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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

#211

Post by vanderZwan »

rocqua wrote: post #208
zippergz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the research point, why are research and teaching commingled? Both are important, but it seems that they require very different skillsets. Would we be better off filling universities primarily with people who love teaching, and are great at it, and having some other kind of institution (or some separate division of universities) do the research? Is this heresy?

The main reason they are commingled is that teachers need to have mastery of what they teach. As subjects become more difficult, fewer and fewer people have the required mastery to teach a subject. At the end of this (i.e. graduate level courses) the only ones with sufficient mastery are those that are doing the research. For lower level subjects (i.e. most undergraduate courses) this is much less an issue, but the a…

> At the end of this (i.e. graduate level courses) the only ones with sufficient mastery are those that are doing the research.

Sadly, sufficient mastery of the subject often comes at the cost of sufficient mastery of teaching, which becomes especially important for such difficult subjects. If only some of that money spent on more staff was spent on assistant teachers whose main skill was teaching and coaching other teachers, and providing paid hours for both of them to fix the curriculum together...

Anyway, I fully agree with your second paragraph. Another issue is that of researchers not really seeming to care, having an attitude of "you shouldn't be in University unless you really want to learn this, and I'm not going to try to motivate you or help you with that." There's some truth to that, but it also sometimes feels like it's used as a way to mask their own teaching incompetence.

I was asked to be an assistant teacher after graduating from my masters, and I completely freaked out about the responsibility of making sure I wouldn't fuck up my student's education (I cared more than most of my students did). I almost declined the job offer! I was basically told "yeah we know, that's part of why we want you."

Anyway, I spent a lot of time on-line trying to find advice on the dos and dont's of education. I can say that the best two lecture were Eric Mazur's Confessions of a Converted Lecturer[0] and John Corrigan's Are We Listening To Our Children?[1]. I think every teacher should watch these at least once.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvgbvtxYRX4

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

#212

Post by IanCal »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #192

The problem in the UK is there is no significant competitive pressure. What would help is separating the teaching from grading, just as it is in schools. Right now an employer has to consider a degree from Oxford Brookes in a completely different light to one from Oxford University. If they knew the students were graded in exactly the same way then it could really shake the system up.

I'm not a fan of that, it's adds huge drag to any change. Want to add a module on deep learning that you also want to test? Now it needs to be added by a country-wide exam board. Want to add something on cognitive neuroscience to the standard "AI" degree? Only if everyone can teach it.

Given how regularly things are messed up by the boards on simple GSCE level questions covering far fewer subjects, I'd not like to have that applied across everyone.

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

#213

Post by wavefunction »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #92
meri_dian wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are good points. What I was trying to put across by invoking "market dynamics" was that the state of the current market as it exists is driving bloat rather than the capriciousness of individual administrators. You're right that the market is not in an unrestrained state.

Agree! I work in K-12 and we've seen the same exact thing over the past few years. The emphasis on top-down control and quality measures have done a ton of good for consultants, advisors, data analysts, and IT depts - and a ton of nothing for students. My favorite part of this whole debacle is seeing districts and schools using administrative bloat to their advantage when creatively reporting "Student:Staff" ratios.

I can't believe folks would even accept a metric like "student:staff" rather than class-size. I would have no care about the ratio of myKid:janitor for example, no offense to janitors intended.

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

#214

Post by michaelt »

WalterBright wrote: post #179
vacri wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Students who now go to schools who do nothing for them and have no chance of paying their loans -- or spend most of their adult life trying to -- would be dissuaded from making that incorrect financial choice. The feedback loop for that is incredibly slow and incomplete. University reputations move on the order of decades, and only a handful of universities enter the public consciousness by way of reputation. Most…

I'm baffled by adults that grew up with computers yet seem to be unable to google a school for their reputation and the job prospects for graduates. Back in my day, pre-internet, every high school guidance counselor had catalogs that compared schools, so did public libraries, and magazines like US News & World Report would annually publish rankings.

Feedback loops for "Is this degree a good investment?" are slow because it can take 15 years or more between starting an undergraduate degree to reaching maximum salary (and/or fully paying off loans).

So you can only really report on how good value a course was 15 years ago - and in the intervening period, there's a good chance the academics, curriculum, price, industry and economy will have changed a great deal.

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

#215

Post by wavefunction »

jononor wrote: post #204
meri_dian wrote: post #27

I work in the administration for a top public US research University. The increase in size of University administration and bureaucracy is due to a number of factors. One is certainly unnecessary employment and over-employment. Not only at high levels, with VP's, Assistant VP's, Assistant Vice VP's, Chancellors, Vice Chancellor's, Executive VP's, Directors of XYZ, etc, but also at low levels where the work done by 3…

True that there is an expectation of the many non-academic needs of students is also well served. In Norway, this is done by an organization separate from the university ('Studentsamskipnad' or Student Welfare Organization). It is responsible for housing, health- services, food et.c. Students pay their semester fee (<100USD) to this organization (no tuition). Possibly this helps for keeping focus on academic needs in…

In the US this is often handled by using funds from educational loans. I knew many years ago one or two people in college who took the money they got from educational loans and used it as a fund to acquire and sell large quantities of narcotics, which they built into a lifestyle business while they were at university.

