7 ms·

Faculty reflect on two decades of rapid expansion

51 points by Jugurtha 5y ago

SubiculumCode 5y ago
It's happening in the UC system too, I feel...though I don't have data. Edit: https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-csu-data/ https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-...
- secabeen 5y ago
  For a lot of these schools, it helps to look at the increase in research dollars that they're bringing in. I expect some fraction of the new administrators are necessary to manage the research funding, which has a limited affect on tuition costs. Federal grants in particular have a lot of reporting and compliance that has to be produced. The article also notes: > University spokesperson Karen Peart pointed out that while the University’s managerial staff has increased over the last two decades, so too has the faculty, which has grown by 54 percent. If the faculty have increased by that much, I would hope the staff would increase a similar amount. Neither of the experts quoted in the article are particularly focused on higher ed economics, either: https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=10 https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=10 https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/james-scott https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/james-scott
  - tejtm 5y ago
    For a lot of research it is good to look at who will NOT be doing the research anymore because ... wtf; Tenured Administrators and "Pro Tem" Faculty ... which is the Grey Poupon (tm Kraft/Heinz) way of saying the corporation administrators have turned their own HR into a "Kelly Girl" office to commoditize their complement, the schools teachers.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      You've overloaded this run on sentence with so many metaphors that I have no idea what you are trying to say.
      - sjg007 5y ago
        I think what they are trying to say that the people doing the teaching in the university are not research professors and that there is some kind of classism involved. I don't know about tenured administrators though, I don't think admins get tenure but maybe if you count Deans and Chancellors who might be faculty.
        moron4hire 5y ago
        I'm thinking this might be what they meant by "Kelly Girl": https://www.kellyservices.com.pr/pr/about-us/company-information/kelly-girl-story/ https://www.kellyservices.com.pr/pr/about-us/company-informa...
  - cossatot 5y ago
    You've got to look at the scholarly work rather than their faculty web pages. Campos has written a number of recent papers in the broad area of higher ed economics (particularly law school), but in the grand tradition of American law professors also clearly feels entitled to write about things such as public health that are well outside of his formal training. Campos's google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=1Geb1zAAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=1Geb1zAAAAAJ... James C. Scott is an influential scholar on power structures and the often antagonistic relationship between governors and the governed. His book Seeing Like a State in particular is widely read and mentioned on HN frequently. What is most interesting about this article is that there is, at least among the quoted faculty, zero support for the administrative growth and a universal sentiment that it is harmful to the University and places undue burdens on faculty and students, and the quotes are quite vitriolic (this is not normally how professors talk in public about their schools). The Administration's explanations are hilariously weak (Additionally, the growth may have partially stemmed from student requests. Hannah Peck, the assistant dean of student affairs at Yale College, told the News that the Student Affairs team added four new health promotion positions as part of the YC3 program. “Students have consistently requested more mental health support on campus and we are thrilled to be able to provide it,” Peck wrote. So, that's 4 out of >1,500!). It really does look like a struggle for power and billions of dollars in revenue, and the faculty are losing.
    - secabeen 5y ago
