How much does the bloated bureaucracy (and highly compensated administrators) at universities (not just Yale) contribute to the high cost of higher education?
https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/the-review/2022-08-22?cid=gen_sign_in
1 Like
Article is paywalled; I’ve posted full text below. While the article is about Yale, in my opinion administrative bloat is a big problem at a bunch of universities. (I discussed it a bit recently in the thread about “sending unprepared/underprepared students to college”). Personally, I make a distinction between low-level (not bloated) and high-level (bloated) administrators.
AUGUST 22, 2022
From: Len Gutkin
Subject: The Review: The Report Yale Doesn’t Want You to See
“University professors,” David Graeber wrote in these pages in 2018, “have to spend increasing proportions of their days performing tasks which exist only to make overpaid academic managers feel good about themselves.” That’s an assessment corroborated by a draft report on the “Size and Growth of Administration and Bureaucracy at Yale,” dated January 2022 but not yet released. (At the moment, the report appears to be in limbo, circulating privately but with no official stamp of approval. Karen Peart, a spokeswoman for Yale, said only that “the Senate voted at its closed-door May 2022 meeting to postpone discussion of the report until a future date.”)
In an appendix, the authors of the report — the seven-person governance committee of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences — have collected several anecdotes from faculty members that they say are symptomatic of an increasingly intolerable burden of bureaucratic oversight. “Disrespectful,” “demoralizing,” “infantilizing,” “opaque” — these are some of the adjectives that appear. One professor compared dealing with Yale administrators to “interacting with an insurance company.”
The governance committee’s thesis is that these afflictions all stem from the numerical increase in administration even as the size of the faculty has remained stagnant. The authors cite a 2018 Chronicle report showing that Yale has the fifth-highest ratio of administrators to students in the country, and the highest in the Ivy League (for comparison, peer institutions like Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford were 24th, 35th, and 55th, respectively). Between 2003 and 2022, the draft report states, “we note increases in administrative positions in various units of at least 150 percent. … This compares with an increase in just 10.6 percent” for tenure-track jobs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
And not only is the number of administrators growing, but so are their salaries. The seven “upper administrators” who remained in the same role between 2015 and 2019 received “roughly 8.25 percent per year” raises, a rate far out of step with what faculty members got. As depicted in the report, Yale’s upper administration is both bloated and greedy.
The report is — or will be, if the university ever releases it — the result of a long period of concern over the ballooning administration. For the Yale Daily News, the student journalist Philip Mousavizadeh reported on that concern in November of last year. “According to eight members of the Yale faculty,” Mousavizadeh wrote, the administration’s “size imposes unnecessary costs, interferes with students’ lives and faculty’s teaching, spreads the burden of leadership, and adds excessive regulation.” (One of those eight, Nicholas Christakis, also sat on the governance committee that authored the report. The other members of the governance committee were Hélène Landemore, David Bercovici, R. Howard Bloch, Gerald Jaynes, Maria Pinango, and Larry Samuelson.)
In response, Provost Scott Strobel wrote a letter to the editor construing the professors quoted in Mousavizadeh’s article as pitting faculty against staff. “I take strong exception,” Strobel wrote, “to any view of Yale that privileges the needs of our students and faculty while dismissing the invaluable contributions of any of our staff.” He went on to sing the praises of health-care workers, IT specialists, mental-health counselors, and so on, all of whom helped Yale to weather the pandemic. “While I and many of my faculty colleagues could continue our work from home, many of our staff were on our campus, in our buildings and with our students. Staff have been essential workers on the front lines, readying campus for our safe return.” The professors quoted in Mousavizadeh’s article were talking about deans and deanlets; Strobel pretended to think they were also talking about facilities workers.
To advertise the letter, Nate Nickerson, Yale’s vice president for communications (and therefore, according to the draft report, one of Yale’s 20 highest-paid employees — albeit clocking in at the bottom of the list) sent an email to managers encouraging them to share Strobel’s “beautiful tribute to what we together do … with staff in your units. No pressure, of course — just forward the link above as feels natural.”
The authors of the report, presumably anticipating more criticisms like Strobel’s, take pains to define their targets. “The committee emphasizes that this report is not primarily concerned with the many members of the Yale community who fill staff and support positions. Our primary focus is on the general administrative structure of the university.” Elsewhere, the committee “reiterates that its focus is not presently on the number or allocation of the staff that keeps Yale’s daily activities running on the ground. Many of the personnel at Yale do not play a role in the increasingly burdensome policies and procedures of the administration.”
