Workday and the excesses of higher-ed “efficiency” consultants

In higher ed, consulting fees and big technology buys go hand-in-hand with austerity.

In the last few months the Trump administration has filed two investigations against UW-Madison and attempted to cut federal National Institutes of Health grant funding. In response, Chancellor Jennifer Mnoonkin said in March that the school is “developing a range of scenarios for implementing budget cuts.” Rather than laying off staff or admitting fewer graduate students, one place the school (and the UW System more broadly) could look to save hundreds of millions of dollars is to cut its exorbitant spending on out-of-state business consultants and costly technology purchases. Additionally, in this time of attacks on faculty research, now UW System’s adoption of Workday further threatens researchers’ ability to do their work.

In December, I reported for WORT that the UW System, recently rebranded as the Universities of Wisconsin, spent over $121 million on contracts with private consulting firms between 2013 and 2024. A large chunk of this spending went to Huron Consulting for the rollout of a workforce technology program called Workday, sold by the publicly traded California-based company of the same name. 

One former UW System PeopleSoft support and administration professional, who asked to remain anonymous because they are still employed in the industry, describes technologies like Workday as “the central hub of all the human resources data which are used to manage and administer the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to retirement, and all the steps in between.” It’s a comprehensive software that the school will use to manage HR and finance, replacing a patchwork of other school and department specific processes. 

If we take the UW System’s pronouncements about Workday at face value, we would have to believe that it will “standardize and streamline finance, human resources, and research administration processes” and “make it easier for administrative staff to perform much of their work.” 

UW has a human resources and payroll sytem—it’s built on a software suite called PeopleSoft, a product of technology giant Oracle. It cost $78.6 million to implement back in 2012, and Huron was also the primary contractor responsible for implementing it. Back in 2009, UW System  leaders lauded PeopleSoft as “A 21st Century Business Solution.” They justified it in almost the same terms used to justify Workday today, calling it necessary to “modernize hundreds of business practices, integrate recordkeeping systems, eliminate redundancies, and better safeguard employees’ personal data.” 

No matter, the necessity and superiority of Workday is a foregone conclusion. Its launch is just part of the UW’s Administrative Transformation Program (ATP), a soon-to-be-completed project of remaking the UW into a model of organizational efficiency—with a price tag of $212 million. It’s a vision that requires the purchasing of expensive technologies to solve problems defined by consultants and high-level administrators. 

Faculty and staff have repeatedly voiced their concerns about the austerity across the UW System in their schools and in their unions; in publications including the Cap Times, Tone Madison, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Isthmus; and through professional organizations like the American Association of University Professors. When it comes to Workday, numerous UW-Madison staff I spoke with would not go on the record for fear of reprisal from their departments. But you wouldn’t know this if you just read the glossy language of UW press releases or in news articles that just reiterate UW System leadership’s language.

The UW System’s seemingly banal rollout of the beautifully bureaucratic Workday shows just how much public higher education in Wisconsin has been captured by corporate interests.

Years in the making

The story of the ATP and Workday goes back at least to the Scott Walker years, when Huron Consulting Group was contracted for roughly $3 million to study the UW System. In 2013, Huron delivered a report in which consultants recommended raising tuition by charging per credit hour, regionalizing or centralizing services like human resources and administration, streamlining financial aid workflows, and increasing online education. 

Huron’s rationale was organizational efficiency, yet the report noted that “There are no organizations from which to draw straight-forward comparisons or to evaluate benchmarks.” Other colleges and universities could have provided appropriate comparisons, but Huron had not yet solidified itself as a go-to consulting firm in the higher education market—at least not the the extent that it has since. Huron’s portfolio now includes the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins, American University, The New School, University of Connecticut, University of New Hampshire, University of Wyoming, and West Virginia University. As staff, faculty, and students at many of those schools have learned, layoffs quickly follow on the heels of Huron’s work. 

Since the 2013 report, the UW System Administration and Board of Regents have been responsive to Huron’s recommendations, ramping up online education, attempting to regionalize campuses, and consolidating administrative processes through the ATP. 

