6 ms·

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corpo

by tammer 12y ago

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hypnotize_the_media/ http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

jjoonathan 12y ago
I took a look at CMU's financials and it definitely looks like the money is going towards salaries. They don't offer a breakdown between the different kinds of salaries, naturally. Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/financial-reporting/files/2012_annual_report.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...
- nkurz 12y ago
  Here are numbers for Duke and Barnard. I have no idea if they are representative, but they have respectively 10% and 5% of their total budget going to administration. The Barnard link has quite a depth of information. Duke: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-000-a-year-for-college-is-actually-a-discount http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-... Barnard: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_book.pdf https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_boo...
  - Retric 12y ago
    That's not really true. Duke includes finical aid as a cost but that's not actual spending. So from the chart, 10/.76 = ~13% is administrative costs. Though the Text says out of 90k in spending $14,000 goes to pay a share of administrative and academic support salaries which puts just salary's for administration at 15.5 not including their share of the building etc. So, a reasonable estimate ~25-40% of each dollar actually spent goes to administration depending on where you draw the line. AKA is a dean Administration or Faculty. PS: Not that facility get to actually spend anywhere close to 100% of there time on teaching.
  - avn2109 12y ago
    Barnard is a special case for the following reasons: 0) It is one of Columbia University's affiliated undergraduate schools, so facilities/athletics/administration/some budgets are tightly coupled to the mothership, which has approximately more money than god and subsidizes many things 1) It is in NYC, so the cost structure is not representative of the rest of America 2)) It is a Women's college, which probably changes some stuff (though I don't know what)
    - chimeracoder 12y ago
      Points 0 and 1 are (mostly) correct, though I don't think point 2 really has any appreciable impact on the costs. To clarify one thing: Columbia doesn't exactly "subsidize" Barnard - in fact, Barnard maintains its own independent endowment and board of trustees. Columbia and Barnard "partner" together to provide a number of joint services (for example, Columbia students majoring in theater take their classes at Barnard, and vice versa for some other departments, but many departments exist independently at each school). Barnard retains its own independent administration for most positions; there is very little sharing of administrative roles. Student organizations are joint-funded through student fees, and almost all are open to both Columbia and Barnard students. In fact, there was some debate a few years back about the Barnard group overseeing student organizations not contributing its fair share towards Greek life[0], which was soon rectified. It is important that fund transfers between (e.g) Columbia College and Barnard are generally not considered internal transfers the way (e.g.) Columbia College and SEAS (the engineering school) would be. This is not unlike the situation at certain other schools like Harvard and MIT, which sometimes allow cross-enrollment, or other schools which pool resources for student activities. The main difference is that Barnard professors are awarded tenure from Columbia University, not from Barnard (which cannot grant tenure independently). That said, I agree that Barnard's expenses are not indicative, but that's more because they share many resources with another school (Columbia) and reap efficiencies that way, not because Columbia "subsidizes" their costs. Columbia saves a lot of money from these partnerships as well, and I doubt that they would keep the current setup if they didn't feel that they benefited from it financially as well. [0] http://columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/26/inter-greek-council-get-barnard-funds http://columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/26/inter-greek-council-...
