9 ms·
The disconnect between uni administrators and the academics on the ground is growing at a staggering pace. One example is that I know of several universities we
by cycomanic 4y ago
The disconnect between uni administrators and the academics on the ground is growing at a staggering pace. One example is that I know of several universities were salary increases for academics have been capped to 1-2% due to the "hard economic times", while the vice chancellors/presidents ... received salary increases above 8% (and above 20% in at least one case).
At the same time most academics will attest that the requirements that they have to fulfill are consistently going up, for example when computer systems are being modernized e.g. purchasing systems, it's very obvious that the requirements are made to minimize the work of the administration, which typically increases the workload of academics.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoI think a distinction should be made between administrations on the ground (we had an incredible secretary of graduate studies who made everyone's life much easier) and those who work for the executive office and act to lower the "cost" of running a University while not actually making any processes more efficient.
- cycomanic 4y agoCompletely agree, the closer an admin is to actually working with the people on the ground, the more they care and the more engaged they are. The administrators in our department that we interact with on a weekly basis are all extremely dedicated and will go out of their way to help you. If you ask someone in central admin for anything you will likely be told it is not their job and look somewhere else (and the next person you contact will do the same... until you give up).
- etempleton 4y agoYes administration is a very broad term in higher education. When people complain about administration they are almost always talking about the presidents cabinet and academic leadership, not, say, the folks in financial aid or admissions.
- rdtwo 4y agoYeah but the bloat is there too. Admission, DEI, mental health, community outreach, environmental affairs, etc…
- psychomugs 4y agoMany of those you listed were, at least at my university, actually understaffed in my opinion, especially mental health services. Our department director of grad studies told me that the counseling center went through double-digit turnovers in just a few months. Students almost have to compete for appointments the way they’d compete for seats in a class. The cynic in me thinks that the student-run and -staffed peer counseling program was the university putting a band-aid on the issue while they continued pouring resources into brand management.
- etempleton 4y agoAdmissions folks also work pretty crazy hours and are notoriously understaffed and underpaid. It is a grind.
- etrautmann 4y agoYes - concur for expenses is exactly this. Administration loved that users now need to do all of the work.
- another_story 4y agoAny bureaucracy seems to tend towards making the system of bureaucracy more efficient for those managing it, not those working under it. Schools, K through university, all suffer from this.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoOne of the worst parts of this is that the bureaucrats in school systems are so smug about it. They go yelling "academic freedom" when you threaten to cut their job, while clamping down on the "acceptable" fields of study for faculty. These administrators are the real threats to academic freedom. That said, I think the entire US university system needs a rethink, so I'm not upset that these bureaucrats are accelerating the process of burning it to the ground.
- salamo 4y agoFrom the article, > The founders of the democratic tradition understood that institutions are prone to corruption. This does not mean that they cease to operate. It means, to the contrary, that they continue to function, but in ways that no longer serve their original purpose. It's not clear to me that universities will burn to the ground. They can probably stumble along for decades down the same path if nothing changes. No, their incentives need to be corrected.
- User23 4y agoLindy[1] suggests that Harvard will outlive the United States. Edit: [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- naniwaduni 4y agoHarvard is older than the US, and frankly does at least seem better-aligned to its original goals (training Puritan ministers!) than the US does.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
- killjoywashere 4y agoPeople, especially well educated people in affluent areas, are living longer and the cost of their healthcare is skyrocketing. Unless you are next in line to the throne of a specifically designated tenured spot, you’re fucked. You could cure cancer and it doesn’t matter, actually that would literally make the problem worse. Also, read the Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.
- doliveira 4y agoGiven the salary increase for CEOs and executives, I'd say that's a general trend throughout society.
- flanked-evergl 4y agoIt is, but in traditional shareholder owned companies have mechanisms to deal with this, and is less detrimental to society. If the owners are fine with shitty profits, they can let things stand. If they are not, they demand change and can get it because they have control over the company. In publicly traded companies even minority shareholders can have an impact. Universities are a bit like corporate squatters though, or even monopolies, they sit on some intellectual real estate that is incredibly overvalued and does not easily scale, and refuse to provide what society expects of them at reasonable quality and price. The solution is actually quite simple, we should reduce the value we place on university educations, especially from these captured institutions which are the most prestigious.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI don't think this has anything to do with academia or administration, you're describing every large organisation, from companies to charities to states...
- hooverd 4y agoThere's more than just faculty and administrators. Staff aren't fatcats. They're doing all the boring work that keeps the university running.
- beckingz 4y agoThe issue is that they create more boring work. Some of the newly created work is valuable for the goals of the administration, in most cases the boring work provides marginal benefit to anyone.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoAs a faculty member I find it more and more difficult to use my own grant funding (some of which is from organizations like NSF and some of which is "unrestricted gift" funding, which is supposed to be used at my sole discretion.) Mostly this is due to new rules and reporting requirements that rule out certain expenses, and some of it is new procedures that make reimbursement harder. For example, we were informed last year that we couldn't buy pizza for grad students' research lab meetings because the business office had determined that "food purchased within 100 miles of the University" was no longer a valid business expense. Similarly, travel booking has become much more difficult and many of my colleagues (and grad students) report large sums of un-reimbursed expenses, just because the process of getting things through the system is so much more byzantine now. I don't want to complain too much, but all these "small" new requirements add up: particularly the ones that require office staff to manually approve expenditures (our office is understaffed.) It is definitely making it harder for us to do our jobs, and some faculty and students are so frustrated with the procedures that they spend their own salaries to get work done.
- i_am_proteus 4y agoWe've been seeing "administrators" start asking for detailed reports on unrestricted funding, plans for expenditure, etc. I am starting to wonder when they'll start to ask for "gifts" from faculty discretionary accounts to support general scholarship funds or anything else that basically just pushes it back into the top line. Unrelated tangent because I recognize your name: thanks for making your course materials openly available!
- pannSun 4y agoFunny. One would naively assume that administrators are there to make the faculty's job easier. To take care of administrative work so that you can focus on teaching and research. Instead they think their role is to create administrative work.
- malshe 4y agoBy any chance are you required to use Concur for flight booking?
- noipv4 4y agoJust as every other aspect of American life has played out while being taken over by the corporate management model and financialization. Quality plummets, costs soar, Executives proliferate and grant themselves enormous pay raises, the ranks of Administrators and Executive Assistants balloon as these feudal lords require retainers and staff to maintain the style to which they feel entitled
- genghisjahn 4y agoWhich university?