The Economics of Duke University

https://dontaylor13.substack.com/p/duke-university

by paulpauper • 7 months ago

51 27 7 months ago

dontaylor13.substack.com

djoldman2• 7 months ago

"Grants and contracts revenue represents the largest component of University revenue ($1.5 billion and 38%)."[0]

Indeed. Many large US universities are more accurately labeled as research centers with schools attached.

Because those grants are extremely restricted in what they can pay for, it's not quite accurate to include them in anything like an "available operating revenue" number.

[0]https://resources.finance.duke.edu/resources/docs/Financial_...

SoftTalker2• 7 months ago

Yes, grant money must be spent according to the approved budget plan for the grant. But Duke is also one of the "elite" schools that charge over 60% "overhead" on federal research grants.

conception2• 7 months ago

Most federal grants offer that level of overhead, or did. And not sure why overhead is in quotes. You can’t charge electricity or HR to directs.

bbminner• 7 months ago

I'd be curious to know the breakdown of "wages and benefits" between academics, teachers and administrative staff. I've heard that admin takes up a huge fraction of the cost. How large can it be?

JadeNB2• 7 months ago

What distinction do you draw between academics and teachers? Those are usually overlapping roles.

According to https://publicaffairs.vpcomm.umich.edu/key-issues/compensati... (just an example of a public university), it's $376K to executives, $481K to deans, and $152.7K to faculty in FY2013. Deans usually count as ~50% admin, so we could call that $376K + $240.5K = $616.5K to admin and $240.5K + $152.7K = $393.2K to faculty, roughly a 3:2 ratio.

nathan_compton• 7 months ago

I'm an academic and its difficult for me to imagine what the fuck deans do that is worth ~3-4 times as much as the people actually teaching and doing research. Fire them into outer space, I say.

analog312• 7 months ago

"Academic" is kind of a broad brush. A professor and a teacher are both academics. One difference is tenure and research. A professor is eligible for tenure, and expected to do research or scholarship. They can train grad students.

In contrast, most undergraduate teaching is done by "adjuncts" for whom the job is essentially gig work. Moreover, professors are considered "faculty" and adjuncts "staff," making it confusing to figure out how many employees of a university are engaged in teaching versus doing other things. For instance a faculty-to-staff ratio would be misleading.

Disclosure: I was an "adjunct" many years ago.

bpt36• 7 months ago

From https://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-facility-a...:

Duke has a F&A rate of 61.5% with the NIH, which means that for every dollar provided to a Duke faculty member conducting research, an additional 61.5 cents is given to the University to compensate for its F&A costs.

This is not an uncommon overhead rate for a large university, and is competitive with overhead rates at the largest government contractors. That doesn't mean it's entirely reasonable or a sign of an efficient operation.

fuzzfactor• 7 months ago

From the comments:

The number of staff and non-tenure track faculty has ballooned dramatically since I arrived at Rice in 2004. I agree with you, that from what I've read elsewhere, it's a common phenomenon at well-resourced institutions.

What I've seen at a number of universities are opportunities to get hired on to things like full-time maintenance staff with better pay, job security, and work-life-balance compared to actual PhDs.

And maybe more likely to be a decades-long career at the same institution, compared to recognized scholars.

I couldn't help but notice this about ten years ago, and UH looks like it is on track too.

The Economics of Duke University

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