USF administrators and the Florida Board of Governors have found areas within the university that need improvement — including student success, administrative efficiency and research investment.
USF’s Advancing Efficiency and Strategic Impact Task Force was launched in April following Gov. Ron DeSantis’ creation of the Florida State Department of Governmental Efficiency in February.
The Florida DOGE aims to “identify and eliminate unnecessary spending, programs, courses, staff and any other inefficiencies” in state universities.
Each state university was required to establish a team to address requests from the Florida DOGE, according to Executive Order 25-44.
The BOG’s Division of Bond Finance presented its first DOGE report on Nov. 6, which showed data on how public universities are managing their resources.
The task force is co-managed by Paige Geers, USF vice president and chief of staff, and Gerard Solis, senior vice president for legal affairs and general counsel.
At Tuesday’s Board of Trustees meeting, Geers and Solis reviewed DOGE findings and how they aligned with the task force’s own conclusions.
Geers said the DOGE report was an “external validation” of what USF is doing well, but also served as a helpful tool to guide improvements.
USF plans to use the DOGE results as a guide to identify where it can improve and to set clear “targets” as analysis moves forward, she said.
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The DOGE findings from Nov. 6 measured the number of employees in state universities — instructional personnel, research faculty, administrators — per 100 students.
Solis said this measure is important because it shows how competitive a university is through its mix of employees and students.
Solis said USF’s results suggest the university might be a “little bit” heavier in administrative employees as compared to instructional staff and research roles.
Still, Solis said the BOG’s definition of administrative roles is “broad,” since it could also include academic advisors and university attorneys.
“We don’t fully understand [the category],” he said. “We believe [the category] is administrators, more than anything else.”
Solis said admitting more students at USF would help balance the number of employees and students, but the university has made a “conscious decision” to keep enrollment low.
“Relatively speaking, if USF wanted to admit an additional 10,000 students, it could,” Solis said. “But that’s not consistent with our strategy, our focus or our priorities.”
The DOGE findings also showed USF has a higher level of research productivity than any other Association of American Universities institution — with $804,213 in grant revenue per research employee.
And although USF is seeing a “significant return” on research investment, Solis said DOGE results show the university might be investing “a little bit more” in research than in student success.
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Prasant Mohapatra, USF provost and executive vice president, said the university recently launched several new academic programs, centers and institutes.
Still, Mohapatra said USF must periodically review each program to ensure it still aligns with the university’s “priorities.”
“The overall goal is to best serve our students while using the resources wisely,” Mohapatra said.
Solis said the task force is also working to resolve some “efficiency bottlenecks” at USF since it transitioned to Oracle HR this March — the university’s new workforce management system.
“[The transition] has been a challenging process, and we understand that there have been some inefficiencies that have been caused by that,” Solis said.
USF also needs a consolidated model that eliminates service duplication across campuses, he said.
Solis said the task force has received guidance from the BOG on the types of services that should be offered at each campus.
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Geers said the USF task force met every two weeks since its implementation in April to identify and eliminate inefficiencies, as well as to invest savings in areas that “strengthen” USF.
But Geers said the task force’s focus wasn’t just cost-cutting — it was creating a structured process to compete on the same level as other AAU institutions.
Geers said having representatives from “across the university” in the task force ensured that every perspective was represented in discussions and recommendations.
USF’s task force consists of 10 members — who are mostly Tampa-based university administrators — with one representative from USF St. Pete and none from USF Sarasota-Manatee.
The task force created a survey and held listening sessions with the USF Administrative Advisory Council, the Staff Senate, the Student Government, graduate students and faculty leadership to gather information about where USF could be more efficient.
Geers said the feedback from these efforts showed the USF community is “eager” to reduce inefficiencies and build systems that work better for everyone.
Solis said the task force’s next steps will be to refine and implement its findings.
The next university president will be in charge of a new strategic plan — which will include DOGE recommendations and task force findings, Solis said.
USF President Rhea Law said she is pleased with the task force’s work, and congratulated Geers and Solis for co-chairing the “well-needed” initiative.
“I think that’s going to be the impetus to propel us to the new heights and achieving our goal of a billion dollars in research,” Law said.
