McKinsey Arts and Sciences Report

The McKinsey Report was a document produced by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in summer 2011 which recommended changes to the administrative structure of Columbia University. The controversy over the report revolved around the plan to further integrate Columbia College and other schools into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, led at the time by Executive Vice President of Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks. The report was popularized among the Columbia community after Moodygate, when former Columbia College Dean Michelle Moody-Adams suddenly announced that she would be leaving her post in wake of concerns over transformations in "the administrative structure in Arts and Sciences."

A summary of the McKinsey Report, obtained by the Columbia Daily Spectator is available here.

Report Content

Revenue

As the summary makes clear, some of the main recommendations from the report aimed to increase revenue. The Spectator article states that "McKinsey’s report was commissioned in part to help administrators eliminate a budget deficit that has plagued A&S for the last few years."

=No Loan Policy

The McKinsey Report recommended that Columbia's financial aid office consider bringing loans back into its official policy for assembling aid packages. Columbia eliminated loans in its package for families earning less than $50,000 a year beginning in the 2007-2008 academic year, and eliminated loans entirely the year after. In an effort to increase revneue,