The authors acknowledge that their data-gathering is somewhat improvisational, a necessary evil, they say, given the administration’s failure to provide official figures on many of the relevant topics. Running like a refrain throughout the report are pleas for more information. “Despite repeated efforts on the part of the Senate Budget Committee over the past few years to obtain meaningful information about the budget and its deployment, the administration has not made current and past administrative costs transparent.” Later, a note of irritation creeps in: “We note that the lack of transparency about this topic by the administration is itself a problem.” And later still, buried in a footnote, “We cannot know, because we do not have the requisite transparency to make such an assessment.” Perhaps the administration feels too burdened by onerous paperwork to find the time.
3 Likes
Oof!
Thanks for cutting and pasting. I 100% agree this isn’t a Yale problem. And this is why COA at some schools is $80K.
5 Likes
IMO it’s not ethical to post full article texts that are behind a paywall. There are many ways to get around paywalls which a simple google search will detail. OTOH, If everyone stops paying for credible news sources, I expect many won’t like the limited news reporting that remains. Registration is free at the Chronicle, and with that, you can read two free articles per month.
9 Likes
Having worked at a college recently, I know from experience that much of the administrative staffing & oversight is necessary. The authors say, “The committee emphasizes that this report is not primarily concerned with the many members of the Yale community who fill staff and support positions.” From where I sit, yeah, it is. The increased staffing needs for IT, mental health services, enrollment management, compliance, physical plant maintenance and necessary upgrades, etc, etc are real. I left because I kept getting more and more work piled on me. Why? Because the school where I worked couldn’t afford additional staffing. Yale is fortunate to be able to afford additional staff to deal with increasing demands. Perhaps the authors would be better off if they focused on their own needs in terms of assistance for dealing with their increased workload, making a case for staff to help them.
5 Likes
Might College Confidential be legally liable for allowing posting of full article texts that are behind a paywall, whereas an excerpt with reference might be fine?
You can rest assured that we have reviewed the topic with legal. If the author or the publication asks us to take it down, we will. Let’s move back to topic please.
3 Likes
The private university I went to 30 years ago has increased COA about 350%. Enrollment has increased about 6%. I have often thought about what has caused the increase. Well one thing is they took a dorm that used to house about 500 students and made it admin offices. What caused the need for so many new admin workers? I am sure the professor to student ratio is about the same.
It is just crazy the increased costs.
2 Likes
There have been many articles over the years that point out a huge increase in administrative costs. Many of these things are not needed, IMO. Or, at least should have a surcharge. The idea is, every student should have access to everything and that admin is as important as professors. While I don’t agree with those premises, that’s the result. There are fewer full profs, more adjunct lecturers and fewer on the tenure track yet there are more overall college students. ( Naturally one has to ensure complete access for students to comply with ADA, as it should be).
Some of the things we saw on college tours were outlandish. Tens of million dollar athletic workout spaces, manicured lawns, buildings devoted to a single topic that don’t hold classes, 15 entrees. So much more. Colleges are in a contest and like any race, it will continue until someone halts the insanity.
Paying 80K for college for most people is insane. We’re piling on tons of debt on most kids, for what? So they can work out in style. And then pay for the admin and extras for ten years? Crazy, imo. Why not make these things optional? And those who want them can pay. Or better yet, eliminate them entirely.
At some point, 120K? No one is going to be able to pay. What then? We’re getting pretty close to the breaking point. Even top 5% people in the US, have a hard time paying 80K for a couple of kids. Not to even mention helping with grad school.
4 Likes
I agree about subscribing and I’m happy to stop posting full text. I get annoyed when people complain about paywalls because I value good news. However, your statement is somewhat contradictory, because if it’s unethical to read without a login (whether paid or X number free per month), why would it be ethical to google ways to get around a paywall?
I do pay for subscriptions to my local paper and several other publications. I get the Chronicle through my employer. While I do feel differently about news sources in general (including The Chronicle), I don’t feel bad at all about sharing full text for scientific journals which are a disgusting rip-off of taxpayer money and free faculty labor. That’s a different topic, though.
If the mods don’t want users to post full text, then I certainly won’t do it anymore!
