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Thank you. I can see how, say, asking students to notify campus police in advance with a simple online form would make sense for large parties. But here we're t
by cs702 4y ago
Thank you. I can see how, say, asking students to notify campus police in advance with a simple online form would make sense for large parties. But here we're talking about asking students to submit an application with a known list of attendants two weeks in advance. That doesn't seem right.
Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a]
[a] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptable-words-elimination-of-harmful-language-initiative-11671489552 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptabl...
- rainbowzootsuit 4y agoThe administrators are there as approximately 1:1 hand servants to carry your bags, attend to preparation of meals, and so forth such that you not expend yourself unduly.
- rainbowzootsuit 4y ago/s
- MerelyMortal 4y agoI think you should have included the /s tag. Since they don't actually do all of that stuff, it goes to show that ratio is ridiculous.
- rainbowzootsuit 4y agoYou got the /s. I thought it would be implicit.
- nobody9999 4y ago>You got the /s. I thought it would be implicit. As sad as it may be, Poe's Law[0] really is a thing: Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied. I've been bitten by that more than once, myself. C'est la vie, eh? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
- amluto 4y agoNot unless something has changed radically. The administrators are nominally there to do specific things. For example, there might be an administrator whose job is to liase (sorry!) with the students on staff at a group of houses to make sure that they do their jobs and to find out when the university needs to do to help. For example, if there is a plumbing problem, students would tell this administrator and they would get it fixed. Of course, there seem to be a lot of administrators these days if all the articles are right, so perhaps there are now extra ones doing nothing particularly useful or administrators whose job is to make policy.’ There is no administrator that actually helps students with daily tasks.
- lumost 4y agoThe above commentator was almost certainly being facetious. However with so many highly paid administrators - there could be an alternate world where they simply did serve students in daily needs. Considering this alternate world, it really does beg the question what these administrators are doing.
- nobody9999 4y ago>there could be an alternate world where they simply did serve students in daily needs. I'd say an alternate time[0] (up to ~50 years ago) rather than an alternate world. That said, domestic servants are still common today in some parts of the world. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedder
- giardini 4y agoNo apology is necessary as "liase" is a valid word dating back to at least the early 1900's: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/liaise https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/liaise amluto notes: >"There is no administrator that actually helps students with daily tasks."< We graciously thank you for pointing out this oversight and shall take measures immediately to correct it and ensure it never happens again!
- amluto 4y agoNot unless something has changed radically. The administrators are nominally there to do specific things. For example, there might be an administrator whose job is to liase (sorry!) with the students on staff at a group of houses to make sure that they do their jobs and to find out when the university needs to do to help. For example, if there is a plumbing problem, students would tell this administrator and they would get it fixed.
- ajross 4y ago> Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a] Major universities aren't primarily about educating undergraduates, and of course graduate students (about half of that student population at Stanford) are essentially "employees" from a economic production perspective. So really it's about 8k kids paying to learn near the activities of 10k researchers and academics, and the 16k administrators are just the staff needed to keep those 10k workers productive. Which... sounds about right to me?
- cs702 4y agoYou make a good point... but when I read that one of those 16K administrators has the title of "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning," I can't help but feel that things have gotten out of hand. And when I see that the "sticker price" of attending elite US colleges has risen faster than pretty much everything else and is now ~$80K/year, I can't help but be shocked. PS. I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Even though I disagree with you, I find your comment valuable.
- ajross 4y ago> but when I read that one of those 16K administrators has the title of [...] That's the same logic you see on Fox Business when guests demand that we defund the entire federal government because something they don't agree with got funded. Whether or not you personally see value isn't really the issue here. You get that, right? Even granting that the post is likely to ineffective and silly (something I'd agree with, FWIW) lots of people at the school value things like inclusion, community and "integrative learning" and want to see the school prioritize it in its staffing decisions. Also post-secondary tuition has been beating general inflation, but lagging many other areas. This link says it's been growing at 4.63% for the last decade, which is less than most real estate markets. The idea of tuition being "out of hand" is mostly just a meme.
