attempt to use the variables of a market economy has not worked for helping to improve the efficiency of universities. He also describes how these differences have resulted in universities engaging in various behaviours that do not work. Massy makes the argument that we've reached a critical juncture where faculty are both accepting that a problem exists and are ready to embrace change. He closes by making the case for strengths of the traditional university, including challenging, cultivating and growing young minds; contributing to research and scholarship; and using the existing infrastructure of campuses, buildings, and human resources.Chapter two, The reengineering challenge provides several reasons that reform is both difficult and has largely failed. This view is not unique, as other have stated that there is a need for research evidence to inform higher education; too often policy and change are due to anecdotal evidence or even beliefs (Levin, 2010). Massy speaks to flaws in the current university that underlie the reasons for the current situation:overcentralization of teaching activity, unmonitored joint production, dissociation of educational quality from cost, lack of good learning metrics, and overreliance on market forces. …

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