      > What is most interesting about this article is that there is, at least among the quoted faculty, zero support for the administrative growth and a universal sentiment that it is harmful to the University and places undue burdens on faculty and students, and the quotes are quite vitriolic (this is not normally how professors talk in public about their schools). What I have generally seen is that the faculty aren't seeing increases in staffing that appear to accrue to their benefit, but they also aren't as exposed to the parts of campus where the increases are happening either. Universities are much more complicated than they were 40 years ago, and they are serving a much more diverse, dynamic and broad student base. Schools aren't attended by primarily upper-class white men anymore. Many of the students really benefit from the additional resources available, whether that's mental health support, academic support, financial aid, etc. etc. Yale also has a medical school and hospital, which always adds a huge amount of complexity to the finances of the organization.
  - pempem 5y ago
    The question I was immediately struck by was "how many of those are tenured?". For the last decade+ we've seen the same flow of contract gigs rather than jobs with assured benefits proliferating higher education. It makes our colleges' education poorer because these non-tenured contract profs are making a lower quartile salary with no benefits after 4+ years of being underpaid as a grad student while also pursuing and interviewing for tenured positions/working on their research. Universities have two jobs: 1. teach the populous, but also 2. be a leader in understanding the corner of the world they are focused on. We have been a leader in the latter and the less we invest in it, the more problematic a future we'll face as a nation.
WalterGR 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
b9a2cab5 5y ago
Turns out hiring 50 Deans of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Other Useless Things does not make for a good research institution. Also turns out that you really don't need a bunch of people putting out feel-good press releases to realize "DEI".
quacked 5y ago
More and more often, large institutions like bloated corporations or swollen universities feel like giant holes where people go to mine money. The American Dream is to have all of your paperwork in order so you can set your tent up right above a rich vein.
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  Oddly enough, this is the most optimistic way I've seen the state of our institutions described without agressively veering into the realm of fiction
  - quacked 5y ago
    What about it strikes you as optimistic? I felt pretty pessimistic when I wrote it.
    - crocodiletears 5y ago
      The framing of people as prospectors looking to stake out their plot of a mine. I'd have framed the analogy in the terms of a tick climbing a tree for the opportunity to latch onto a large, diseased animal. A prospector might go on to do something great with what he's extracted. A tick just wants to survive, and hopes that his meal will outlast him.
- deepnotderp 5y ago
  I think that’s a really, really good way to put it. The American Dream has moved away from pioneering new value streams to acquiring pedigrees/credentials that enable you to extract cash from an existing stream.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    I sort of agree but I don't think we're quite there yet. The only time I here anyone speak favorably about owning a business that's protected by regulation or milking a professional license is if it's part of some grand scheme to make a ton of money and then cash out of <coastal state goes here>.
christkv 5y ago
This just reminds me of an episode in yes prime minister where there is a new hospital fully staffed by administrative staff and no medical personnel because it never officially opened to the public.
robocat 5y ago
I wonder when they will exceed one staff member per student?! Although: “The total number of instructional staff teaching the 5,964 undergraduate students at Yale University is 1,915 . When this is adjusted to account for those with part-time status, the result is the "full-time equivalent" (FTE) count. Using the FTE count for students and staff results in a "student to instructor" ratio of 6 to 1 which places Yale University among the best concerning instructional attention.” - from another site.
- catgary 5y ago
  I always find the US system shocking, even just up north in Canada. UBC has comparable numbers of faculty + administrative staff, and services ~4x the undergrad population. UofT has ~50% more faculty and staff, and handles close seventy thousand undergrads!
  - WoodenChair 5y ago
