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Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

theguardian.com

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Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#101

Post by candiodari »

phlakaton wrote: post #70
vinylkey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the argument is that all 2,700 administrators are unneeded, but rather that everything would run as good (if not better) without that much administration bloat.

For you to make that argument, you must first make the case that 2,700 actually constitutes bloat. Who exactly would you say is expendable and why? (Not getting down to brass tacks is the great weakness in the article too, I think. The author seems to have an idea that these expendable positions can simply be identified by filtering out anyone who can't explain what they do in non-jargon terms, or asking the surplus…

Are you saying that to cut the bloat you actually need to know the business and how the parts fit together ?

Heresy !

If that is true then the whole idea behind management is flawed. (management, MBA, business administration and the like depend on the idea that managing one company is pretty much the same activity as managing another. If what you say is true, that you cannot just generically cut then such people should never be put in charge of companies or even departments, yet that is exactly what is happening in every large company).

(Just a frustrated ex-cisco employee whose manager had an MBA)

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#102

Post by stale2002 »

sir_kin wrote: post #25
Overtonwindow wrote: post #9

Extremely unpopular opinion: Let's cut both the extra admin, and excess tenured professors. In fact, the entire tenure system should be completely upended. At my alma mater there were a lot of professors who didn't have enough students sign up for their classes, or their field of study was phased out, or reduced. Instead they sat around doing "research" and when they were forced to teach, quite a few openly expressed…

The purpose of universities is twofold: to educate and to produce new knowledge. You seem to have the mindset that most of a professor's work should be teaching-related. People don't do PhDs because they want to teach, they do it because they love their field. And a professor's status (and funding!) depends on a history of producing high quality (and quantity) research, not their teaching prowess.

That's great that PHDs are good at research, and engage in that.

But personally, I want to be taught by a professional teacher who specializes in teaching and isn't spending any of their valuable time doing research.

Researchers should research and teachers should teach.

It makes no sense to me that researchers, who do not enjoy teaching and would rather be researching, are forced to teach.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#103

Post by greglindahl »

carapace wrote: post #94
greglindahl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, who needs the Library and Archives? The book conservation lab is one of the things in the RWC location, that's clearly overhead that's totally not needed! Buckminster Fuller's models? Let 'em molder.

> Buckminster Fuller's models? What now!?

Part of the Stanford library collection. Every time they are loaned out to an art show they go through conservation.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#104

Post by stale2002 »

rifung wrote: post #46
Overtonwindow wrote: post #9

Extremely unpopular opinion: Let's cut both the extra admin, and excess tenured professors. In fact, the entire tenure system should be completely upended. At my alma mater there were a lot of professors who didn't have enough students sign up for their classes, or their field of study was phased out, or reduced. Instead they sat around doing "research" and when they were forced to teach, quite a few openly expressed…

Isn't research a large part of what universities are for though? I don't want to argue that tenure is the best system but it exists for a reason: so that those who have proved themselves can pursue research which is longer term and carries more risk. I don't think it makes sense to get rid of it without a proper replacement. University is pretty much the only place where people can do truly long term research. The on…

Research is fine. But it should be funded by the government, and NOT by student tuition.

Researchers should be spending 100% of their time researching. And teachers should be spending 100% of their time teaching.

It makes no sense to me that researchers, who don't want to be teaching, are instead forced to teach.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#105

Post by melling »

greglindahl wrote: post #82
melling wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the cost of education in the US being so expensive and the constant call for student loan forgiveness ($1 trillion), it might be worth looking into the extra cost. I’m sure Stanford isn’t unique. The cost of a university education has far outpaced inflation. Harvard cost $2,600 in 1970. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/16/why-college-costs-are-so-hig...

At Stanford, there's no connection between university undergraduate cost and price. Tuition is an unimportant part of the budget.

First, I was talking about the extra cost, in general, with all universities.

Second, since you brought it up, can you explain how they determine the cost of tuition? If it’s unimportant maybe they can simply eliminate it for everyone. Are other universities the same?

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#106

Post by Tsagadai »

zaphos wrote: post #28
Animats wrote: post #17

Stanford is building a new "campus" in Redwood City. 35 acres. 2,700 people on site. None are students. None are faculty. No teaching or research will occur there. It's all administrators .[1] "School of Medicine administration; Stanford Libraries and University Archives; the major administrative units of Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; University Human Resources; Residential & Dining Enterprises;…

The article is about UK Universities. Stanford is not broke. http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances

Like interview processes and office design being copied for tech companies, universities clone from the top end schools too. Almost every university starts trying to manage their donations because top schools are making over 10% gains. Building a or an because some other school has one. Even the schools that aren't broke are hemorrhaging funds on construction and real estate investment for buildings that aren't for teaching, research or any other task traditionally associated with being a university...

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#107

Post by maxerickson »

postnihilism wrote: post #61
maxerickson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can still be the case that they are spending excessively on administrators. They can easily use any potential savings by adjusting the way their scholarships taper off versus income.

Maybe, but using one of the most successful and wealthy institutions in the world as an example of ineffective bloat isn't useful for the overall argument. "This workout routine is a waste of time and effort. See, look at Usain Bolt doing it."

In your analogy, are the students his sore muscles?

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#108

Post by scythe »

How?

I've been hearing variations of "universities have too much administration" for at least a decade. I still haven't heard any solutions that aren't ridiculously expensive or already being implemented (and failing). Except, of course, for the solutions like "make it impossible for most of the people who currently attend college to go to college" which are approximately as politically viable as making French fries illegal and which furthermore do not really seem to have any mechanism to fix administrative costs other than "market voodoo".

One thing that tends to come up repeatedly when these discussions do reach a modicum of depth is the persistent gaming of the university rankings system. Universities game the ranking system by e.g. encouraging students to apply who are not likely to get in so that they will appear to be more exclusive. It would be nice to improve university rankings so they can't be so easily gamed, but will this actually make a significant difference? I'm not convinced yet that rankings actually have that large of an influence on university policy, in the first place.

The need for universities to police student behavior is another unfortunate situation. It's my understanding that federal cost-cutting is basically behind the moves on the government's part to implement policy by way of schools' enforcement of student misconduct. An honest politician should be able to fix this by allocating money for the government to do what it should have been doing in the first place, but increasing spending is very hard these days...

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#109

Post by praneshp »

vinylkey wrote: post #52
greglindahl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, who needs the Library and Archives? The book conservation lab is one of the things in the RWC location, that's clearly overhead that's totally not needed! Buckminster Fuller's models? Let 'em molder.

I don't think the argument is that all 2,700 administrators are unneeded, but rather that everything would run as good (if not better) without that much administration bloat.

Without a shred of citation that any non-trivial number of the 2700 are not unneeded though.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#110

Post by postnihilism »

maxerickson wrote: post #107
postnihilism wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but using one of the most successful and wealthy institutions in the world as an example of ineffective bloat isn't useful for the overall argument. "This workout routine is a waste of time and effort. See, look at Usain Bolt doing it."

In your analogy, are the students his sore muscles?

His pulled hamstring is from over extending this analogy.
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