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What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, a

What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.

shigawire 5y ago
Hospitals require an army of admins because the regulatory burden is so high. And for that we can only blame our convoluted insurance model.
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  Not just insurance model. 1/3 of the population is on government funded insurance and we still have a mess. Healthcare is polluted up and down with regulation that tends to maximize profit or create rent-seeking.
ModernMech 5y ago
This is sort of true but also at the same time I rely on a lot of staff to make my job a lot easier. Yes we could cut down on those administrators but it would mean that professors have to do more, taking away from research agendas. Universities have been optimized to make doing researcher easier and I appreciate that. I'd have to pay a lot more attention to my students' personal lives if we didn't have a dean of student affairs and the whole apparatus that is involved with that. There's a whole office of advising that does a better job than I ever could, and I am freed up to focus on other things that I'm good at. As another example, we have a bunch of internal grants. It's basically free money that you can apply for to do whatever you want with it, to the tune of 10s of thousands. We need to pay administrators to handle that whole process. It's a lot of money to handle and it's not a cheap process to administer these grants. We could cut them and it would shrink the budget, but it would also stop the flow of early-stage ideas from forming that later turn into huge grants. If I have an idea that might cost like $10k, I can whip up a proposal and get funding for that lickity split, without having to go to the NSF or some other external agency. Then when the idea is more mature I can go and get external funding. If you cut the administrators just looking at a budget, you're really cutting research without realizing it. I mean, running a University is basically like running a city. You have all the same concerns: infrastructure, food, security, a citizenry, political struggles, etc. You need a government (administrators) to do that kind of work that keeps this huge system running. Yes bureaucracies are expensive and inefficient, and sure there are of course things that could be cut, but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. That machine doesn't just happen, it's administrators keeping it running.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. The students get their piece of paper that employers use as a free-to-them proxy for intelligence and diligence. I won’t cry at all when this exploitative business model is disrupted and lots of administrators have to find honest work.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    I mean, you call it a scam and exploitative, but our customers are very happy with our service. They give us repeat business by sending their kids and grandkids to us. Our brand becomes a part of their identity moreso than Apple could ever dream. They wear our logo on their clothes and they even tattoo it on their bodies. When we call our customers up every year and ask for donations, they open their checkbooks and give us money for nothing at all in return. If our business were so exploitative, why are our customers so enthusiastic about our product?
sdenton4 5y ago
Ratio of tenured staff only tells /part/ of the story. The problem with this ratio is that there's a massive oversupply of people to do the work (new-minted phds) compared to the number of available prof positions. ie, Supply >> Demand, which has made it trivial to convert what would have been tenured jobs a couple generations ago into rotating assistant prof positions. It may be that the increasing admin staff has taken advantage of this situation more ruthlessly than good communist professor admins would have, but "Supply >> Demand" and a consequent race to the bottom in the labor market is the major factor in this part of the 'why academia sucks' story. Meanwhile, states have pulled back or failed to increase university funding, and the universities fill the gap with greater tuition. Here's the story+graph for the University of California system: https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapters/chapter-12.html#12.3.2 https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt... This is the GP's point, and completely spot on. It is also true that there are more MBA's in the admin buildings and that they suck, and are likely paid more than they should be. But while I think it /is/ a factor, it's likely not the biggest bottleneck.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Meanwhile, states have pulled back or failed to increase university funding, and the universities fill the gap with greater tuition. Here's the story+graph for the University of California system: https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt... This is the GP's point, and completely spot on. If this is the primary factor we should expect student debt load for private school graduates to have grown much more slowly than for public school graduates, right? It may be that the increasing admin staff has taken advantage of this situation more ruthlessly than good communist professor admins would have, Why are we giving non profit tax benefits to profit maximizers?
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    [flagged]
seneca 5y ago
> Colleges were captured by professional administrators. This is, as I understand it, correct. Administrators as a percentage of university staff has ballooned. The explanation I've seen for this is that they are needed to handle ever increasing amounts of regulations. This is the same problem faced by hospitals.
- rapind 5y ago
  > needed to handle ever increasing amounts of regulations I’m cynical about this. “These damn regulations! It would be so much better for us… I mean for the public… if we could get rid of them.” Too simplistic and too much incentive to blame regulations. No doubt it’s a burden, and some regulations are overzealous and misguided, but there’s probably more to it. It’s a significant burden to the chemical factory when you make it illegal for them to dump their waste in the river (greed bad!). It’s also a burden to society because now we have to police their douchebaggery. Then there’s the (inevitable) chance that this policing is corrupted or becomes inefficient (regulations bad!). Probably a flawed analogy, but it’s what I think of whenever there’s an argument for or against regulation.
- Fomite 5y ago
  One of the great problems with this is that "Too many administrators", like "Too many regulations", is easy to say, but hard to implement. There's a reason each of those positions was created - often a fairly good one. As an exercise, I sat down one day and listed the administrators that if I was suddenly president of my university should begin considering updating their resumes. Each one was a problem as a person, but the position was one I would want refilled - indeed, at least one of them was currently running a badly understaffed office.

shigawire 5y ago

Hospitals require an army of admins because the regulatory burden is so high. And for that we can only blame our convoluted insurance model.

erosenbe0 5y ago
Not just insurance model. 1/3 of the population is on government funded insurance and we still have a mess. Healthcare is polluted up and down with regulation that tends to maximize profit or create rent-seeking.

