As another comment here mentioned: outsourcing of decision making (consulting) is endemic to bureaucracies, whether that's in government, education or elsewhere.
Has research been done on the amount of money saved/wasted on these consulting firms? Have any economists tried to evaluate whether or not these consulting firms provide any value at all beyond political cover for bureaucrats afraid to make or incapable of making decisions?
From my brief experience working in a large University's bureaucracy and seeing how consulting firms took advantage of the school, I believe the public is being swindled by companies like McKinsey and others. If private corporations want to spend money on consulting firms without any tangible benefits, fine. But taxpayer money should not be wasted on these corporate vultures.
What I've found is that in the short term you may question everything, but in the long term you settle back down and only continue questioning what you should have been questioning in the first place.
I took a strong psychedelic once, and a high dose at that. I tripped for over 12 hours, and by the end of the trip I was seriously considering changing my life in significant ways. For days after the trip I was considering making these changes. My thought patterns and assumptions had made a complete jump from one train of thought to another.
This experience made me realize how much of our outlook on things is dominated by whatever mode of thinking we happen to be in, and that mode is more shaped by custom and habit than anything approaching logic and reason.
Has research been done on the amount of money saved/wasted on these consulting firms? Have any economists tried to evaluate whether or not these consulting firms provide any value at all beyond political cover for bureaucrats afraid to make or incapable of making decisions?
From my brief experience working in a large University's bureaucracy and seeing how consulting firms took advantage of the school, I believe the public is being swindled by companies like McKinsey and others. If private corporations want to spend money on consulting firms without any tangible benefits, fine. But taxpayer money should not be wasted on these corporate vultures.