In the dark

In 2021 the Board of Regents approved a contract for Huron to install Workday to the tune of over $47 million. That amount does not even include the cost of the Workday software itself. 

It’s hard to find out how much Workday costs, but it is considered one of the most expensive options in the market of so-called “Human Capital Management” (HCM) software. After implementation, Workday charges a yearly subscription, calculated based on the number of employees at a company. In addition to the annual subscription and fees, full-time staff (or contractors) are necessary to maintain the software.

In 2023, Workday went live at the University of Washington, which has over 36,000 employees. The University of Washington pays over $9 million dollars annually for Workday, splitting these costs between individual organizational units or departments. For comparison, the UW System as a whole employs about 43,000 people.  

I reached out to UW System spokesperson Mark Pitsch for clarification on how much UW is spending on Workday. He explained in an email that “costs for initial startup of Workday and other software are about $21.8 million, funded mostly by UW-Madison and the UW’s administration.” He added that the annual costs for Workday for the UW System are about $7 million. Pitsch did not say whether the costs would be distributed to different work units.

Yet these numbers aren’t being clearly communicated to faculty, staff, or the public. At a UW-RIver Falls Faculty Senate meeting in February, campus administrators described the benefits of Workday but couldn’t say how much it would cost annually, says Neil Kraus, professor of political science at UW-River Falls and President of United Falcons, the campus branch of AFT-Wisconsin. “I asked how much Workday would cost annually, because I don’t think we’ve been told that yet, and I know that its annual costs will be excessive. But no one knew. It’s as if they hadn’t thought about that question,” Kraus says. And each time I reached out to campuses for comment, I was directed to UW System spokesperson, Mark Pitsch.

I also reached out to faculty and staff at the University of Washington to learn about how their recent transition to Workday is going. Jim Gawel, Associate Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma and chair of the Faculty Council on Research, says that though the personnel side of Workday seems to be functioning, the software has severely hindered the ability of researchers to manage their grants. 

Prior to Workday, the school used internal systems that were sufficient but were growing harder to maintain and keep secure. In those systems, faculty could track their own grants and reconcile their financials on a monthly basis. When the school made the switch to Workday, Gawel says, faculty lost the capability to check on their own grants, and faced other problems, like low functionality and unpaid vendor invoices. The system has created more work for staff and taken away researchers’ autonomy, says Gawel. 

These issues stemmed from the incompatibility of products like Workday, which was developed for the business sector, with the “intricacies of large grant-funded universities,” The Seattle Times reported in March 2024.

Gawel says that problems stemming from Workday have become so serious that, in a study by the Faculty Council on Research, “59% of faculty ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘somewhat agreed’ that the problems with Workday would make them consider working at another institution. And almost 50% of faculty have decreased the amount of grants they’ve applied for.” Gawel adds that given the growing issues at the federal level, the school needs a system that can adapt quickly, but it doesn’t have one in the current software. 

I also reached out to University of Washington administrators and was referred to Victor Balta, the University Spokesperson and Assistant VP for Communications, who said: “we won’t be able to accommodate an interview.”

Workday has faced other criticisms. It is the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit over workplace discrimination, because the AI software it uses to screen job applicants is allegedly biased on the basis of race, age, and disability. UW System spokesperson Mark Pitch says that the University of Wisconsin is not using Workday’s AI hiring software. But the UW will use other AI features in Workday. Perhaps if you attended this jazzed-up workshop, you might understand how. 

Workday lobbyists are also hard at work in statehouses across the country, “helping state legislators craft industry-friendly bills to regulate artificial intelligence,” the cybersecurity-focused news outlet The Record reported in 2024. So far these lobbyists haven’t turned up in Wisconsin. But elsewhere, worker’s rights advocates are concerned that Workday’s model legislation could give “employers and other private entities nearly unchecked power to set workplace and other AI norms with no independent audits,” The Record‘s Suzanne Smalley wrote.

Same song, different verse

UW administrators and Regents believe that technology is a solution to the perceived problem of inefficiency in higher education institutions. But as Kraus writes, “higher education… somehow doesn’t see massive expenditures on technology and consultants as inefficient.” 