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  There's a bunch of relevant data in this paper, albeit from 2008 (starting on 21): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2153122 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2153122 Here's a summary of the conclusions A recent study by two professors of economics attempts to arrive at the ideal ratio of tenured and tenure-track faculty to administrators in order to operate effectively. Analyzing data from 137 public universities from 1987 through 2008, they found that on average the ratio was two administrators to one full-time faculty member when the most cost-effective ratio is one administrator for every three full-time faculty members. They found that an imbalance between administrators and faculty where administrators outnumber faculty is what accounts for the rise in costs. Administrators and non-instructional staff have continued to rise despite less state funding. Furthermore, more part-time faculty are being hired at very low wages to offset the costs of administrators whose salaries tend to be much higher than faculty. Critics argue that the ratio should not be applied universally, as different types of universities have different needs when it comes to instructional vs. supervisory staff. But many agree that the goal of higher education is to focus on those who are in the classroom and not those pursuing an agenda of business development.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Put the administrators on a living wage and send them home.
- Nicholas_C 12y ago
  >Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? All government employee salaries in the state of Texas are public info [0], I used to check out how much my professors made. And how much my dad made. You can see salaries by employer as well. I'm not sure where to find historical salary data but it has to exist somewhere. [0] http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee-salaries/ http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee...
- jhalstead 12y ago
  Here's [1] data for all the public universities in IL. [1] http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/PA96266/search.aspx http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/PA96266/search.aspx
sogen 12y ago
sounds like education in Mexico
bilbo0s 12y ago
Just to point out what may not be so obvious... a lot of the administrative and non instructional staff are not what many of us would consider to be "management". For instance, at the University of Wisconsin, there is an VERY large, extremely expensive bureaucracy called DoIT. It stands for "Division of Information Technology". Basically... it is the department for all of the IT people at the University. It is enormously expensive because of the nature of the work they do. And that is just one of the operations level bureaucracies that the University needs. There is Facilities. There is Campus Police, which are very important at a place like UW. Student Housing. Health Services. The list goes on and on. These sorts of costs are not cheap, but they are necessary. Be that as it may, honest people CAN debate whether or not operational arms like DoIT are functioning as efficiently as they could be. My main point here was only to shed light on operational costs that many universities have which tend to be overlooked in conversations like these. Especially as those expenses are most likely the key contributors to the cost rises being discussed. [Edited for grammar]
- jpulec 12y ago
  I worked at DoIT before graduating and moving out to the Bay Area. And your characterization regarding its bureaucracy and efficiency are pretty spot on.
  - ams6110 12y ago
    I worked at another Big Ten IT division. The amount of productive work per salary dollar would shock anyone in the start-up or corporate sector. Staff would roll in from 9:00 to 10:00AM, surf the web or fool around with some toys for a couple of hours, take a 90 minute lunch, go to a few meetings, and be out the door at 4:30 or 5:00PM. A lot of these people making 6 figures or close to it in a town where that is a VERY good salary. On top of that, 6 weeks of PTO and pretty generous benefits. Every few years there would be a reorganization to create a bunch of new job titles and new useless layers of bureaucracy, since that's the only way to give people more than a cost-of-living raise. You could fire half of them, hold the other half accountable to a reasonable level of productivity, and notice no difference. There might be a net gain.
zacinbusiness 12y ago
And don't forget sports teams. Almost all football programs, for instance, actually cost the university more money than they bring in. This includes revenue from sports memorabilia. Source: friend worked in athletics at my uni and they were extremely proud when they started breaking even.