- rayiner 4y agoDefending something you concededly can’t defend on the merits with the assertion that nobody should agree with Fox News about anything is a bad tic that won’t work out for you in the long run. It makes it trivially easy to bait mainstream liberals into seeming to embrace wacky ideas. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
- zozbot234 4y agoIt's not like having a huge party during a frickin' pandemic is a sensible idea in the first place. Really, I have trouble getting what people are complaining about. Nobody likes shelter-in-place all that much, but sometimes it is the right choice.
- AlbertCory 4y agoSo you think that when the frickin' pandemic is officially over, it'll be OK again?
- nl 4y agoIs this a pandemic precaution? There guest list two weeks in advance seems useless for that.
- letitbeirie 4y agoThat's unreal. One bad year for admissions and the administrators will outnumber the students.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> One bad year for admissions and the administrators will outnumber the students. Only if a "bad year" is one where the majority of college-age students in the world are precluded from applying to college due to natural disasters or the like. A realistic "bad year" would mean that the same number of students are admitted, but Stanford breaks some informal non-poaching agreements with Harvard / Yale / Princeton, or perhaps admits some students at a lower bar than the administration was hoping.
- drdec 4y agoIf I am not mistaken, that has already happened at Yale.
- nealabq 4y agohttps://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-part-of-its-leadership-to-lead-yales-administration-increases-by-nearly-50-percent/ https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-... seems to say that in 2019 there were about 5900 undergrads and 5000 administrators and managers at Yale. Not quite parity. But https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts shows somewhat different numbers.
- drdec 4y agoI was remembering this article: https://reason.com/2022/12/01/students-at-yale-faced-mental-health-crises-instead-of-helping-them-yale-forced-them-out/ https://reason.com/2022/12/01/students-at-yale-faced-mental-... But digging in it seems they may have been a little sloppy in their statement.
- cryptonector 4y agoOne admin per student, almost. What on earth do they need so many admins for?? What are they doing?
- mradek 4y agoThey’re elite bro
- mattkrause 4y agoBig R1 universities do a lot more than organize classes. From memory (the last time this came up) That number includes staff at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (a National Lab, Stanford University Medical Center (which runs two hospitals and a bunch of clinics), Stanford University Press, and all of the research administration needed to manage the (many) grants Stanford gets. These are admin-intensive things: federal contracting involves lots of paperwork, healthcare + insurance is a nightmare too. Plus, many of these involve staff that aren’t students (nurses at the hospital, scientists at SLAC, etc), all of whom still need “normal” admin things like parking, HR, and payroll, so the per-student denominator is a bit misleading.
- b112 4y agoAlso all the land and buildings it owns, manages, and rents/leases to others. (eg, they own and lease properties and buildings on El Camino) And they have their own police force, own thousand of houses, and all the infra too (including streets, roads, sewers, etc). Stanford is immensely rich, just considering their land holdings alone...
- heisenbit 4y agoApproving parties although based on their response they still have a staffing gap there.
- Beltalowda 4y ago> Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a] Are administrators exclusively for administrative work? Or does this also include people like teaching aides, lab assistants, etc. which aren't exactly "faculty" but also aren't doing, well, administrative work? On the face of it, this number sounds completely bonkers. So bonkers that I suspect that there's some nuance to it and that these "administrators" are doing more than just "administrating". Maybe not, but really needs some more detail than this.
- nverno 4y agoMalcolm Gladwell wrote an article recently [1] about how Princeton's endowment generates more than enough income to fund the entire school forever- no need for tuition. Yet, they still employ hundreds (thousands? I'm guessing given I know USC employs over a hundred full-time fundraisers, then all the fund managers, etc.) of people as part of their fundraising machine. These schools really are bureaucratic monsters. They need to make more money so they can hire more fundraisers so they can make more money etc. 1. https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-university-is-the-worlds-first-perpetual-motion-machine/ https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-university-is...
- TulliusCicero 4y agoEven if it's including all support staff that seems like kind of an insane ratio to me.
- Beltalowda 4y ago"Seems like", sure. But a lot of thing "seem" this or that until you actually look at the details and context. Without that, it's essentially meaningless information.
- brewdad 4y agoSure. How many businesses have more employees than "customers"? It's not a perfect analog but it's not unreasonable to ask "what are we really doing here?" either.
- malandrew 4y agoYou can’t find daycare with that ratio.
- vkou 4y agoWhich is why daycare is only somewhat unaffordable, while university is completely unaffordable.