5 ms·

Or maybe you have no idea. Consider how absurd it's gotten (http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit http://www.thebaffl

Or maybe you have no idea. Consider how absurd it's gotten (http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-decl...): "My own knowledge comes from universities, both in the United States and Britain. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide. "The growth of administrative work has directly resulted from introducing corporate management techniques. Invariably, these are justified as ways of increasing efficiency and introducing competition at every level. What they end up meaning in practice is that everyone winds up spending most of their time trying to sell things: grant proposals; book proposals; assessments of students’ jobs and grant applications; assessments of our colleagues; prospectuses for new interdisciplinary majors; institutes; conference workshops; universities themselves (which have now become brands to be marketed to prospective students or contributors); and so on."

gamblor956 12y ago
Providing a diatribe from another professor does little to support your argument that professors have any idea as to the amount of administrative work required to make a university function. Indeed, the quote actually supports my argument that most professors are blissfully or even deliberately ignorant of the time and effort necessary to prepare grant proposals for research funding, student grants for student projects and job applications, setting up conferences and workshops for the faculty and students, managing the curriculum, and other tasks necessary for the university to function so that the professors can do their jobs (lecturing and/or research). None of these burdens was created by the administrative staff--they are external burdens that the administrative staff were hired to address so that the academic faculty didn't have to waste their time on it.
- tensor 12y ago
  How about a first hand example from the secretary at the last university where I worked? The university used to give travelling professors and students a per-diem for food. I think it was around $50 US per day, so pretty reasonable. You had to justify if you spent more than that. However, while I was there the administration decided that they wanted to cut down on some imagined "abuse" that people were not spending the $50 on food, but maybe kept some of it, or used it to buy a beer heaven forbid. So they required receipts for everything, no more per-diem. Even better, they decided that they know how and when you should eat and set limits on breakfast lunch and dinner individually. This created so much paperwork that they had to hire more full time staff to go through all the receipts. Clearly this cost the university way way more than it potentially saved and also created huge problems for people with special dietary requirements. All of this was exclusively caused by the administrative staff, not tenured professors who universally hated it. The older secretaries who were around when things were better also hated it and thought it stupid.
  - fluidcruft 12y ago
    You seem to totally not grok compliance at a fundamental level. You're blaming the tail for wagging, but the dog's tail doesn't wag just because it chooses to.
    - tensor 12y ago
      This is not an external compliance issue, it is entirely the university management that is responsible. Plus, it is only one example out of many. I was never in the system deep enough to be able to recount the other examples, but I certainly remember lots of drama around forced classroom aids and other nonsense. Excessive bureaucracy is not some inevitable thing that you cannot help. It's driven by people who directly cause it to fester and grow.
      - fluidcruft 12y ago
        How does it makes sense for administration to take their overhead and then spend it hiring unnecessary beurocrats (rather than shuffling funds to give themselves raises)? The ever-growing regulatory burden that the private sector always cries about? This is the same thing.

gamblor956 12y ago

Providing a diatribe from another professor does little to support your argument that professors have any idea as to the amount of administrative work required to make a university function. Indeed, the quote actually supports my argument that most professors are blissfully or even deliberately ignorant of the time and effort necessary to prepare grant proposals for research funding, student grants for student projects and job applications, setting up conferences and workshops for the faculty and students, managing the curriculum, and other tasks necessary for the university to function so that the professors can do their jobs (lecturing and/or research). None of these burdens was created by the administrative staff--they are external burdens that the administrative staff were hired to address so that the academic faculty didn't have to waste their time on it.

tensor 12y ago
How about a first hand example from the secretary at the last university where I worked? The university used to give travelling professors and students a per-diem for food. I think it was around $50 US per day, so pretty reasonable. You had to justify if you spent more than that. However, while I was there the administration decided that they wanted to cut down on some imagined "abuse" that people were not spending the $50 on food, but maybe kept some of it, or used it to buy a beer heaven forbid. So they required receipts for everything, no more per-diem. Even better, they decided that they know how and when you should eat and set limits on breakfast lunch and dinner individually. This created so much paperwork that they had to hire more full time staff to go through all the receipts. Clearly this cost the university way way more than it potentially saved and also created huge problems for people with special dietary requirements. All of this was exclusively caused by the administrative staff, not tenured professors who universally hated it. The older secretaries who were around when things were better also hated it and thought it stupid.
- fluidcruft 12y ago
  You seem to totally not grok compliance at a fundamental level. You're blaming the tail for wagging, but the dog's tail doesn't wag just because it chooses to.
  - tensor 12y ago
    This is not an external compliance issue, it is entirely the university management that is responsible. Plus, it is only one example out of many. I was never in the system deep enough to be able to recount the other examples, but I certainly remember lots of drama around forced classroom aids and other nonsense. Excessive bureaucracy is not some inevitable thing that you cannot help. It's driven by people who directly cause it to fester and grow.
    - fluidcruft 12y ago
      How does it makes sense for administration to take their overhead and then spend it hiring unnecessary beurocrats (rather than shuffling funds to give themselves raises)? The ever-growing regulatory burden that the private sector always cries about? This is the same thing.