by tammer 12y ago

jjoonathan 12y ago

I took a look at CMU's financials and it definitely looks like the money is going towards salaries. They don't offer a breakdown between the different kinds of salaries, naturally. Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/financial-reporting/files/2012_annual_report.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...

nkurz 12y ago
Here are numbers for Duke and Barnard. I have no idea if they are representative, but they have respectively 10% and 5% of their total budget going to administration. The Barnard link has quite a depth of information. Duke: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-000-a-year-for-college-is-actually-a-discount http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-... Barnard: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_book.pdf https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_boo...
- Retric 12y ago
  That's not really true. Duke includes finical aid as a cost but that's not actual spending. So from the chart, 10/.76 = ~13% is administrative costs. Though the Text says out of 90k in spending $14,000 goes to pay a share of administrative and academic support salaries which puts just salary's for administration at 15.5 not including their share of the building etc. So, a reasonable estimate ~25-40% of each dollar actually spent goes to administration depending on where you draw the line. AKA is a dean Administration or Faculty. PS: Not that facility get to actually spend anywhere close to 100% of there time on teaching.
- avn2109 12y ago
  Barnard is a special case for the following reasons: 0) It is one of Columbia University's affiliated undergraduate schools, so facilities/athletics/administration/some budgets are tightly coupled to the mothership, which has approximately more money than god and subsidizes many things 1) It is in NYC, so the cost structure is not representative of the rest of America 2)) It is a Women's college, which probably changes some stuff (though I don't know what)
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    Points 0 and 1 are (mostly) correct, though I don't think point 2 really has any appreciable impact on the costs. To clarify one thing: Columbia doesn't exactly "subsidize" Barnard - in fact, Barnard maintains its own independent endowment and board of trustees. Columbia and Barnard "partner" together to provide a number of joint services (for example, Columbia students majoring in theater take their classes at Barnard, and vice versa for some other departments, but many departments exist independently at each school). Barnard retains its own independent administration for most positions; there is very little sharing of administrative roles. Student organizations are joint-funded through student fees, and almost all are open to both Columbia and Barnard students. In fact, there was some debate a few years back about the Barnard group overseeing student organizations not contributing its fair share towards Greek life[0], which was soon rectified. It is important that fund transfers between (e.g) Columbia College and Barnard are generally not considered internal transfers the way (e.g.) Columbia College and SEAS (the engineering school) would be. This is not unlike the situation at certain other schools like Harvard and MIT, which sometimes allow cross-enrollment, or other schools which pool resources for student activities. The main difference is that Barnard professors are awarded tenure from Columbia University, not from Barnard (which cannot grant tenure independently). That said, I agree that Barnard's expenses are not indicative, but that's more because they share many resources with another school (Columbia) and reap efficiencies that way, not because Columbia "subsidizes" their costs. Columbia saves a lot of money from these partnerships as well, and I doubt that they would keep the current setup if they didn't feel that they benefited from it financially as well. [0] http://columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/26/inter-greek-council-get-barnard-funds http://columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/26/inter-greek-council-...
bradleyjg 12y ago
There's a bunch of relevant data in this paper, albeit from 2008 (starting on 21): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2153122 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2153122 Here's a summary of the conclusions A recent study by two professors of economics attempts to arrive at the ideal ratio of tenured and tenure-track faculty to administrators in order to operate effectively. Analyzing data from 137 public universities from 1987 through 2008, they found that on average the ratio was two administrators to one full-time faculty member when the most cost-effective ratio is one administrator for every three full-time faculty members. They found that an imbalance between administrators and faculty where administrators outnumber faculty is what accounts for the rise in costs. Administrators and non-instructional staff have continued to rise despite less state funding. Furthermore, more part-time faculty are being hired at very low wages to offset the costs of administrators whose salaries tend to be much higher than faculty. Critics argue that the ratio should not be applied universally, as different types of universities have different needs when it comes to instructional vs. supervisory staff. But many agree that the goal of higher education is to focus on those who are in the classroom and not those pursuing an agenda of business development.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Put the administrators on a living wage and send them home.
Nicholas_C 12y ago
>Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? All government employee salaries in the state of Texas are public info [0], I used to check out how much my professors made. And how much my dad made. You can see salaries by employer as well. I'm not sure where to find historical salary data but it has to exist somewhere. [0] http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee-salaries/ http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee...
jhalstead 12y ago
Here's [1] data for all the public universities in IL. [1] http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/PA96266/search.aspx http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/PA96266/search.aspx

sogen 12y ago

sounds like education in Mexico

bilbo0s 12y ago

Just to point out what may not be so obvious... a lot of the administrative and non instructional staff are not what many of us would consider to be "management". For instance, at the University of Wisconsin, there is an VERY large, extremely expensive bureaucracy called DoIT. It stands for "Division of Information Technology". Basically... it is the department for all of the IT people at the University. It is enormously expensive because of the nature of the work they do. And that is just one of the operations level bureaucracies that the University needs. There is Facilities. There is Campus Police, which are very important at a place like UW. Student Housing. Health Services. The list goes on and on. These sorts of costs are not cheap, but they are necessary. Be that as it may, honest people CAN debate whether or not operational arms like DoIT are functioning as efficiently as they could be. My main point here was only to shed light on operational costs that many universities have which tend to be overlooked in conversations like these. Especially as those expenses are most likely the key contributors to the cost rises being discussed. [Edited for grammar]

jpulec 12y ago
I worked at DoIT before graduating and moving out to the Bay Area. And your characterization regarding its bureaucracy and efficiency are pretty spot on.
- ams6110 12y ago
  I worked at another Big Ten IT division. The amount of productive work per salary dollar would shock anyone in the start-up or corporate sector. Staff would roll in from 9:00 to 10:00AM, surf the web or fool around with some toys for a couple of hours, take a 90 minute lunch, go to a few meetings, and be out the door at 4:30 or 5:00PM. A lot of these people making 6 figures or close to it in a town where that is a VERY good salary. On top of that, 6 weeks of PTO and pretty generous benefits. Every few years there would be a reorganization to create a bunch of new job titles and new useless layers of bureaucracy, since that's the only way to give people more than a cost-of-living raise. You could fire half of them, hold the other half accountable to a reasonable level of productivity, and notice no difference. There might be a net gain.

zacinbusiness 12y ago

And don't forget sports teams. Almost all football programs, for instance, actually cost the university more money than they bring in. This includes revenue from sports memorabilia. Source: friend worked in athletics at my uni and they were extremely proud when they started breaking even.