2 Likes
Well, those things are optional. Nobody is forced to attend Yale or Tufts or SMU or UCLA (at OOS prices). There are many options that are far less expensive after merit aid (and acknowledging that at many universities, 90+% of students receive merit aid…making it a discount). $100+ million dollar buildings are beautiful and can definitely uplift a space. But I’ve had some of my best class discussions in a room with few windows and desks from 50 years ago. But it’s not new and shiny and there are definitely students/families who will ding a campus for that. But I’d rather a school have newer technology and older furniture and dorms than the reverse.
But as far as making things on a campus optional? I’d rather not. I’d prefer for the gym to be functional but not glamorous and have everybody able to use it rather than having a flashy gym with the latest and greatest items but then require students to pay extra to use it. Creating economic barriers between students is not healthy and doesn’t promote the kind of interactions that an intentionally diverse student body is selected for.
7 Likes
This is what I meant by the distinction between low-level and high-level administrators.
Here’s a typical example: faculty are increasingly burdened with doing all the fiddly little administrative tasks that often used to be done by an assistant. There are seemingly new administrative tasks that get piled on every year. Just booking travel or dealing with filling out various forms can occupy a huge amount of a professor’s time. Colleges have slashed low-level administrative positions like department assistants and tech help and professional advisors. That is work that HAS to get done and then it gets added to faculty workload, but often invisibly.
What faculty are mad about is the bloat in “deans and deanlets”. High-level administrators that do hand-wavey stuff that isn’t even well described. They have lots of meetings but don’t do much concrete work. Often times they seem to exist just to make work for others, so that their own position can be justified. Every time there’s a new initiative that has no support amongst faculty and students, and/or seems to serve no real purpose, there’s a chance it came from high level administrative bloat. They love to pay big money to 3rd party vendors to supply a product no one wants.
They love to build new buildings that are too expensive, that they can’t afford to hire low-level administrators to staff (custodians, IT, etc.). They slash faculty salaries and lay off support staff, all while justifying their own large salaries. At spouse’s institution (a middling SLAC), faculty had totally stagnant wages below market rate. Someone got the tax forms and found out some high-level admins got 30% raises the previous year. When confronted, I kid you not, they claimed “well that’s the market rate for administrators and we have to pay this to attract good people to the position”. A slap in the face to faculty and students. This was after much hand-wringing about belt-tightening for faculty who haven’t seen even a cost of living raise in years, yet are expected to spend hours every year detailing every bit of work for the administrative bean-counters, just to beg for an extra $50 of scraps. This happens ALL THE TIME at many schools with the rise of the business class of professional administrator.
Of course, Yale is rich and can pay whatever they want to whomever they want. But this same problem exists at financially struggling institutions too, and yes, it has got to contribute to ridiculously high tuition rates.
6 Likes
I don’t there are any/many schools where 90% of people receive merit aid, certainly not any of the schools you mentioned. And while I agree that nice classroom buildings are helpful, that’s not an excess or something I mentioned. The gym excess is the point. Yes, there should be work out areas but they don’t need to cost 50-100 million. Everything within reason.
I think most/many low and mid SES students esp those who are taking out loans would opt for non participation if they saw how much it was going to cost them. More importantly, the salary of the profs and tenure track profs add more to education than any building. YMMV>
I agree that there are schools where the extra amenities are kept to the bare minimum, and students can certainly choose those. I worked at a bare-bones school, and the cost to operate was still ridiculous. And … it got harder & harder to enroll students, because they wanted amenities. We worked so hard to find creative ways to provide what we could, but that was another burden on staff. I absolutely recognized the burdens on our faculty, who frankly were increasingly required to hand-hold grad students (not fresh out of school, either) and do a lot of things that weren’t required in the past. If I were a faculty member, I would be angry if my school had the financial means to lessen my burden but chose not to - large endowments can lead to resentment in this case.
I think that there are numerous reasons we are where we are, and they aren’t all related. The small co-op school where I received my degree had very, very few amenities - and those that they had were pretty lame compared to other schools. We complained about it to each other, but not to administration. We knew we were lucky to get an amazing education for a bargain price. Fast forward 40 years, and the amenities at that school are really nice. My understanding is that they had to do certain things to enroll students, not all fluff - state of the art labs aren’t cheap to build or maintain. Tuition is really high as a result, but enrollment is on target.
3 Likes
No, Tufts, Yale, etc, are not providing merit aid to 90+% of their students. But that’s the point. Families are not required to send their children to those schools. Choosing one of those schools is choosing a luxury good. There’s nothing wrong with luxury goods, but people should acknowledge that’s what they’re selecting.
