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Many people have pointed to an overpopulation being the root cause for this, but I believe that ignores the increasingly inflating administrative staff at unive
by eximius 10y ago
Many people have pointed to an overpopulation being the root cause for this, but I believe that ignores the increasingly inflating administrative staff at universities. That is, it is also a budget problem. The budget for the increase in professor staff is being diverted into additional administrative positions that do... something, apparently. I'm not convinced that the administrative bloat is worth a fraction of what it costs.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dharmon 10y agoYou'd be appalled at how much overhead universities take out of research grants (from NSF, DARPA, NIH, etc.) to maintain these administrations (along with legitimate uses, like paying utility bills). 40-50% is not uncommon.
- etendue 10y agoHarvard's common indirect rate is as high as 69%: http://osp.finance.harvard.edu/fa-cost-rates-federal-sponsors http://osp.finance.harvard.edu/fa-cost-rates-federal-sponsor... I've long been expecting someone like the NYT to do an exposé on the "dark money" of F&A. It would seem to be ripe given he current discussion of the cost of education.
- protomyth 10y agoHow in the heck do they get away with that? Each grant we have has an indirect rate that you cannot exceed and its not 40-50%.
- luckluckgoosed 10y agoProbably just people not understanding what an indirect rate means. They think it means the % of the grant that the university takes. So when they hear an indirect rate of 65%, they think the university is taking 2/3 the money. When in fact, it's about 1/3 due to how it's calculated.
- pkaye 10y agoI won some student award at school funded through an industry sponsor. I think it was $1000. I was recommended by one of my professors. As part of the processing fee, they deducted 20% for school overhead!
- tomcam 10y agoOtherwise known as racketeering.
- Retric 10y agoExponential growth is never the answer. Over 20+ years at 1:5 teacher ratio so one could teach well over 20+ PHD's and 1 gets to replace them. Actual ratio seems to be around ~1:50 based on openings.