GUEST COLUMN: "A numbers game"

Scott Savitz says chaos now reigns in the name of efficiency, thanks to 26-digit budget codes mandated by I was recently informed that my graduate group's purchases, from nails to computers, will now require a 26-digit code to specify our purchasing account. Taken alone, the introduction of these codes as part of the new FinMIS financial management system represents only a small drag on efficiency. However, given that this is an addition to a litany of existing administrative burdens, it appears to be the beginning of renewed growth in bureaucratic encumbrances her e at Penn. It is slightly surprising that the complexities of the University's accounts require no fewer than 26 digits. The old six-digit account codes provided for up to one million different account numbers, which would enable every student and employee of the University to have nearly 40 distinct accounts. Only seven digits are needed to provide unique telephone numbers for every office, home, and fax in Philadelphia and some of its suburbs. The Social Security Administration uses nine digits to specify every person in this country; it has done so since its inception during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, without yet needing to re-use the numbers of deceased Americans. Ten digits would provide 10 billion distinct account numbers, so that every person on Earth could have two of his or her own. I understand that part of the reason for the account codes' prodigious length is that they indicate the school, department and professor with which each account is associated. Even so, a 26-digit code entails a great deal of redundancy. Two digits should suffice to characterize up to 100 different schools, should the University grow so large; three additional digits would provide for each school to have up to 1,000 different departments. Three more digits would allow for a unique number for up to 1,000 individual professors within each department; if a professor should require as many as 10 separate accounts, appending just one more digit would provide each of these with a distinct number. Thus, with just nine digits, accounts could be specified for a University many times larger than our own. Having to write 26 digits on a regular basis is a nuisance for individual purchasers, who surely have better ways of utilizing their spare moments. For business administrators and stockroom managers, however, the new system represents a serious infringement on their ability to get work done. Typing in 26 digits -- and dealing with the typographical errors that will inevitably ensue -- promises to be a time-consuming activity that will exacerbate existing barriers to information transfer around the University. If the intent of developing 26-digit codes is to reduce productivity and thereby create jobs, it is an admirable policy indeed. It is difficult to believe that at least some of Penn's administrative institutions and procedures are not developed with this aim in mind. Despite the emergence of widespread computer technology and other mechanisms for improving efficiency, this University's bureaucracy has mushroomed over the last two decades, although the student population has remained relatively constant. The university receives approximately $1 million per year in graduate tuition from my department of Chemical Engineering alone, as well as several times this sum in undergraduate tuition. Only a small fraction of this money is returned to each department, in the form of faculty salaries, building upkeep, and utilities; most of it disappears into University coffers, where it pays for some necessary administrative structures, but also a great many that reduce, rather than enhance, academic productivity. Bureaucracies are by their nature self-promoting, and few checks exist upon them. Like any biological phenomenon, their overriding tendency is to grow. Much has been made of late (by both political parties) of gross inefficiencies in, and caused by, government; one can only imagine how dangerous government would become if it could successfully raise taxes just a few percentage points each year. In some respects, this is the situation in which universities find themselves today, when tuitions rise so rapidly and seemingly without limit. I write about my frustrations with the new budget system for several reasons. Partly, I hope that bringing monstrosities such as the new 26-digit codes to the attention of the general public will help to avert future administrative fiascos, by tempering the colossal hubris of the persons responsible for this idea. (I have no illusions that 26-digit codes, however unwieldy, will be scrapped while their progenitors are still employed by the university.) To a great extent, though, I am impelled by sheer curiosity about the reasoning behind this new policy, and the mathematical backgrounds of those who created it. I look forward to learning more about their perspective in future issues of the Daily Pennsylvanian.