    > I always find the US system shocking, even just up north in Canada. UBC has comparable numbers of faculty + administrative staff, and services ~4x the undergrad population. UofT has ~50% more faculty and staff, and handles close seventy thousand undergrads! While your overall point is well taken, UBC is not a comparable institution to Yale. UBC has an acceptance rate of around 50%, Yale has an acceptance rate of around 5%. UBC has an endowment of around $2 billion, Yale has an endowment of around $40 billion. These are order of magnitude differences. We can debate whether Yale should have that level of selectivity or endowment, but it's to be expected that a way more selective school with way more resources will spend more on human resources per student. If you want to make a comparison, it would make more sense to compare something like a selective large state university in the United States to UBC, not Yale.
    - catgary 5y ago
      I guess the selectivity is what I take issue with - institutions like Yale/Harvard don’t really exist in Canada, and I think we are better off for it.
finolex1 5y ago
Without details about what roles these new administrators are being hired for, it's impossible to say whether this is justified. For example, the quote from the university president suggests the growth is due to hospital staff: > University President Peter Salovey emphasized that the administrative growth has been proportional with the growth in faculty size and in University revenue. He reiterated that the growth in the Yale School of Medicine’s clinical practice has been a significant and worthwhile cause of the administration’s increased size. Whereas the reactions in the article and in this thread seem to be focused on other positions.
wilde 5y ago
When the number of people you work with becomes the proxy you are rewarded on, the organization grows. The alternative is for management to understand the work ICs are doing, but everyone is too busy meeting with each other for that to happen.
MarkLowenstein 5y ago
14 comments in and no mention of the element Administratium? https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a5/74/e9a57450043a4af5725ccf0ba474eb62.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a5/74/e9a57450043a4af5725c...
- etiam 5y ago
  Nice. Do you know any similar ones? I've been trying to find one in similar vein I read once, which among other things mentioned force exchange through morons if I recall correctly.
  - MarkLowenstein 5y ago
    Best I could do was an image search that didn't have many good ones honestly. I know there was one once with a nice nuclear diagram associated...maybe under the alternate name "administrontium"?
etempleton 5y ago
A lot of these positions are hidden support for students. Faculty often think “administrator” means exclusively Deans and academic leadership, but it is the IT department, the website department, the counseling center, the career center, records, archives, marketing, admissions, health services, etc., etc. that makes up the bulk of administration. The level of service expected, especially at an Ivy League school is very different today then it was 20-30 years ago. It is a much more complex operation.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  I can bet if you actually give students a choice between "support for students" with a $500K student loan vs. a library card and a basic room for $50K, very few will pay the premium. It would be a very sobering experiment to make these services optional and independently billed. Otherwise it sounds like the typical bureaucratic excuse for creating more bureaucracy.
  - etempleton 5y ago
    Students do have the choice. There are many colleges that are more affordable with less services. Many of these colleges are going under because enrollment has dropped at these schools. Community Colleges in particular have seen a huge drop in enrollments. Students opt for the schools with more prestige, better facilities, and more services 9/10.
    - john_moscow 5y ago
      Oh, come on, you can't be serious. Top schools have previously earned good reputation through attracting the best talent, so their diplomas are worth more in terms of salary expectations. And they are now banking on that reputation to charge as much as they can, while using loosely defined "services" to justify the costs. A fair comparison would be 2 schools of comparable reputation having different administrator proportion and spending structure, but not in this world where the people running them go to the same golf club. Also "community college" these days is an euphemism for "the cheapest degree one could get that formally counts as one", so it is perceived accordingly.
everybodyknows 5y ago
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973

