Administrators Ate My Tuition

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all

by cpaone • 15 years ago

43 18 15 years ago

washingtonmonthly.com

aidenn02• 15 years ago

So tuition has tripled, and it's all because of the administrative budget, which is a whopping 15% of expenditures?

cpaone• 15 years ago

Administrators are setting the priorities of expenditures. In so-called "fiscal emergency," administrators have opted to cut academic programs and freeze hiring in teaching while at the same time increasing expenditures on bureaucracy. The article cites abundant examples.

aidenn02• 15 years ago

Still, according to the article's own numbers, if we reset the administrative fraction of the budget to 1947 levels, we would only shave 6% off of costs; this hardly explains much of the huge increase in inflation-adjusted tuition since then.

Xlythe• 15 years ago

To be fair, it was 15% in 1995, and is higher now.

idle_processor• 15 years ago

Here's a gross oversimplification showing the possibility (not actuality) of something like this's occurrence.

1) Suppose the government sponsors $100 out of every student's $103 tuition.

2) Suppose that $3 of that $103 tuition goes towards the beaurocracy.

3) Suppose beaurocracy costs somehow increase to $9, from $3 (and that all other costs remain fixed).

Outcome: Student tuition is now $109, $100 of which is paid for by the government. The students' share of the tuition, however, has tripled from $3 to $9. I doubt the percentages work out anything like that in the real world, though.

And on an entirely unrelated note, a fun quote: "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

rkischuk• 15 years ago

It's true that it's not just the administrators. It's the budgets and programs that come with them.

I went to Georgia Tech. The last time I heard a report, Georgia Tech had 3 staff members dedicated to the fraternity system. 1 for fraternities, 1 for sororities, and one for minority organizations that don't want to be in the mainstream system. Schools should have zero staff dedicated to the "greek" system. Greek letter organizations are free associations of citizens that operate on the periphery of the school. But we need staff. And we need budget and fees to pay to educate this system, and monitor them.

Expand this to every corner of campus. You not only need many staff dedicated to diversity programs, you must take "fees" from students to pay for diversity days, weeks, and months. I served in Georgia Tech's student government, and watched every week as student organizations came through asking for money to pay for bands, t-shirts, refreshments, banners, etc, all from student funds. Many of the projects were nice ideas, few of them justified boosting the cost of education for a school's students.

At most schools, there are multiple staff members dedicated to purposes for which there should be zero staff. But some combination of social agendas and lawsuit avoidance builds up the headcount.

Students pay for access to sporting events, which used to be about actual students competing, but are now huge cash cows that serve as farm leagues for pro sports teams. Students now pay hundreds of dollars in fees for the _chance_ to see their school's sporting events, even though stadium capacities are often triple or more the student population.

steve-howard2• 15 years ago

I don't know if there are many schools like this, but the Greek houses at Northwestern are all on campus property. As I understand it, the frats do not pay rent, but members still pay rent which the frat then keeps. So my on-campus living cost per year is $8k, and theirs is essentially $0. I love seeing my money go to things that have no relation to me.

yardie• 15 years ago

This must be unique to Northwestern. The housing prices at other universities is listed on the residential housing page. Greek housing was no different than anyone else and were a little more since the houses weren't as dense as a tower block.

The only way I can see the Greeks at Northwestern getting away with this is if they covered all the maintenance and all the utility charges. Considering that most of those houses are old and paid for NU wouldn't have to charge anything beyond that.

jpadvo• 15 years ago

Beware -- this article makes a variety of claims that are not well supported. They are not even anecdotal, they're just out of thin air. Just one example from the first part:

"Alas, today’s full-time professional administrators tend to view management as an end in and of itself. Most have no faculty experience, and even those who have spent time in a classroom or laboratory often hope to make administration their life’s work and have no plan to return to teaching."

Um, any data _at all_ to back this up? In my experience at a public university, this is not at all true. And when administrators make a career out it, it is often in roles like working on technological infrastructure of a campus.

Also, many universities are growing their research programs. From what I've seen, it takes a lot more staff to support the research side of things than to support the educational side of things. And research is paid for (in theory) from grants and such, not tuition.

Anyway, there are a variety of problems with the way higher education is run and funded, but this article doesn't cover them. Instead, it uses a few statistics and a lot of bold, inaccurate, unsubstantiated, sensationalistic hand waving about that darn old wasteful ivory tower.

"There are lies, darn lies, and statistics" applies quite well in this case.

_delirium• 15 years ago

> And research is paid for (in theory) from grants and such, not tuition.

The former dean of Georgia Tech's College of Computing has a series of posts arguing that many (most?) universities actually lose money on research, contrary to the grants argument:

http://innovate-wwc.com/2010/07/05/why-universities-do-resea...

http://innovate-wwc.com/2011/05/18/if-you-have-to-ask-ten-su...

rjprins• 15 years ago

What the article misses, but what I think is going on is that education is a lot like health care:

The need is very high (everybody wants to get a good job!), while supply is limited to established institutions.

Partly because it's so hard to prove to the world that your education program is excellent, it's very difficult to disrupt the market. Also, having money correlates with success later. Only well off people can pay for the best universities, but the best universities produce the best students partly because those students were well off in the first place.

Greedy_Fools2• 15 years ago

Beware -- you're missing the point. Education is being drastically reduced because fools think It's about what they want and have forgotten what is good. Greedy fools are the problem and how it gets pointed out is irrelevant. You defend greedy fools. The discussion needs to be in the abstract, because fools hide behind concrete.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

Rising demand and inelastic supply leads to rising prices. This is a good thing. The price premium the wealthy are willing to pay allows schools to massively subsidize their brain drain of the brightest students. If you get into stanford and your parents make less than 60k, you don't pay tuition at all. The alternative is rationing which leaves just as many students out in the cold but doesnt allow the school to capture extra rents.

So the other issue is inelastic supply. This is partially down to the regulatory environment, but that isn't the whole picture. I haven't done enough research to understand why there aren't more schools starting up. I suspect it's an accreditation barrier to entry issue.

americandesi333• 15 years ago

One thing I want to mention is that this article sheds a lot of negative light on adjunct faculty with no strong arguments of why.

From my university experience, I actually got a lot more out of faculty that were loaned from the business world because they were great at sharing practical relevent knowledge and examples.

Full-time faculty on the other hand lacked the knowledge of the outside practical world and were outdated in their teaching.

bryanwb• 15 years ago

Universities are more expensive because they have become educational country clubs/babysitting facilities, complete w/ professional sports teams, grandiose athletic facilities (often for those professional athletes), and n number of caretakers to plan students lives and cater to every one of their developmental needs.

Greedy_Fools2• 15 years ago

It's just about stealing. All they're doing is is old fashioned theivery. Just because they are allowed to, nobody can stop them. This country celebrates theivery, and is willing to sacrifice the minds of generations to honor and protect theives.

Administrators Ate My Tuition

Related Stories