A Comprehensive Review of the Comprehensive Review: The Mugdown Consulting Report
Executive Summary
We at The Mugdown wear several different hats: writers, creators, supermodels, altruists. Following the release of the controversial report by MGT Consulting and Martin+Crumpton Group (M+CG), we decided to add one more hat to our repertoire: consultants.
When the report was released on October 19, 2021, a few writers at the Mugdown came together to start-up our own consulting firm, MD Consulting (MDC). MDC has temporarily reallocated our bandwidth from covering news at Texas A&M University to developing in-depth recommendations through meta-analysis of the initial consultant report, thereby allowing us to help optimize the university’s policies and bodies toward synchronized and balanced functionality. All of this has been done pro-bono, with the ultimate goal of elevating Texas A&M from the middle-tier of American public universities to the upper-middle-tier.
Background
MGT Consulting and Martin+Crumpton Group (M+CG) were hired by the Texas A&M University System in June 2021 to conduct a high-level, comprehensive review of major functional areas at Texas A&M. Following the release of the report in October 2021, The Mugdown hired themselves, under the name MD Consulting (MDC), to audit the recommendations proposed in the original report and refine them further based on the original findings.
Over the course of three weeks, MDC conducted 0 in-depth interviews with individuals affiliated with the university. The recommendations for change and improvement in this report are based entirely on analyses of the original report, consideration of the human experience, and knowledge of the impact of previous decisions at Texas A&M University.
Findings and Recommendation
Inconsistent transparency and a lack of strong operational analytics and performance metrics across units, colleges, and campuses creates operational inefficiencies as well as unclear responsibility and accountability necessary for operational success. The lack of existing operational data and analytics is a factor preventing the improvement of current processes, procedures, and resources use.
Below are the high-level findings:
- Texas A&M University does not truly understand the needs of the student body.
- Former Students completely understand the experience of current students.
- Student services, as they exist, are currently too efficient.
- Separation of the academic colleges is bringing too much diversity of thought to campus.
- Engineering good.
Conclusion
The recommendations in this report provide a specific, attainable, and direct pathway to achieve Texas A&M’s goal of putting forth a facade of change while remaining functionally and idealistically the same. Keys to achieving that goal include ignoring input from students, catering to the needs of Texas A&M alumni, building statues to excuse cover-ups of historical inaccuracies, and pumping copious amounts of donor money into the College of Engineering while largely inconveniencing the other academic colleges through needless restructuring. The recommendations throughout this report are designed to benefit university administration, donors, and former students while completely disregarding the needs of the student body and faculty, furthering Texas A&M’s commitment to mediocrity.
University-Wide Recommendations
Finding #1
Texas A&M University currently contains 17 academic colleges and schools. This is an example of the decentralized and ineffective university structure currently in place.
Recommendation #1: To eliminate redundancy and increase efficiency, a long-term plan of the university should be to consolidate all majors into one interdisciplinary college called “Mega College of School”.
Rationale #1
Consolidation of all majors and academic colleges into Mega College of School will eliminate redundant staff like deans and allow for separate advising departments to be merged into one. This recommendation should increase profit and improve the student experience by making department transfers and major changes more accessible. The graphic included below demonstrates the proposed consolidation:
Finding #2
As found in the initial consultant report, “the pool of applicants for undergraduate students is currently not representative of [Texas’s] diverse demographics…Texas is 12.9% Black or African American, but TAMU’s Black or African American student population is only 3.7%. Likewise, 39.7% of Texans are Hispanic or Latino, but only 24.9% of TAMU students are Hispanic or Latino.”
Recommendation #2: Texas A&M University should provide significant financial rewards to underrepresented students who successfully recruit incoming freshmen of the same race.
Rationale #2
Adding a financial incentive to targeted recruiting would allow Texas A&M University to better recruit and retain underrepresented students into undergraduate programs from the inside, using the expertise of current students who really “get” their communities. According to many former students of the university, it is impossible for all people of different races to relate to one another perfectly; targeted recruiting of underrepresented students by underrepresented current students streamlines and decentralizes recruitment efforts in alignment with other recommendations made in this report.
Finding #3
Brutalist architecture is really cool and everyone thinks so.
Recommendation #3: More buildings should be gray squares.