Delays and added costs are characteristic of technology transfers, and the UW System has had at least three major transfers in the last two decades. Prior to PeopleSoft, the UW System purchased a product from Lawson Software for $26 million, and then scrapped the project years later before it was completed. 

Next came PeopleSoft, with its $78.6 million price tag. The Legislative Audit Bureau found in a 2014 report that two-thirds of the cost of the project went to consultants. Huron managed that implementation with 22 employees at $174/hr. That implementation was delayed and over budget. Meanwhile, Huron was overstating its earnings, and was later fined by the SEC for doing so. 

The story of delays and rising costs is true of Workday and the ATP as well. The UW System is a year past its originally planned July 2024 launch date for Workday, due to COVID and staffing issues. This time around, there are over 200 people working on the ATP. Pitsch says the majority of these folks are UW-Madison and UW System Administration staff. But at the same time the Board of Regents continues to approve amendments to contracts with Huron worth millions of dollars. 

In 2020, the Legislative Audit Bureau published a report that found several flaws with the UW System Administration’s planning process for ATP. According to the report, the UW System Administration did not seek the necessary approval from the Board of Regents before committing to “spending at least $10.6 million on the Preplanning project and leasing office space for 150 individuals.” The report also revealed that the UW spends between $11.4 and $21.1 million annually on IT systems. But the report notes that these numbers were supplied by a consultant without documentation on how the costs were calculated. 

The UW System is not transparent when it comes to how the ATP is being funded. Board of Regents public documents point to sources “internally available to UW-Madison and the UW System” and the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s Master Lease Program, which functions like a loan program for state agencies’ large IT projects. However, the Board of Regents budgets don’t break down these costs. According to Pitsch, the UW-Madison will contribute 65% of the cost and the Universities of Wisconsin will contribute 35%. Pitsch adds that of the total cost for ATP, only $3.5 million comes from the Master Lease Program.

You’ve gotta spend money to make money

Though the ATP and Workday expenses may be among the largest of UW’s recent technology investments, the UW continues to make other expensive purchases. We know that another major technology purchase, EAB Navigate (a CRM that purports to “Recruit, Retain, and Engage Students and Alumn”), will cost $22.4 million. In fall 2024, UW-Madison spent $1 million on a TV ad campaign that tried to reassure the public that the school isn’t elitist and overpriced. In 2023, the UW System became the Universities of Wisconsin via a nearly half-million dollar rebrand. Also in 2023, UW-Madison spent over $67,000 on Chancellor Mnookin’s “investiture ceremony,” as I found out from an open records request. And to add to her massive annual salary of nearly $900,000, Mnookin and other System chancellors are scheduled to receive considerable annual merit raises and student retention bonuses for work performed by faculty and staff. Mnookin stands to make more than $1 million in total compensation in 2025, The Daily Cardinal reported last year.

UW System President Jay Rothman has requested an additional $855 million for the UW System for the 2025-27 state biennial budget. But how much of that would go to support students, faculty, and staff, and how much would go to administrators, consultants, and companies like Huron? As Kraus puts it, “austerity for students and employees, but never for corporations.” Or, one might add, for the administrators at the very top of the academic gentry.

Many people before me have expressed that colleges and universities shouldn’t trust the advice of business consultants. As far back as 2011, UCLA’s Graduate Division was sounding the alarm that a Huron study of that school had numerous flaws, including factual errors and unrigorous methodologies. The Graduate Division’s rebuttal to Huron’s findings even cited the mission of the UW-Madison’s Graduate School as a shining example of how schools should stay committed to education. Rather than treating students as consumers or products, the mission of the Graduate School is “to foster excellence in research and graduate education.” As tenuous and not fully realized as the mission is, its ethos nevertheless remains ideologically oppositional to the corporate mindset driving consulting firms’ recommendations.

Combined with other looming austerity measures brought on by federal cuts to higher education, the work of educators across UW System campuses is going to get harder. The practice of education requires people, and people aren’t the focus of the ATP. In fact, the ATP is putting in place a restructuring of employee roles at the Universities of Wisconsin that is likely to result in more layoffs, less satisfactory service, and at the end of the day, more consultants.

The article has been updated to correct the spelling of Jim Gawel’s name.