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Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-doubled-staff-to-student-ratio/ https://stanforddaily.com
by testfoobar 2y ago
Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-doubled-staff-to-student-ratio/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double...
In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff.
In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff.
In 28 years:
27% increase in students
56% increase in faculty
281% increase in total staff
The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1
This is insane.
- mrtksn 2y agoWhat does the non-faculty staff does? Is it maybe connected to technical staff? They Can’t all be management?
- jagged-chisel 2y agoJanitorial, technical, nutritional … basically anyone not involved in educating students “non-faculty.”
- freehorse 2y agoSo including people performing a big chunk of essential research tasks and who do not fall into the "professor" or "student" category.
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoI would assume non-student TAs (who do teach students), lab technical staff (who maintain equipment and and more directly enable teaching than janitorial staff) and such are also all non-staff.
- biophysboy 2y agoNon-student TAs are typically grad students whose research lab lacks research assistant funding.
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoUniversities try to hire grad students as TAs to help them out, but sometimes hire outsiders as TAs. It could be because the undergrad major has lots of students but the corresponding graduate major has few. Obviously this varies from university to university and I know nothing about Cornell.
- LeafItAlone 2y ago>I would assume non-student TAs (who do teach students), lab technical staff (who maintain equipment and and more directly enable teaching than janitorial staff) and such are also all non-staff. They are considered staff.
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoSorry. I did mean they are staff, and that they are "necessary" staff for the core function of teaching.
- Ekaros 2y agoDidn't those already exist before? Is there lot more of that type of work? Or shouldn't it be done more efficiently now? Also aren't those increasingly out-sourced so shouldn't count in that stat?
- Reason077 2y ago> "The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1" > "This is insane." "This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University... School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and provide clinical care, financed by external research funds from government and industry sources"
- ein0p 2y agoStill, 1:1? Please.
- whoisburbansky 2y agoI mean, if you tack on a hospital to a university, the correct denominator to compare against is "patients served," not "students educated," at least for the portion of the headcount you're sticking in the numerator.
- jhbadger 2y agoHospitals attached to universities aren't in general "tacked on" but are a part of the educational environment. They exist not only to serve patients but to educate students.
- whoisburbansky 2y agoNo, of course, but is the primary focus of the bulk of the staff educational or patient care? Seems disingenuous to pretend it's the former just to make a point.
- naijaboiler 2y agoIn the US, many Medical schools are schools only in the technical definition of schools. In reality they are more like research and medical centers that also do a bit of teaching on the side. Staff to students ratio could easily be in excess of 10:1 A little over a decade ago, I remember Dean of a top medical school I attended showing the budget of the medical school. Tuition was like 5% or of the entire med school revenue and budget. I remember raising my hand and asking the Dean if tuition was so little, why not just make it free. He gave me a death stare and just danced around the question.
- freehorse 2y agoWhat is "staff"? Is there a break down on how much "staff" is involved in research tasks vs admin tasks? Research nowadays is complex and requires a lot of technical support, a lot of people who are hired as technical-administrative stuff may do actually purely research tasks [0]. As usually faculty captures people in some "professorship" level, it completely misses this big crowd of research-related work. [0] source: me
- secabeen 2y agoExternally funded research also come with many compliance, reporting, and other requirements [1]. Administrative staff are the ones who handle these responsibilities. If funding agencies want fewer administrators, require less oversight. [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200?toc=1 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/p...
- machinekob 2y agoContemporary academia especially in the West has a massive surplus of staff. Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other. Occasionally, folks outside of the circle come in and they start finding ton of fraud in the research with multiple big cases in past few years on top universities like Harvard for example.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoWhat fraud happened at Harvard?
- nis0s 2y agoIf you search “Harvard research fraud” at least three distinct cases come up.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI found 2. One is an ongoing lawsuit and the other seems mostly like stupidity because people keep falling for the stupid AI grift. I can barely trust AI to produce basic boilerplate and they are trying to verify novel research with it?
- prasadjoglekar 2y agohttps://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/8/3/hbs-prof-lawsuit-data-fraud-defamation/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/8/3/hbs-prof-lawsuit...
- sega_sai 2y agoWow, experts in academic careers are contributing here. Can you please give us a source of your knowledge of why people pursue academic careers?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- grounder 2y agoWe might need to know the FTE values to understand what this means. Are staff positions full-time FTE? Are faculty positions full-time, tenure positions? Have they added part-time staff, adjunct faculty, etc.?
- LeafItAlone 2y agoTotal staff numbers are only marginally useful without further breakdown, as that article points out. A family member works for an eatery at a large university. Technically they are employees (staff) of the university, but pretty much in name only. They work for a business unit which receives no financial support from the university. They are profitable on their own and if they aren’t, they would close down. They are provided benefits via the university, but it is part of their budget. Including them in the count relative to students is about as useful as including the employees of the (independent) Starbucks on campus. (It’s not Stanford, so I can’t speak to that specific institution)
- elif 2y agovirtually every sector of the economy has 'excess staff;' it is not confined to higher ed. It's the obvious conclusion of decades of automation not being realized as less working hours, but in the dilution of responsibilities into more complicated and larger corporate apparatuses. Some of them are called "bullshit jobs" some of them are given credibility, while being utterly purposeless ultimately. This is largely ignored as a general trend because it is usually contextualized to a narrative within each company (as is the case here) rather than seen as a larger phenomenon. This is the inevitable conclusion of unprecedented concentration of capital, which is not new but only being revealed during a time of seemingly limitless automation potential.
- almosthere 2y agoThe other insane thing is 10 students to one teacher? I don't understand that because when I went to SJSU, I was almost always in a class with 60+. For CS, it was around 30 people in the room.
