UNT examines Responsibility Center Management

The finance and business affairs office recently put together a 27-member committee to explore implementing Responsibility Center Management at UNT. With universitywide representation, the committee includes six representatives named by the Faculty Senate and two named by the Staff Council.

RCM is a decentralized approach to financial management designed to give more areas across campus greater control and responsibility for the university's budget process, while also making the budget process more transparent.

"UNT is considering the model because it would place more budgetary control in the academic units where teaching and research occurs, and all campus units would incur the rewards and risks of the decisions they make that impact university revenues and costs," says President Norval Pohl.

Under an RCM model, a responsibility center (possibly a college or school) could keep a significant portion of the funds it generates instead of having all revenues flow through a centralized university budget.

The committee, which began its work in December, is charged with developing an RCM model for UNT. It will make a series of recommendations about the structure of responsibility centers, cost and revenue allocation, subvention funds (money provided by the provost and/or president as base funding, in support of excellence, and for new initiatives consistent with the academic plan), reserves management, budget control and a phase-in strategy.

The committee aims to complete its work of designing an RCM model this summer. If Pohl approves the recommendations and model design, the budget office will work toward producing reports to show the effect of RCM on the university's responsibility centers next fall. A decision about whether UNT implements RCM could then be made in the spring of 2006.

To learn more about RCM, visit www.unt.edu/president/initiatives/rcm2.htm.

BY KELLEY REESE kreese@unt.edu

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