Making the Model Work
There was broad agreement that Temple must move to a budget model that allows leadership to make intentional, mission-based allocation decisions, rather than relying on historical spending patterns, incrementalism alone, or the continued expectation that revenue growth will solve structural inefficiencies. As the work of the Task Force has made clear, Temple must move beyond an “addiction to enrollment growth” as a substitute for structural discipline.
The proposed model is therefore not simply a technical change in allocation mechanics. The model is built around a simple principle: Temple should budget from centrally determined core allocations, informed by activity and performance, and adjusted through strategic institutional judgment—not through decentralized ownership of revenue streams. This principle is based on the premise that two primary revenue sources—undergraduate tuition and state appropriation—do not reflect the efforts of individual units.
When Temple transitions to the new model on July 1, a few things will happen immediately with the change
- Cost allocation pools will cease. The central costs assigned to responsibility units under RCM will now reside within base budgets in the administrative areas.
- Subvention and strategic initiative funds will be replaced by an overall base budget and limited strategic investment funds.
- Revenues will be pooled, not assigned to the colleges. They will factor into the allocation of base budgets in certain cases described below.
Annual Workbooks & Assessment
Each year our university support units are invited to submit a workbook to profile how the unit has leveraged the tools of the budget model to achieve excellence, support quality service and efficiency, and advance Temple's mission. The annual workbook serves a few purposes for us and came into being during FY2015 to chart progress and changes over time.
Workbooks are completed with the expectation that the content will be shared widely and especially with the deans and officers who are keenly interested in what we do and how we do it. The workbooks become evidence of the guiding principles in action where we demonstrate that our resources are closely aligned with mission, transparent in their use and outcomes, and decisions are accountable at the unit level.
The workbooks are also important to the Cost & Services Committee, and their role in evaluating the effectiveness of existing services provided by central units, reviewing and approving internal charges, and establishing a performance management framework for each service provider (including KPIs and SLAs where needed).
And finally, along with our assessment reports, these tools serve as evidence of the linkage between planning, resources and institutional improvement. Demonstration of how the department continuously ties assessment activities with resource allocation decisions, and shares widely how university priorities and investments in those priorities are connected, is how we contribute to the effort.