Each month brings a new revelation about inefficient management, fiscal waste, top-heavy administration and other troubling problems, not just at the Chapel Hill campus but throughout the entire 17-school system.

In July, a report by the Bain & Co. consulting firm found that UNC-Chapel Hill was weighed down by too many supervisors, swollen administrative costs, overly complicated organizational structures and inefficient bureacracy.

In August, a News & Observer report revealed a dramatic surge in administrative positions throughout the UNC system; administration swelled by 28 percent over five years, twice the rate of growth in student enrollment. System President Erskine Bowles responded with a remarkably strongly worded message to the chancellors saying the findings were "an absolute embarrassment."

September brings Friday's report that a UNC program intended to help National Guard and Army Reserve troops has sucked up $7.3 million without accomplishing much for the people it was supposed to help. The $10 million program, according to an internal review, has few tangible results to show for its five years of existence, featuring instead excessive administrative costs, overpaid staff, expensive consultants and lots of thick documents that look impressive but don't actually do much.

Large, complex organizations have an innate tendency to grow ever larger and more complex unless active measures are taken to counteract that tendency (isn't there a law of physics to that effect?). Decision-making and oversight gets spread out over a vast organizational structure; new positions and additional bureacratic layers grow almost organically. And, usually, that growth clogs up the movement of material and information, and the whole thing costs more and produces less.

That's what we've seen in each of the recent findings about how UNC operates.

The good news is that the leaders of the university have responded to the reports with what we take to be a sincere and firm determination to set things right.

UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp was the one who proposed hiring Bain to unearth inefficiencies in in the first place. He was frank about the university's responsibility to the public to increase efficiencies, reduce costs and implement active and creative measures to meet the challenges posed by the findings.

Bowles' directive to the chancellors in the wake of the August N&O report was remarkable for how direct, clear and impassioned it was. He directed them to make significant administrative cuts pronto, period. He has ordered some 900 positions cut from the system's administrative ranks.

And in response to the recent report about the Natoinal Guard and Army Reserve program, Thorp acknowledged that "the program has serious flaws," and he let those in charge know he expects a quick and thorough turnaround.

All the reforms are especially important at a time of economic difficulty. Given the realities of the times, everybody has to operate in a leaner, more efficient way. The university system is no exception.