Thank you for re-electing me as your Member at Large in AAPS Board! I look forward to working with you to safeguard AAPS members job security and increase re-hiring rate!

Yes, there are many AAPS members in UBC. To date, there are roughly 3800 AAPS members and AAPS the is the largest employee group in UBC.

But some people are not happy with that. Former president Dr. Arvind Gupta expressed concerns on growing AAPS members. After his mysterious resignation,  a report from Globe and Mail accused management and professional staffs to be blamed for Dr Gupta’s departure (he did not explicitly say AAPS, but based on his words, such as “In 2009-10, this group totalled 2,903; in five years it had ballooned to 3,640 – an eye-popping increase of 25 per cent. “, we know Gary Mason, the reporter, is putting AAPS on fire).

I am glad to see the editor realized Gary Mason, intentionally or unintentionally, made a huge mistake when comparing staff to faculty ration in UBC and UoT (please see Editor’s note at the end of the report).

However, this report indicates an urgent issue that AAPS members must take it seriously: how to advocate the importance of our work in UBC?  Yes, the number of AAPS members grows fast and AAPS is the largest employee group in UBC. But it came with good reason. How do we make other people understand those good reasons?

Cost recovery model is a common practice in many universities. But cost recovery model in centralized cost-centers in universities is not common, especially when such cost-centers only deal with internal university units (in today’s Market Society, we can internal units “clients”).

In UBC, centralized cost-centers, for example, UBC IT, usually only serves internal clients (I hate to call internal academic or administrative units “clients” but this the practice). Cost recovery model here makes little difference to university, because at university’s finance level, UBC IT’s cost recovery revenue is basically all  from other units’ operating budgets. It is like moving money from one pocket to another.

However, by employing this model, much unnecessary work are added to staffs both at UBC IT and UBC IT’s clients.  A great amount of time that otherwise can be used to better serve internal clients was spent on less meaning full work. Some types of routine work include invoicing, collecting payment, etc.

The practice of cost recovery model for internal centralized cost-centers is based on a few arguments,

1. Cost recovery model saves money
2. Cost recovery model improves efficiency (and in turn, saves money, too)
3. Cost recovery model makes server providers (eg: UBC IT) more accountable to their work

Do you agree with those arguments? Personally, I agree with neither.

I firmly believe cost recovery model for centralized cost-centers in UBC is questionable and university senior leadership team should revisit this practice. The bottom line is, UBC should have a thorough review of this model to compare it with budget model.