Jackson Hare, Campus News Editor

Xavier administration has launched the Sustaining Excellence project, where the consulting firm McKinsey & Company will conduct an eight-week investigation into the university’s performance.This will inform the university’s response to its $16 million budget deficit.

On Jan. 29, the Xavier administration, including President Colleen Hanycz, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Rachel Chrastil and Vice President for Institutional Strategy and Director of Athletics Greg Christopher hosted a town hall to launch this transformation project and inform faculty and staff what to expect in the coming weeks.

The goal of the Sustaining Excellence project is to conduct an eight-week diagnostic of the problems the university faces, their severity and then potential remedies.

Spearheads of this transformation process suggest that “strong headwinds against higher education as whole” are responsible for this budget deficit.

“In recent years, Xavier has faced challenging headwinds tied to several factors: a declining college-aged population, rising costs, a national narrative questioning the value of higher education and more. As a result, the institution’s core operation has run significant and unsustainable deficits as a stopgap,” the newly published Sustaining Excellence page on Xavier’s website reads.

Despite this deficit, the administration’s presentation highlighted that the university is still economically healthy.

“Xavier is annually ranked as one of the best universities in the nation, contributing close to $1B to Ohio’s economy in 2021-22, and our healthy cash balance, credit rating and strong endowment performance put us in the right financial position to pursue growth and cost efficiency,” their presentation to faculty and staff read.

Christopher, who is chairing this transformation process, stressed this point further.

“We currently have a structural or an operating deficit for the last two years, but come at it from an overarching position of institutional strength, we do have secure reserves that have been built up over time of organizational strong health. So, I don’t want anybody to have this picture that Xavier is in financial trouble… This is about improving Xavier’s overall performance and to put the university in a position to take advantage of future opportunities,” Christopher said.

“I think our retention, freshman to sophomore year, right now is 85-87%, and that’s just a tick below what we consider our institutional peers, say Dayton or Butler, some of the schools that look like us and our geography. So, where it jumps into the transformation work is this diagnostic work — the benchmarking exercise… What is it that we’re doing or that they’re doing that we could somehow improve in that space?” Christopher said. “That’s why we are going through this diagnostic, which is first and foremost collecting mountains of data about where the university is and how the university is performing right now.”

To help aid the university’s diagnostic process, Xavier hired the management consulting company McKinsey & Company for their higher education practice, paid for by two donors. There were five firms considered, but Mckinsey & Company’s practice emerged as the best option.

“They had the best approach or strategy that allowed for campus engagement and talking to as many students, faculty and staff as possible to make sure that the right input was into this,” Christopher said.

During the presentation at the town hall, McKinsey & Company’s Responsible Partner Duwain Pinder addressed controversies related to the consulting firm’s previous work.

According to the New York Times, in 2021, the company agreed to a $573 million settlement in response to investigations into its role in the opioid crisis for its work with pharmaceutical and drug making companies.

“I want to express sincere disappointment and frustration with some of the clients McKinsey has served in the past and on the topics we have served on. Since those instances have occurred, McKinsey has made significant changes to its governance, client selection process and its standards globally…Neither myself, any of the members of the McKinsey Xavier team members you will meet nor any members of the McKinsey education practice leadership are involved in the instances that have been reported,” Pinder said.

During the last 15 minutes of the town hall, faculty and staff shared their concerns and asked questions. Of the three audience members who participated in the Q&A, two of them raised concerns about what potential outcomes may be for faculty.

Associate Professor in Sustainability, Global Cultures History and the Williams College of Business Suparna Chatterjee was one of the three.

“What I wanted to signal is that morale is low. There is a pay freeze. There is fear that jobs will be cut… So, I wish you success with this, but I do want (the administration) to speak to this general feeling of anxiety on campus and to address that in a very honest way. I think it has been addressed, but I just want to hear a bit more about what the administration is doing in terms of understanding the real fear that people on this campus have,” Chatterjee said.

“The points she rattled off there are all valid, important and real,” Christopher said in response. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing right now, standing up here and walking everyone through the process, and being as transparent as we possibly can.”

Christopher spoke further on the concern about faculty losing their jobs in a later interview.

“I think it’s way too early to jump to any kind of conclusion with this. Again, we’re just in the middle of the diagnostic right now collecting where we stand. I think it’s uncertain as to where we stand relative to our peers in that way,” Christopher said.

Hanycz also responded to Chatterjee’s concerns following Christopher’s response.

“The flip side of that is not moving forward with change and uncertainty…Certainly not having improvement, certainly not being in a position to recognize the contributions of our colleagues properly, certainly not being in a position to better support the success of our students — students who come here with dreams and who are not able to meet those dreams here,” Hanycz added.

Through the course of this eight-week diagnostic, administration and representatives with McKinsey & Company will meet and discuss with students and faculty on several occasions. 

In an effort to help facilitate transparency and education throughout this process, Newswire will continue to share details as the transformation proceeds.

“The points she rattled off there are all valid, important and real,” Christopher responded. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing right now, standing up here and walking everyone through the process, and being as transparent as we possibly can.”

Christopher extrapolated further on the concern about faculty losing their jobs in a later interview.

“I think it’s way too early to jump to any kind of conclusion with this. Again, we’re just in the middle of the diagnostic right now collecting where we stand. I think it’s uncertain as to you where we stand relative to our peers in that way,” Christopher said.

Hanycz also responded to Chatterjee’s concerns following Christopher’s response.

“The flip side of that is not moving forward with change and uncertainty… Certainly not having improvement, certainly not being in a position to recognize the contributions of our colleagues properly, certainly not being in a position to better support the success of our students — students who come here with dreams and who are not able to meet those dreams here,” Hanycz added.

Through the course of this eight week diagnostic, administration and representatives with McKinsey & Company will meet and discuss with students and faculty on several occasions. 

In an effort to help facilitate transparency and education throughout this process, Newswire will continue to share details as the Sustaining Excellence transformation proceeds.