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

#216

Post by Clubber »

wavefunction wrote: post #213
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree! I work in K-12 and we've seen the same exact thing over the past few years. The emphasis on top-down control and quality measures have done a ton of good for consultants, advisors, data analysts, and IT depts - and a ton of nothing for students. My favorite part of this whole debacle is seeing districts and schools using administrative bloat to their advantage when creatively reporting "Student:Staff" ratios.

I can't believe folks would even accept a metric like "student:staff" rather than class-size. I would have no care about the ratio of myKid:janitor for example, no offense to janitors intended.

The one you are looking for is student/faculty ratio. They used to promote that until they realized they could puff up their ratio by including staff as well. Similar to the unemployment rate excluding people who can work but have stopped looking.

SO much BS in the US.

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

#217

Post by Can_Not »

fish_fan wrote: post #143
meri_dian wrote: post #27

I work in the administration for a top public US research University. The increase in size of University administration and bureaucracy is due to a number of factors. One is certainly unnecessary employment and over-employment. Not only at high levels, with VP's, Assistant VP's, Assistant Vice VP's, Chancellors, Vice Chancellor's, Executive VP's, Directors of XYZ, etc, but also at low levels where the work done by 3…

> Universities fear that if they were to stamp their feet and refuse to supply these amenities in the name of keeping down tuition, matriculation rates would decline as students would seek greener pastures elsewhere. I find this so fascinating. In a normal market, demand is driven by differentiating factors, and I imagine paying for a reduced set of services could be wildly popular. I certainly never took advantage o…

> I would quit my job and finish my degree tomorrow if there was a "no bullshit, we'll just get you your degree as fast as possible" option.

Have you checked out WGU? It's online only, acredited, fast-if-you-are-fast paced. My only criticism is that the BS in IT: Software Development does not have a strong math background. WGU also offers a master's in IT Security. A lot of the classes will double as certifications, too. I think you'll get a lot less bullshit here than normally possible.

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

#218

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

meri_dian wrote: post #27

I work in the administration for a top public US research University. The increase in size of University administration and bureaucracy is due to a number of factors. One is certainly unnecessary employment and over-employment. Not only at high levels, with VP's, Assistant VP's, Assistant Vice VP's, Chancellors, Vice Chancellor's, Executive VP's, Directors of XYZ, etc, but also at low levels where the work done by 3…

Have you read the actual article that for Parkinson's Law?

In there you will find the oft-overlooked Law of Multiplication of Subordinates. The findings were based on the expansion of Admiralty in Great Britain after WWI.

TL;DR: administration kept expanding even though the number of ships was reduced to 1/3 the size.

This is much the same problem identified in the article, what you have said and what I have seen in corporate america as well. Too much administration, some of it required via legislation/regulatory matters.

http://www.economist.com/node/14116121

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

#219

Post by Applejinx »

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;…

Malcolm Gladwell's podcast has excoriated these people quite strenuously, and in the process has explained very well how this comes about.

Those aren't telephone sanitizers. Their job is to keep thinking up spectacular things to propose, the better to lure insanely wealthy people into investing in Stanford. Stanford's run (or was) by a guy who as a matter of principle cannot think of ANY reason why any endowment or gift should ever go to any other school or thing that isn't Stanford, no matter how much money Stanford has or how little money anyone else has. He's committed to the proposition that the world's advanced through the consolidation of infinite resources (for Stanford).

As such, 'Office of Development' is a big deal for them, as is Land, Buildings and Real Estate: it's pretty much all about maximizing resources in order to be awarded more gifts to turn into more resources forever. They could not have ANY students or faculty and still function just as they are, if the hyper-wealthy people awarding them money were convinced their mission would be better without students. They could not have ANY students or faculty and still go on for years or decades just on the wealth they've currently got.

This university isn't 'broke'. They're part of the reason everybody else is broke. The idea is that they should have it all, ???, profit!

I'm not sure what metric 'profit' is expressed in. If it's 'money', this is working for Stanford.

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

#220

Post by taneq »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #84
meri_dian wrote: post #27

I work in the administration for a top public US research University. The increase in size of University administration and bureaucracy is due to a number of factors. One is certainly unnecessary employment and over-employment. Not only at high levels, with VP's, Assistant VP's, Assistant Vice VP's, Chancellors, Vice Chancellor's, Executive VP's, Directors of XYZ, etc, but also at low levels where the work done by 3…

Loved everything you said except the part about market dynamics being the culprit. I think you correctly identify the widespread availability of student loans as a key factor driving this bloat; but there's nothing "market-based" about them. In a market, interest rates would vary according to the risk of the loan. Bad schools which don't teach and don't actually improve student outcomes and simply spend on other thin…

It not being an ideal free market doesn't change the fact that it's a market and it has market-ish dynamics.
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