Academics, by tradition or by default, tend to be a pursuit carried out with a fair degree of unruliness, management-wise, as management types might say. More creative than disciplined, it tends to attract, or cultivate, cluttered-mind, cluttered-desk types given more to inspiring new generations of scholars and professionals, as well as researching, than marching along predictable lines.

But managers do emerge from our colleges and universities, fleeing the groves of Academe for high-paid jobs in business and industry — to be seen again only at football games and alumni gatherings.

Could this flight-from-campus phenomenon lie behind the chaotic financial and administrative state of The University of New Mexico, from the executive suites to the locker rooms, causing so much hand-wringing ? Or is it mostly a problem resulting from political game-playing, as Gov. Bill Richardson's critics are quick to claim?

The governor, and his hand-picked, readily puntable board of regents, might deserve some of the blame. But partisan electoral and appointive politics are child's play compared with academic politics carried on so subtly at UNM and on most of our nation's campuses, so the power-packing regent Jamie Koch and school president David Schmidly aren't necessarily the villains they've been portrayed by whining faculty.

In fact, there might not be any villains in the Lobo-campus drama: Administrators, staffers, policymakers and professors alike are after the best education they can give the students of our state's flagship university. Maybe the problem lies in their approach to running the school.

So a story tucked in a back page of last Sunday's New York Times caught our attention: Seems some of America's leading universities are turning to — mirabile dictu — management consultants to resolve their budgetary and administrative problems, the way executives in private industry would.

At the University of North Carolina, the prexy called in a consulting company to look for ways of saving money in these thin times. The outside experts came back with recommendations that would save the Tarheel campus $150 million — through such business-common practices as centralizing school purchases, sharing computer systems and simplifying the organization structure.

Gee — that much money saved, and without even getting to such touchy issues as courses and tenure.

What is in for reforming is the proliferation of "centers" and institutes — 100 or so of them, most of them little fiefdoms of their own with separate finance, hiring offices and computer technology.

What took place at Chapel Hill has inspired Cornell and the University of California at Berkeley to contract with the same consultants — at $3 million no cheap date. But if it leads to savings 10 times as great, or greater, it could be a bargain at twice the price.

Trust the entrenched bureaucracies of academia to balk — but as students, and their parents, grow restive over tuition racing ahead of inflation, public support for academic efficiency, today oxymoronic, could be on the rise.

UNM's Dr. Schmidly should see in this trend a way to regain some statewide support among New Mexicans nervous over the faculty's no-confidence vote on him and Koch — and, perhaps, to gain leverage over dissidents whose own houses might not be in order.

Whatever in-house management types might tell Schmidly about the state of UNM management, we'd bet that an outside outfit could find all kinds of cost-savings and efficiencies.