51 points by Jugurtha 5y ago

It's happening in the UC system too, I feel...though I don't have data. Edit: https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-csu-data/ https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-...

secabeen 5y ago
For a lot of these schools, it helps to look at the increase in research dollars that they're bringing in. I expect some fraction of the new administrators are necessary to manage the research funding, which has a limited affect on tuition costs. Federal grants in particular have a lot of reporting and compliance that has to be produced. The article also notes: > University spokesperson Karen Peart pointed out that while the University’s managerial staff has increased over the last two decades, so too has the faculty, which has grown by 54 percent. If the faculty have increased by that much, I would hope the staff would increase a similar amount. Neither of the experts quoted in the article are particularly focused on higher ed economics, either: https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=10 https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=10 https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/james-scott https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/james-scott
- tejtm 5y ago
  For a lot of research it is good to look at who will NOT be doing the research anymore because ... wtf; Tenured Administrators and "Pro Tem" Faculty ... which is the Grey Poupon (tm Kraft/Heinz) way of saying the corporation administrators have turned their own HR into a "Kelly Girl" office to commoditize their complement, the schools teachers.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    You've overloaded this run on sentence with so many metaphors that I have no idea what you are trying to say.
    - sjg007 5y ago
      I think what they are trying to say that the people doing the teaching in the university are not research professors and that there is some kind of classism involved. I don't know about tenured administrators though, I don't think admins get tenure but maybe if you count Deans and Chancellors who might be faculty.
      - moron4hire 5y ago
        I'm thinking this might be what they meant by "Kelly Girl": https://www.kellyservices.com.pr/pr/about-us/company-information/kelly-girl-story/ https://www.kellyservices.com.pr/pr/about-us/company-informa...
- cossatot 5y ago
  You've got to look at the scholarly work rather than their faculty web pages. Campos has written a number of recent papers in the broad area of higher ed economics (particularly law school), but in the grand tradition of American law professors also clearly feels entitled to write about things such as public health that are well outside of his formal training. Campos's google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=1Geb1zAAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=1Geb1zAAAAAJ... James C. Scott is an influential scholar on power structures and the often antagonistic relationship between governors and the governed. His book Seeing Like a State in particular is widely read and mentioned on HN frequently. What is most interesting about this article is that there is, at least among the quoted faculty, zero support for the administrative growth and a universal sentiment that it is harmful to the University and places undue burdens on faculty and students, and the quotes are quite vitriolic (this is not normally how professors talk in public about their schools). The Administration's explanations are hilariously weak (Additionally, the growth may have partially stemmed from student requests. Hannah Peck, the assistant dean of student affairs at Yale College, told the News that the Student Affairs team added four new health promotion positions as part of the YC3 program. “Students have consistently requested more mental health support on campus and we are thrilled to be able to provide it,” Peck wrote. So, that's 4 out of >1,500!). It really does look like a struggle for power and billions of dollars in revenue, and the faculty are losing.
  - secabeen 5y ago
    > What is most interesting about this article is that there is, at least among the quoted faculty, zero support for the administrative growth and a universal sentiment that it is harmful to the University and places undue burdens on faculty and students, and the quotes are quite vitriolic (this is not normally how professors talk in public about their schools). What I have generally seen is that the faculty aren't seeing increases in staffing that appear to accrue to their benefit, but they also aren't as exposed to the parts of campus where the increases are happening either. Universities are much more complicated than they were 40 years ago, and they are serving a much more diverse, dynamic and broad student base. Schools aren't attended by primarily upper-class white men anymore. Many of the students really benefit from the additional resources available, whether that's mental health support, academic support, financial aid, etc. etc. Yale also has a medical school and hospital, which always adds a huge amount of complexity to the finances of the organization.
- pempem 5y ago
  The question I was immediately struck by was "how many of those are tenured?". For the last decade+ we've seen the same flow of contract gigs rather than jobs with assured benefits proliferating higher education. It makes our colleges' education poorer because these non-tenured contract profs are making a lower quartile salary with no benefits after 4+ years of being underpaid as a grad student while also pursuing and interviewing for tenured positions/working on their research. Universities have two jobs: 1. teach the populous, but also 2. be a leader in understanding the corner of the world they are focused on. We have been a leader in the latter and the less we invest in it, the more problematic a future we'll face as a nation.

WalterGR 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

b9a2cab5 5y ago

Turns out hiring 50 Deans of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Other Useless Things does not make for a good research institution. Also turns out that you really don't need a bunch of people putting out feel-good press releases to realize "DEI".

quacked 5y ago

More and more often, large institutions like bloated corporations or swollen universities feel like giant holes where people go to mine money. The American Dream is to have all of your paperwork in order so you can set your tent up right above a rich vein.

crocodiletears 5y ago
Oddly enough, this is the most optimistic way I've seen the state of our institutions described without agressively veering into the realm of fiction
- quacked 5y ago
  What about it strikes you as optimistic? I felt pretty pessimistic when I wrote it.
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    The framing of people as prospectors looking to stake out their plot of a mine. I'd have framed the analogy in the terms of a tick climbing a tree for the opportunity to latch onto a large, diseased animal. A prospector might go on to do something great with what he's extracted. A tick just wants to survive, and hopes that his meal will outlast him.
deepnotderp 5y ago
I think that’s a really, really good way to put it. The American Dream has moved away from pioneering new value streams to acquiring pedigrees/credentials that enable you to extract cash from an existing stream.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  I sort of agree but I don't think we're quite there yet. The only time I here anyone speak favorably about owning a business that's protected by regulation or milking a professional license is if it's part of some grand scheme to make a ton of money and then cash out of <coastal state goes here>.

christkv 5y ago

This just reminds me of an episode in yes prime minister where there is a new hospital fully staffed by administrative staff and no medical personnel because it never officially opened to the public.