There are many schools that provide merit aid to 90+% of students without financial need. For example:
- Agnes Scott: 95%
- Allegheny: 98%
- Augustana: 100%
- Austin: 98%
- Baylor:: 89%
- Beloit: 97%
- Berry: 100%
- Bowling Green State: 91%
- Bradley: 100%
- Butler: 90%
And notice, I never got past the letter B in an alphabetical list of schools (source).
I was reviewing the faculty bios of a couple directional public schools in a state that is not renowned for its public education system. There were professors with their terminal degrees from Columbia, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. An in-state family could pay about $20k sticker price to attend one of those directional-type universities. When choosing to pay $80k for Tufts vs. $20k in-state, that “upgrade” is for a luxury item. And math, English, and bio are not all that different no matter where you’re learning them.
Let’s say that a student is interested in public policy. All of these are considered “good” private schools and they’re all located in state capitals.
- Butler (IN): $40k after average merit award (90% receive)
- Trinity (CT): $79k COA, as only 2% receive merit award
- Emory (GA): $75k COA, as only 11% receive merit aid
- Agnes Scott (GA): $28k COA after average merit award (95% receive)
The difference in price between these is substantial. For some families, it is undoubtedly worth it. For others, they may not have the means to pay for the more expensive options, or they may have the means and decide that the difference in value isn’t sufficient for them to pay the difference. I am willing to bet, however, that the facilities of Trinity and Emory are much fancier than those at Butler and Agnes Scott.
All of that to say, once again, nobody is forced into paying $75-80k when there are options that are significantly less costly, not even considering people’s in-state public options.
4 Likes
I will take it even further: I am against college gyms of all sorts. I fully realize I am an extreme outlier, and that an American residential college couldn’t meet enrollment today without a gym. But the fact that providing a gym is no longer optional is a clear sign of bloat to me. Most foreign universities do not provide gyms. Even in the United States, working out wasn’t “a thing” before about 1980. My grandparents lived into their 90s without ever “working out.” I haven’t been to a gym in over 20 years. My kids have never been to a gym. My plan is to be like the Queen Mother; I am going to live to 102 never exerting myself beyond strolling with my corgis.
3 Likes
@ColdWombat 's post perfectly encapsulates my experience teaching at a public university in the northeast. Well said!
And if the positions haven’t been eliminated entirely, the low-level staff are paid so poorly that it’s hard to keep anyone in those positions. My department has gone through three student coordinators in the last five years because each has been poached by a better paying part of the university as soon as they’ve learned the ropes. Constantly dealing with new hires unfamiliar with the department is incredibly frustrating for students and faculty alike.
2 Likes
From the chronicle opinion piece:
This representation of Strobel’s letter in the last sentence seems disingenuous, at best. The article which Strobel was addressing is not just about “dean’s and deanlets” it was about the “44.7 percent expansion” of “managerial and professional staff that Yale employs.” Strobel points out:
An incomplete list of the roles played by our M&P staff include: residential college deans, lead administrators, nurses, clinical practice managers, research associates, dining hall managers, librarians, human resource generalists and mental health counselors.
He also notes:
Between 2002-2020, the faculty grew by approximately 54 percent, while the M&P staff grew by approximately 45 percent and revenues by almost 200 percent. In other words, the growth in M&P staff has been slower than the growth in faculty and the growth of both groups has occurred during a period of increasing scholarly ambition.
Seems like the increase in M&P staff is more likely explained by the larger increase in faculty, as well as the growing numbers of clinical staff at the Medical school.
I would encourage anyone interested actually understanding the issue (as opposed to using the chronicle opinion piece as fodder to support their preconceived beliefs) to read the Yale News article and Strobel’s letter. Neither are paywalled, and both offer a more honest assessment of the dispute than does the chronicle opinion piece copied in its entirety, above.
2 Likes
Seems like the same kind of phenomenon in general business where CEO pay has risen far faster than everyone else’s pay.
1 Like
You’re making the assumption that job prospects, education and long term earning and opportunities are equal by comparison across all the schools you have presented. This has been talked about in dozens of threads. Some parents and students will pay more for certain schools and some will not.
Of course based on your cost analysis, someone could just attend a CC and then transfer to the state flagship. It’s cheap. But college is not just about cost. Most people do not in fact get merit. There’s very little merit money out there compared to FA. So, those who are full pay or who receive little merit have to make their choices. For you, those schools you listed are options. For many, they are not.