Rationale #3
Brutalism was really cool in the 1970s when Texas A&M University erected notable buildings like Heldenfels Hall, Harrington Tower, and the Langford Architecture A Building. Students at Texas A&M University seldom, if ever, remark on the uniformity of buildings on campus and both students and faculty find great comfort and enjoyment in the gray-brown color palette of campus. Unlike the Innovative Learning Classroom Building and the Zachry Engineering Education Complex, which feature unique facades, natural light, and student-oriented spaces, new construction at Texas A&M University should focus on poured concrete and uniform rectangular facades. In addition to decreasing costs of construction, this will deter prospective students who are interested in choosing a university based solely on looks, allowing for targeted recruitment as recommended above to remain effective.
Finding #4
The official university visual brand style is ineffective at marketing Texas A&M as a top-tier university.
Recommendation #4: Texas A&M University should add more brand-supported colors and fonts.
Rationale #4
Aggie Maroon has become cliche with schools like Mississippi State adopting a similar color scheme. Open Sans fonts have become synonymous with parking tickets and business cards. The following graphic details the proposed brand expansion.
Student Affairs and Campus Operations Recommendations
Finding #1
By interviewing self-proclaimed “real Aggies,” performing data-mining on forum site TexAgs, and conducting random surveys at Corps of Cadets alumni tailgates, we have objectively determined that current Texas A&M students straight up have no clue about what it means to be an Aggie. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the “Spirit can ne’er be told” will be dead by May 2023 if bad bull practices are not extinguished by the end of this fiscal year and students are not taught to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
Recommendation #1: Texas A&M University officials should change all “student organizations” to “former student student organizations”.
Rationale #1
A primary concern of alumni is that these lazy brats will have no chance of making it in the real world if they keep expecting handouts. Student organizations within the Division of Student Affairs have traditionally been where Texas A&M students learn lifelong skills that have led countless alumni to become executives, morally corrupt lawyers, and debt sharks. However, stakeholders have identified current practices of this Division as detrimental to the development of Aggies. Sheltered Texas A&M students have no idea what it takes to make it in business or politics. Many have focused on low-impact practices such as being less racist, which has been shown to have no effect on one’s professional career. By transitioning the leadership of each student organization to former Texas A&M students residing within Southeast Texas, the Division of Student Affairs can ensure that students are “career-ready”, so long as they never encounter someone with a different viewpoint in their career. These mentors can provide insightful guidance on acceptable business attire, acceptable hair length, and acceptable ways to attend Yell Practice that will help Aggies remain in high demand among the world’s top polluters. From ensuring that organization events only relate to Aggie Values to making it known who is welcome within different organizations, this recommendation will allow Texas A&M to return to a time when everyone knew exactly what an Aggie looked like.
Finding #2
The Corps of Cadets has continued to become “softer” each year.
Recommendation #2: Corps of Cadets leadership should be replaced with Boy Scouts from Bryan-College Station.
Rationale #2
The Corps of Cadets has gotten softer and softer each year, reaching a peak several years ago when Old Army was officially pronounced “dead”. To better fit the Corps mission of, “making everyone feel comfortable and loved,” all Corps leadership, Commandant’s staff and cadets should be replaced with members of a Bryan-College Station Boy Scout troop. This recommendation will save the university considerable funds on salaries and better align with the vision that General Ramirez has for the Corps.
Finding #3
Students at Texas A&M University are in need of more mental health resources.
Recommendation #3: Put the “quack” back in Quack Shack.
Rationale #3
The original MGT report recommended that Student Health Services (SHS) and Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) should become the domain of the Texas A&M Health Science Center. This recommendation supports a rich university history of ignoring student, faculty, and staff health issues. The best solution is to make SHS and CAPS the responsibility of Texas A&M Health, which is still yet to be fully integrated within the university infrastructure despite being founded in 1999. Additionally, the lack of an existing training program for mental health professionals at Texas A&M Health will not exacerbate the disturbing scarcity of mental health care professionals currently available to students. This recommendation will also benefit College of Nursing and College of Medicine students, who are excited to be unpaid, unskilled labor and to help put the quack back in Quack Shack.
Finding #4
Texas A&M successfully outsourced dining services to a top-tier company, Chartwells.
Recommendation #4: All university services should be outsourced to Chartwells.
