A new state law gives Ohio’s auditor the ability to do audits of the efficiency and operations of state agencies and universities. And he says Ohio State University offered to be first. The performance audit shows the university could save $6.4 million a year but there’s more to the story.
Auditor Dave Yost says OSU could save more than $6 million a year if it optimized the use of printers and copiers, changed the way it hires employees and processes payments and moved its computer services. Still that’s small change when you consider the university’s budget is around $7 billion.
“We looked at a very small portion of the back-office operations. Ohio State University is huge and we’d still be in there if we were trying to do the entire university so you eat the elephant one bite at a time," Yost says.
OSU volunteered to be the first university to undergo a performance audit under the new law, which requires these kind of reviews of at least four state agencies every two years.