Gov. Beverly Perdue praised UNC-Chapel Hill for taking steps to reduce its bureacracy and administrative spending.

The governor was the featured speaker today at UNC-CH's annual University Day ceremony, reports Eric Ferreri.

During her speech, she made reference to the Bain Report, which the university commissioned in hopes of finding efficiencies. The report this year found that the university had bloated administrative costs and too many layers of supervisors.

The report apparently struck a chord with Perdue. She said government should take note.

"Leaders here have focused on how to make the university run more efficiently and effectively — performing a broad study and putting it into action," she said. "And that’s exactly what we must do across state government."

UNC-Chapel Hill has too many supervisors, bloated administrative costs and a bureaucracy that hamstrings everything from assigning courses to classrooms to purchasing supplies, a consultant has concluded.

Bain & Company, an efficiency expert hired to examine the university's financial processes, will present a 107-page report Thursday suggesting an institution with too many layers, Eric Ferreri reports.

UNC-CH officials hope the analysis leads to millions in savings. A campus task force will soon begin discussing the recommendations, though changes could take years to implement.

"The economic crisis is probably not over, and we want to shelter research and teaching as much as we can," Chancellor Holden Thorp said Tuesday. "The more we know about our research and teaching and how it's funded, the better we can protect it."

The report found that the campus, with an annual operating budget of about $2 billion, spends more on administrative costs than it does on academics, a balance Thorp said he'd like to flip-flop.

Supervision is 10 layers deep in some areas. The consultant was hired with private funds donated anonymously.