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Agree in principle. But the real culprit is not professor salaries (some are well paid, but those who are generally bring in much more in grant funding than the
by ams6110 9y ago
Agree in principle. But the real culprit is not professor salaries (some are well paid, but those who are generally bring in much more in grant funding than they cost) or sports programs (most are self funding auxiliary operations, not part of the university budget per se).
The real culprit is administrative staff bloat, and facilities spending. University administrative org charts have exploded in the past few decades, and so has spending on lavish new dormitories, administrative and academic buildings, monuments, etc. While some of the buildings are funded at least in part by donations, the rest has all been fueled by the easy money of student loans, and the premium tuition paid by international students.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- chrisbennet 9y agoI agree except for the sport programs. Sport programs are a net loss for almost every university. "Nearly every university loses money on sports. Even after private donations and ticket sales, they fill the gap by tapping students paying tuition or state taxpayers." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/15/athletics-cost-colleges-students-millions/2814455/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/15/athlet... http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2016/03/how_much_fielding_sports_teams.html http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2016/03/how_m...
- shostack 9y agoI'd caution against lumping all "administrative" functions together as culprits of this bloat. There are quite a few departments in Universities that play key roles, have high visibility, and are thus underpaid for the work they do because there is high demand from the workforce for those roles and the skill sets don't necessarily have a super high bar set for them like a Masters. This is a problem at universities of all sizes and reputation.
- bobdole1234 9y agoThe admin bloat is largely there to manage the absurd rulebook that changes constantly that control how they can spend their grant and donation money. Someone gives you a few million, but it always comes with a laundry list of conditions about how it can be spent, and usually an audit schedule and reporting requirements. This means you need a huge staff of people who largely shuffle money around between various groups to make sure group A who have millions in capital expenditure money can pay their janitors, that money comes from group C, who launders this through an agreement with group B to provide services in exchange for use on group A's equipment with group C's support staff.