<p>"Full-time administrators now outnumber full-time faculty. And when times get tough, schools have a disturbing tendency to shrink faculty numbers while keeping administrators on the payroll. Teaching gets done by low-paid, nontenured adjuncts, but nobody ever heard of an 'adjunct administrator.' ... They only isolate themselves and create conflict on campus."</p>
<p>Opinion.</p>
<p>Having recently worked at a large public U, and now at a very small private college, I have not experienced administrative bloat. At both schools, administrators were extremely overworked (and most were underpaid). Federal regulations, state regulations, accreditation regulations … these all play into the number of administrators needed to keep the boat afloat. Students are often unprepared for school and life, and this also requires administrators to keep everyone on the right course (remediation, academic counseling, personal counseling, financial literacy, etc).</p>
<p>As for reactions to threats, that is a product of our litigious society. Schools are worried about being the next VA Tech.</p>
<p>If administrators are abusive, those abusive administrators should be dealt with. I don’t think that abusive administrators are really all that prevalent (any more so than abusive administrators are prevalent in any segment of the workforce).</p>
<p>I’ve seen it. It’s alive and well at my H’s institution.</p>
<p>I think this falls under the “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it” category. We want safety, IT services, Libraries, maintenance, rec centers etc. But it is disconcerting when those who actually provide the product being purchased (in this case education) become outnumbered by those who “support” them or in the case of the USA today article FAIL to support them Is it possible we are all too spoiled or too burdened by regulation and minutia to remember what really matters to the students most, a great education?</p>
<p>Individual administrators are generally competent and well-intentioned in my experience. The linked article uses two isolated incidents to allege a pattern of administrative “abuse” that IMHO does not exist. On the other hand, the growth in administrative staff in relation to faculty means that the tail now wags the dog in terms of resource allocation and institutional mission. I have heard administrators, without irony or awareness, speak of the “academic branch” of the university. Well, if academics is a branch, what is the trunk or root?</p>
<p>We all tend to see our own roles as central in whatever institution we work in; we all are self-centered. But when the people who run universities on a day-to-day basis reveal their own biases in such a way, I have to wonder about the effect that self-centeredness has on resource allocation and decision making. If we can’t say that faculty and students are more important and the Associate Dean for [Fill in the Blank] or the Vice President for Recreation Management, then we have lost our way.</p>
<p>At what point does “administrative support” turn into parasitism? It’s a tough question.</p>
<p>When budgets get tight, faculty positions get eliminated. In some universities, many departments aren’t fully staffed and probably won’t be in the foreseeable future. Do administrative positions ever get eliminated? Honest question. I have no idea. I have a difficult time reconciling increased student enrollment with reducing teaching staff.</p>
<p>Our department had a student worker part-time, and they were eliminated. Both office staff are out half the time so nothing gets done except in crisis mode.</p>
<p>The administrators vary from useless to useful. The new president of the university brags about record enrollment but not a peep about their average SAT scores and GPAs, let alone the 4-year and 6-year graduation rates.</p>
<p>I would want administrators, especially the Dean and the President, to work under mostly commission, based on graduation rates and graduate employment rates. More = better to them, and a student failing a class = a student taking the class again.</p>
<p>^ I’ll just throw out a few problems with that: </p>
<p>Graduation rates:
-Not everyone can afford to go to school full time and thus take longer to complete.
-Not everyone wants to be a fulltime student (familial obligations or other barriers).
-Lots of people voluntarily choose to go longer because they don’t WANT to graduate, because they want to study abroad, because they want to add on another major, etc.
-In general, a lot of people drop out just because they decide college isn’t the proper pathway for them- that doesn’t mean the school did anything wrong. </p>
<p>Employment rates:
-What do you do with people who go on to get advanced degrees? If they are employed, do you credit the undergrad or grad school?
-What about people that voluntarily choose not to be employed (stay at home parents for example)?
-What about people in very economically depressed areas? Not everyone has the resources to pick up and move if the area around them is depressed. Even if the company paid relocation costs, many graduates have spouses and even children that are already established in that area. </p>
<p>I <em>do</em> think that many presidents get paid too much and I do think that there is too much overhead (way beyond salary issues). I don’t think that tying pay to those markers is appropriate and I think it would drive many talented presidents away from commuter schools, directional schools, community colleges, etc. </p>
<p>“I would want administrators, especially the Dean and the President, to work under mostly commission, based on graduation rates and graduate employment rates.”</p>
<p>This wouldn’t solve the problem. It’s just imposing short term “solutions” on a long term problem</p>