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I read yesterday that there are now more administrators than students at Harvard, but ‘only’ one third as many teachers as students.

bell-cot 3y ago
Yep. And Harvard is anything but alone in that respect.
vkou 3y ago
Harvard is at 19,000 employees for 23,000 students - but I'd be surprised if most of the employees are administrators, as this includes the plumbers, the janitors, the gardeners, the campus cops, the cooks, etc, etc. My, uh, no-name school somehow managed to educate ~37,000 students with a 'mere' 7,200 employees (half of them part-time).
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Did you school have much of a research arm? That's where you can get a lot of mismatch between the ratios because you have whole cadres of people who don't teach anyone at all or teach a few small classes because their jobs are research focused.
  - jjk166 3y ago
    My alma mater, which is a research university, last year had 8000 employees for 12000 students (6000 undergrad, 6000 grad), of whom 1200 were faculty and 3000 were staff. Of the staff about 1000 were in administration-related roles (management ~200, business operations~500, office support ~300). There are about 500 dedicated research staff, which includes post-docs, research associates, and non-teaching research faculty. Research staff is the largest single employee category for the staff.
- wrycoder 3y ago
  The article I saw was this one - It claims 10,000 administrators and support staff compared to 7500 undergraduates. I'm guessing your numbers include all employees and all students, including graduate students? Clearly, one should compare administrators etc. who are focused on undergrads with the number of undergrads. The link below includes a reference to the original study, so I suppose one could tease out the proper numbers. But, in any case, there are a lot of administrators these days. Thanks for the info. https://www.thecollegefix.com/at-harvard-there-are-2600-more-administrators-than-undergrads/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/at-harvard-there-are-2600-more...

bell-cot 3y ago

Yep. And Harvard is anything but alone in that respect.

vkou 3y ago

Harvard is at 19,000 employees for 23,000 students - but I'd be surprised if most of the employees are administrators, as this includes the plumbers, the janitors, the gardeners, the campus cops, the cooks, etc, etc. My, uh, no-name school somehow managed to educate ~37,000 students with a 'mere' 7,200 employees (half of them part-time).

rtkwe 3y ago
Did you school have much of a research arm? That's where you can get a lot of mismatch between the ratios because you have whole cadres of people who don't teach anyone at all or teach a few small classes because their jobs are research focused.
- jjk166 3y ago
  My alma mater, which is a research university, last year had 8000 employees for 12000 students (6000 undergrad, 6000 grad), of whom 1200 were faculty and 3000 were staff. Of the staff about 1000 were in administration-related roles (management ~200, business operations~500, office support ~300). There are about 500 dedicated research staff, which includes post-docs, research associates, and non-teaching research faculty. Research staff is the largest single employee category for the staff.
wrycoder 3y ago
The article I saw was this one - It claims 10,000 administrators and support staff compared to 7500 undergraduates. I'm guessing your numbers include all employees and all students, including graduate students? Clearly, one should compare administrators etc. who are focused on undergrads with the number of undergrads. The link below includes a reference to the original study, so I suppose one could tease out the proper numbers. But, in any case, there are a lot of administrators these days. Thanks for the info. https://www.thecollegefix.com/at-harvard-there-are-2600-more-administrators-than-undergrads/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/at-harvard-there-are-2600-more...