Rationale #4
Chartwells Dining Services has displayed great ability to provide Michelin-star cuisine for three meals a day while simultaneously prioritizing customer service, organic and ethical ingredient sourcing, and nutritional balance. Using their already-refined skills, Chartwells can expand their reach and expertise to cover maintenance and custodial services currently provided by SSC. By assigning the already overworked Chartwells staff additional tasks like residence hall bathroom sanitation, replanting the Howdy flower bed with the other team’s colors every week during football season, removing the asbestos from Rudder Tower, and haphazardly driving John Deere gators, the university can cut down on costs by only contracting one external service.
Academic Recommendations
Finding #1
Biomedical Sciences is distracting the College of Veterinary Medicine from providing top-tier graduate and professional programming.
Recommendation #1: The College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences should completely eliminate the Biomedical Sciences Program.
Rationale #1
Instead of moving the Biomedical Science program to the College of Sciences, as recommended by the MGT report, the Biomedical Science program should be eliminated entirely. Removing the Biomedical Science program from the College of Veterinary Medicine would strip the program of its one redeeming quality: being able to brag about “kind of being in vet school.” The morale of Biomedical Science students would crumble without any tiny justification for their elitism, so it is better to do away with the program entirely. Furthermore, elimination of the Biomedical Science program would definitively end the BIMS-to-psychology-major pipeline, saving academic advisors at least 1,000 hours of lost productivity spent processing change major requests annually.
Finding #2
A recent demographic report shows the majority of the Texas A&M student body from the 1800s to the present day to be more conservative-leaning. This comes from the amount of times Old Ags comment their frustration with “communist” agendas being pushed within classes- more specifically, liberal arts classes.
Recommendation #2: The College of Liberal Arts should be renamed to the College of Liberal and Conservative Arts.
Rationale #2
The call for inclusion of conserative nomenclature in the College of Liberal Arts stems from former student frustration with “communist” agendas being pushed in liberal arts classes. The name change will first and foremost allow boomers to feel included. This will then allow for more capitalist influence and provide an opportunity for organizations such as Texas A&M College Republicans and Pro-Life Aggies to feel like they finally belong at their predominantly white, Christian, public university.
Finding #3
TexAgs is known as one of the most right-winged, male-dominated Aggie sports news sources and forums. It is extremely popular with former students and arguably more popular than The Battalion or KAMU.
Recommendation #3: The new department of journalism should be run by TexAgs.
Rationale #3
The dismal numbers of journalism degrees produced by the department of communication — 14 during the 2019-2020 school year and nine during the 2020-2021 school year — can be attributed to on-campus support from sub-par organizations like The Battalion and KAMU. TexAgs, the largest online Aggie community and number one news source for Aggie athletics, recruiting, analysis, and unsolicited political commentary, should be asked to work with journalism students to increase the program’s popularity and opportunities. Diversity in the staff will likely be kept at a [stiff] arm’s length away, but this initiative will raise the next generation of right-winged media bias in the new department of journalism.
Finding #4
Reports show the College of Engineering to be a shining beam of light at what can otherwise be considered a dumpster fire of a university. Students in engineering programs show above average intelligence and provide a glimpse into the future of human evolution. These super-humans must be protected from outside forces.
Recommendation #4: Engineering students should be sequestered in a engineering-only campus providing on-site facilities for housing, dining and recreation.
Rationale #4
The only thing stopping world and industry domination by Texas A&M’s engineering students is the diversion of their attention from their studies. Issues of football games, non-professional student organizations, and social events should not burden such noble minds. By providing food, housing, and bathing facilities on the engineering campus, future engineers will have the finest education drilled into them without distraction. The implementation comes in two phases, the first being construction of state of the art living facilities centralized around Zachry Engineering Complex and the second being isolation and protection of this new engineering campus. The first phase requires building the infrastructure — dining hall, housing, modest exercise center — for the new engineering colony. The second phase involves implementing security measures like surveillance cameras, time-sensitive locking mechanism, and barbed wire fences to ensure the most productive learning environment. For inspiration, Texas A&M administration should look to Soviet-era nuclear power stations. After phase two is complete, only high clearance individuals will be allowed to enter or exit this self-sustaining ecosystem.
Finding #5
Everyone affiliated with the College of Engineering is perfect and incapable of messing up, yet it is not acclaimed enough for all the good that they do by simply existing.
Recommendation #5: Every member of the student and faculty population at Texas A&M University should compliment the College of Engineering at least once a day.