robocat 5y ago

I wonder when they will exceed one staff member per student?! Although: “The total number of instructional staff teaching the 5,964 undergraduate students at Yale University is 1,915 . When this is adjusted to account for those with part-time status, the result is the "full-time equivalent" (FTE) count. Using the FTE count for students and staff results in a "student to instructor" ratio of 6 to 1 which places Yale University among the best concerning instructional attention.” - from another site.

catgary 5y ago
I always find the US system shocking, even just up north in Canada. UBC has comparable numbers of faculty + administrative staff, and services ~4x the undergrad population. UofT has ~50% more faculty and staff, and handles close seventy thousand undergrads!
- WoodenChair 5y ago
  > I always find the US system shocking, even just up north in Canada. UBC has comparable numbers of faculty + administrative staff, and services ~4x the undergrad population. UofT has ~50% more faculty and staff, and handles close seventy thousand undergrads! While your overall point is well taken, UBC is not a comparable institution to Yale. UBC has an acceptance rate of around 50%, Yale has an acceptance rate of around 5%. UBC has an endowment of around $2 billion, Yale has an endowment of around $40 billion. These are order of magnitude differences. We can debate whether Yale should have that level of selectivity or endowment, but it's to be expected that a way more selective school with way more resources will spend more on human resources per student. If you want to make a comparison, it would make more sense to compare something like a selective large state university in the United States to UBC, not Yale.
  - catgary 5y ago
    I guess the selectivity is what I take issue with - institutions like Yale/Harvard don’t really exist in Canada, and I think we are better off for it.

finolex1 5y ago

Without details about what roles these new administrators are being hired for, it's impossible to say whether this is justified. For example, the quote from the university president suggests the growth is due to hospital staff: > University President Peter Salovey emphasized that the administrative growth has been proportional with the growth in faculty size and in University revenue. He reiterated that the growth in the Yale School of Medicine’s clinical practice has been a significant and worthwhile cause of the administration’s increased size. Whereas the reactions in the article and in this thread seem to be focused on other positions.

wilde 5y ago

When the number of people you work with becomes the proxy you are rewarded on, the organization grows. The alternative is for management to understand the work ICs are doing, but everyone is too busy meeting with each other for that to happen.

MarkLowenstein 5y ago

14 comments in and no mention of the element Administratium? https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a5/74/e9a57450043a4af5725ccf0ba474eb62.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a5/74/e9a57450043a4af5725c...

etiam 5y ago
Nice. Do you know any similar ones? I've been trying to find one in similar vein I read once, which among other things mentioned force exchange through morons if I recall correctly.
- MarkLowenstein 5y ago
  Best I could do was an image search that didn't have many good ones honestly. I know there was one once with a nice nuclear diagram associated...maybe under the alternate name "administrontium"?

etempleton 5y ago

A lot of these positions are hidden support for students. Faculty often think “administrator” means exclusively Deans and academic leadership, but it is the IT department, the website department, the counseling center, the career center, records, archives, marketing, admissions, health services, etc., etc. that makes up the bulk of administration. The level of service expected, especially at an Ivy League school is very different today then it was 20-30 years ago. It is a much more complex operation.

john_moscow 5y ago
I can bet if you actually give students a choice between "support for students" with a $500K student loan vs. a library card and a basic room for $50K, very few will pay the premium. It would be a very sobering experiment to make these services optional and independently billed. Otherwise it sounds like the typical bureaucratic excuse for creating more bureaucracy.
- etempleton 5y ago
  Students do have the choice. There are many colleges that are more affordable with less services. Many of these colleges are going under because enrollment has dropped at these schools. Community Colleges in particular have seen a huge drop in enrollments. Students opt for the schools with more prestige, better facilities, and more services 9/10.
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    Oh, come on, you can't be serious. Top schools have previously earned good reputation through attracting the best talent, so their diplomas are worth more in terms of salary expectations. And they are now banking on that reputation to charge as much as they can, while using loosely defined "services" to justify the costs. A fair comparison would be 2 schools of comparable reputation having different administrator proportion and spending structure, but not in this world where the people running them go to the same golf club. Also "community college" these days is an euphemism for "the cheapest degree one could get that formally counts as one", so it is perceived accordingly.

everybodyknows 5y ago

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183973