- grapesodaaaaa 2y agoThis is also the fallacy of looking at one metric. Do staff include productive researchers producing net positive incoming? Other comments mention the medical school. Are these staff providing patient care (and billing insurance)? University staff aren’t necessarily just your traditional educators. A whole lot of productive stuff (both for the university and everyone else) can potentially benefit from “staff.”
- metaphor 2y ago> 281% increase in total staff Nit: 181% increase I do wonder what percentage of said "staff" are really just students working to fulfill student responsibility[1] for pennies on the dollar. [1] https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html
- evil-olive 2y agofrom the article you linked: > Stanford also has unique characteristics that create high staff headcount, former Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty Senate during a May 2023 meeting: Unlike other institutions, Stanford requires more staff to maintain Stanford Research Park, a large housing portfolio and other facilities. from one of the sources [0] that paragraph linked to: > It’s also important to understand how Stanford defines terms used in headcount growth since those definitions vary widely among research universities, Drell noted. For example, clinician educators, which have grown significantly in number, are categorized as “staff” at Stanford, while at other universities they are often counted as “faculty.” In addition, and in contrast to many other institutions, Stanford has chosen to focus more on hiring staff in many areas rather than using outside contractors whose employees would not count as Stanford staff. and from [1] also linked in the above paragraph: > We recognize that stable, affordable housing is critical for student success. Stanford guarantees housing for undergraduates for all four years and provides housing for over 70% of graduate students. We also provide as much as three times more student housing than large universities across California in similarly constrained housing markets. given the context, it seems perfectly reasonable that Stanford would have more "staff" employees than the University of Southwestern North Dakota, even normalized for different numbers of student enrollment. 0: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/05/provost-provides-data-context-staff-numbers https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/05/provost-provides-d... 1: https://housinginfo.stanford.edu/by-the-numbers https://housinginfo.stanford.edu/by-the-numbers
- daveguy 2y agoSo you're saying the ratio has improved? An education improving their ratio of faculty to students seems like a good thing. Aren't all the big bad billionaires self-made autodidacts? Most people aren't. Most people benefit from education. If there are unlimited AGI educators, that seems like an extraordinary claim and I haven't even seen a pilot. Is the plan to move fast and break education? Cause that seems kind of extreme rather than any sort of conservative I've ever known. Do you just want to destroy those posh academic institutions? Or are the billionaires offering to subsidize education with donations by increasing taxes on themselves? Or you don't realize that "faculty" can include researchers? I'm confused. Can you clarify?
- trescenzi 2y agoUniversities run small cities. That staff number includes the people who mow the lawn, cook food, clean dorms, work security, maintain their networks, etc the list is massive.
- dingnuts 2y agoit's more like a resort than a city, which is the problem.
- acdha 2y agoThis seems like a low-value comment without some data. For example, can you identify the specific jobs which you consider resort-like and how much of the growth they contribute to?
- op00to 2y agoStart with the personal butlers and beach chair attendants at all the big R1 universities. Those positions should go.
- op00to 2y agoAssuming what you said to be true - and I don’t believe it is - why?
- matwood 2y agoWithout knowing more about the numbers, the only one I have an issue with is the number of students. These universities should be doing everything they can to increase enrollment and let in more students. I went to a smaller school in my city, but at the time most everyone I know who applied got it. I would not get it today, and people end up wait listed, etc... IMO, that is the failing of the US higher education system. Next is cost to the student.
- fastaguy88 2y agoIt might be insane, if you believe that "staff" are all doing administrative duties. But, as was pointed out, "staff" are often anyone who is not a tenure track faculty. So librarians, research technicians, environmental health and safety, IT support, etc etc. A more useful comparison would divide staff into "supported by tuition" (should be related to student count) and "supported by external grants and clinical income". This idea that costs have increased because of administrative staff expansion is a popular one, but one that ignores what R1 universities spend money on, and where that money comes from. (Ironically, I suspect that the university may be spending more money on research, because of limits on indirect costs.)
- nobodyandproud 2y agoI think, however, the total count is extremely important. Every University’s purported mission is to educate students and advance our collective knowledge together with its students. That’s it. If the university makes more money from treating patients than teaching its students, then its mission can’t help but shift. Likewise if the bulk of the staff are not focused on teaching and educating, then its mission can’t help but shift. This is a problem.
- fastaguy88 2y ago> Every University’s purported mission is to educate students and advance our > collective knowledge together with its students. > That’s it. Not if the university has a medical school. Virtually all R1 universities with medical schools have a hospital, and a large clinical practice. Most of medical school is an apprenticeship where you treat patients. Medical schools need patients, which means a lot of additional staff. Likewise, in most fields it is no longer possible to advance knowledge just by going to the library or writing on a white board. Knowledge is advanced through experimentation, and experimental equipment and reagents cost money, and need staff to use and maintain them. No university (and certainly no medical school), makes enough money in tuition and fees to pay for the education provided, and I seriously doubt that many universities have supported themselves solely through tuition since the beginning of the universities in the middle ages. You are certainly correct that university deans and presidents have seen their mission shift with the increasing cost of education, and indeed faculty are writing many more grants than they did 75 years ago. So time commitments have shifted. But there is an implication that it could have been some other way -- that the money is there (or could have been there) if some other path were chosen. It is hard for me to imagine where the money might have come from.
- 42772827 2y agoHow much has the endowment increased?
- atoav 2y agoIt could also just mean they do more research and less education. But hey, let's quickly jump to conclusions, that seems to be a popular hobby nowadays.