Rationale #5
The College of Engineering at Texas A&M is very esteemed, so it is super important to make sure that all the individuals within it feel that way. To make sure this deserved respect is established, all university employees and students will be required to say a minimum of one nice thing about the College of Engineering every day. This will make sure the superiority complex of Engineering students can be well-established. No matter what choices these individuals may make, they will always be the right decision and should be rewarded with a compliment because they can do no wrong.
Finding #6
Texas A&M is one of the few universities in Texas to locate their computer science major within the College of Engineering. The University of Texas at Austin places their computer science majors within the College of Natural Sciences. A study of students across the College of Engineering found that housing computer science within the college led to low self esteem in the computer science students and frustration in the other engineering students working with them.
Recommendation #6: The computer science program should be moved from the College of Engineering into the newly-made College of Liberal Arts.
Rationale #6
Computer science is not an engineering discipline, but an art where students play computer games and learn linear algebra for research. Unlike students of other engineering disciplines, who are required to take serious hard science subjects such as thermodynamics and computational fluid analysis, computer science majors are known to have the easiest degree plan within the College of Engineering. After the major is relocated to the College of Liberal Arts, computer science majors are expected to thrive since they will now have bragging rights to the hardest workload in the college. Our study found that engineering students will be able to focus less on responding to the negative and irritating presence of computer science students and more on crying and finishing their own coursework.
Finding #7
Art exists now.
Recommendation #7: Texas A&M should create an college of “Art and Other Dumb Right Brain Stuff”.
Rationale #7
Some people don’t want to do math or science or agriculture and would rather be “creative” and “expressive,” like a bunch of quitters who have never known a hard day’s work in their life. Texas A&M University should create a college to house all the dumb stuff that relies on the right brain. This will allow all of the hippies, liberals, free-thinkers, and other rabble-rousers to congregate together and keep their ideals to themselves.
Finding #8
If Texas A&M University refuses to acknowledge the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, funding will not be reallocated and Texas A&M administration can keep relying on the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension to bring in research and grant money.
Recommendation #8: Put a big sheet over all of West Campus so that the original consultants do not realize that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences exists.
Rationale #8
If MGT Consulting and Martin+Crumpton Group realize that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, which currently offers more than 30 undergraduate majors and is partnered with both the Norman Bourlag Institute and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, exists, they will reallocate funding. This will then cause the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to come begging to the administration for research and grant money, which would not be fun or cool. By investing in a large sheet, Texas A&M can hide the the Kleberg Center, the Heep Center, the BioBio Building, the Plant Pathology Building, Rosenthal Meat Science and Technology Center, the Horticulture Building, and the Agriculture and Life Sciences building to make sure that the consultants do not discover the university’s cash cow. The sheet will need to be custom cut to allow full view of the Mays Business School.
Finding #9
The environment in which graduate programs are conducted is not conducive to student thriving.
Recommendation #9: Toxic work culture in graduate departments can be resolved by eliminating work.
Rationale #9
Graduate students have already proven that they are capable of completing a college degree and should be left alone from this point forward. If these current graduate students had left academia to contribute something meaningful to society, they would be expected to produce the same professional-quality projects every few weeks in a workplace, but they chose to go into debt to avoid any major lifestyle changes, and that should be respected. Across campus, graduate departments should lower their standards and let everyone just take a nap every once in a while. Honestly, they could all just go home at 2:00 p.m. every day and no one would notice outside of their own academic circles. Unlike many useful members of society, graduate students frequently find that their stress is self-imposed and their work means little outside of the classroom. Our recommendation is for everyone to just chill out and take it easy, because we’re all going to die one day and some people decided to waste several years of their lives on a master’s degree.
Finding #10
Texas A&M needs to live out their mission to improve health through research by utilizing their strengths.
Recommendation #10: Texas A&M University should use freshmen as human subjects for experimental treatments.
Rationale #10
One of the top metrics Texas A&M touts is their status as the largest university in the nation in terms of enrollment. Over the past few years, we have seen an increase in the size of the freshman class. To fully utilize the large student population, Texas A&M Health should begin using freshmen for clinical research trials. This will allow a more holistic view on the effect of proposed drugs, therapies, or other advancements in medical technologies on the human body. This recommendation should decrease the cost of research expenditures, as the proposed experimental subjects are already paying tuition to the university, and will allow Texas A&M Health to more clearly understand the effect of their research on the populations they wish to serve. Participation in research could also be offered as a 3-hour credit course to cover liability that might arise from poorly developed experimental treatments.