ModernMech 5y ago

This is sort of true but also at the same time I rely on a lot of staff to make my job a lot easier. Yes we could cut down on those administrators but it would mean that professors have to do more, taking away from research agendas. Universities have been optimized to make doing researcher easier and I appreciate that. I'd have to pay a lot more attention to my students' personal lives if we didn't have a dean of student affairs and the whole apparatus that is involved with that. There's a whole office of advising that does a better job than I ever could, and I am freed up to focus on other things that I'm good at. As another example, we have a bunch of internal grants. It's basically free money that you can apply for to do whatever you want with it, to the tune of 10s of thousands. We need to pay administrators to handle that whole process. It's a lot of money to handle and it's not a cheap process to administer these grants. We could cut them and it would shrink the budget, but it would also stop the flow of early-stage ideas from forming that later turn into huge grants. If I have an idea that might cost like $10k, I can whip up a proposal and get funding for that lickity split, without having to go to the NSF or some other external agency. Then when the idea is more mature I can go and get external funding. If you cut the administrators just looking at a budget, you're really cutting research without realizing it. I mean, running a University is basically like running a city. You have all the same concerns: infrastructure, food, security, a citizenry, political struggles, etc. You need a government (administrators) to do that kind of work that keeps this huge system running. Yes bureaucracies are expensive and inefficient, and sure there are of course things that could be cut, but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. That machine doesn't just happen, it's administrators keeping it running.

bradleyjg 5y ago
but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. The students get their piece of paper that employers use as a free-to-them proxy for intelligence and diligence. I won’t cry at all when this exploitative business model is disrupted and lots of administrators have to find honest work.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  I mean, you call it a scam and exploitative, but our customers are very happy with our service. They give us repeat business by sending their kids and grandkids to us. Our brand becomes a part of their identity moreso than Apple could ever dream. They wear our logo on their clothes and they even tattoo it on their bodies. When we call our customers up every year and ask for donations, they open their checkbooks and give us money for nothing at all in return. If our business were so exploitative, why are our customers so enthusiastic about our product?

sdenton4 5y ago

Ratio of tenured staff only tells /part/ of the story. The problem with this ratio is that there's a massive oversupply of people to do the work (new-minted phds) compared to the number of available prof positions. ie, Supply >> Demand, which has made it trivial to convert what would have been tenured jobs a couple generations ago into rotating assistant prof positions. It may be that the increasing admin staff has taken advantage of this situation more ruthlessly than good communist professor admins would have, but "Supply >> Demand" and a consequent race to the bottom in the labor market is the major factor in this part of the 'why academia sucks' story. Meanwhile, states have pulled back or failed to increase university funding, and the universities fill the gap with greater tuition. Here's the story+graph for the University of California system: https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapters/chapter-12.html#12.3.2 https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt... This is the GP's point, and completely spot on. It is also true that there are more MBA's in the admin buildings and that they suck, and are likely paid more than they should be. But while I think it /is/ a factor, it's likely not the biggest bottleneck.

bradleyjg 5y ago
Meanwhile, states have pulled back or failed to increase university funding, and the universities fill the gap with greater tuition. Here's the story+graph for the University of California system: https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt... This is the GP's point, and completely spot on. If this is the primary factor we should expect student debt load for private school graduates to have grown much more slowly than for public school graduates, right? It may be that the increasing admin staff has taken advantage of this situation more ruthlessly than good communist professor admins would have, Why are we giving non profit tax benefits to profit maximizers?
- sdenton4 5y ago
  [flagged]

seneca 5y ago

> Colleges were captured by professional administrators. This is, as I understand it, correct. Administrators as a percentage of university staff has ballooned. The explanation I've seen for this is that they are needed to handle ever increasing amounts of regulations. This is the same problem faced by hospitals.

rapind 5y ago
> needed to handle ever increasing amounts of regulations I’m cynical about this. “These damn regulations! It would be so much better for us… I mean for the public… if we could get rid of them.” Too simplistic and too much incentive to blame regulations. No doubt it’s a burden, and some regulations are overzealous and misguided, but there’s probably more to it. It’s a significant burden to the chemical factory when you make it illegal for them to dump their waste in the river (greed bad!). It’s also a burden to society because now we have to police their douchebaggery. Then there’s the (inevitable) chance that this policing is corrupted or becomes inefficient (regulations bad!). Probably a flawed analogy, but it’s what I think of whenever there’s an argument for or against regulation.
Fomite 5y ago
One of the great problems with this is that "Too many administrators", like "Too many regulations", is easy to say, but hard to implement. There's a reason each of those positions was created - often a fairly good one. As an exercise, I sat down one day and listed the administrators that if I was suddenly president of my university should begin considering updating their resumes. Each one was a problem as a person, but the position was one I would want refilled - indeed, at least one of them was currently running a badly understaffed office.