The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities • Hacker News Board

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#11

Post by secabeen » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #5

As a former tenured professor I thought a lot about this issue. The underlying problem is that administrative staff create work to justify their existence. The more administrative staff you employ the more you need to employ. I was on the academic council for a couple of years (itself a huge waste of resources and time) so I got to put up a proposal that we get rid of all administrative staff and replace them with ac…

It's an interesting idea, but it misses the substantial increase in administrative load that public schools have seen over the past 30 years. 30 years ago there were non-existent services for disabled students, socionomically-disadvantaged students, international students and scholars, etc.

There was also substantially fewer federal research grants and the associated paperwork required to receive those grants. You'd be surprised how much administrative work is required to receive federal grants and to employ the domestic and international researchers that do said research. (Effort reporting, Visa applications and processing, expenditure justification, backup and reconciliation, etc.)

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#12

Post by gaius » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #4

narrator wrote: post #3

This sounds like more evidence the new and growing phenomenon of "bullshit jobs" http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ .

My brain can't handle neon yellow background, but I don't think bullshit jobs are a new phenomenon. I think there was a huge bloat in bullshit jobs from the 1980s-2008. A lot of jobs that should have been lost due to productivity gains because of computers and networking were converted into bullshit jobs. We went to so long with a real significant recession, it was like a forest that hasn't had a fire to clear the br…

It goes back alot further than that, we used to call those guys pyramid builders.

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#13

Post by spiritplumber » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #9

danieltillett wrote: post #5

As a former tenured professor I thought a lot about this issue. The underlying problem is that administrative staff create work to justify their existence. The more administrative staff you employ the more you need to employ. I was on the academic council for a couple of years (itself a huge waste of resources and time) so I got to put up a proposal that we get rid of all administrative staff and replace them with ac…

... And the tenured professors could sweep their classrooms at the end of the day, and serve in the canteen at lunchtime, and save even more money?

I went to a small uni, and about half those jobs were held by students. There was an ancient mailing list server some kind soul set up in 1994 or so, where you could go to swap cleaning duties in case you wanted to stay in a particular department, to get a chance to "tackle" a prof and ask them stuff.

School is STMU in San Antonio, TX by the way. I ended up a workstudy in the proto lab, and left with my degree AND about nine tenths of a machining certificate.

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#14

Post by spiritplumber » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 9:50 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #7

rhino369 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brain can't handle neon yellow background, but I don't think bullshit jobs are a new phenomenon. I think there was a huge bloat in bullshit jobs from the 1980s-2008. A lot of jobs that should have been lost due to productivity gains because of computers and networking were converted into bullshit jobs. We went to so long with a real significant recession, it was like a forest that hasn't had a fire to clear the br…

No they're not. Parkinson' Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law is the adage that "Work expands to fill the time allotted to it." But Parkinson's original book looked humorously but semi-seriously at actual administrative growth such as the growth of the British Civil Service and Admiralty staff even as British overseas colonies and navy were shrinking.

One of the few management books that are still current after fifty years.

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#15

Post by ghaff » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #14

ghaff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they're not. Parkinson' Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law is the adage that "Work expands to fill the time allotted to it." But Parkinson's original book looked humorously but semi-seriously at actual administrative growth such as the growth of the British Civil Service and Admiralty staff even as British overseas colonies and navy were shrinking.

One of the few management books that are still current after fifty years.

And the most fun to read of the bunch I'm sure.

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#16

Post by calibraxis » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 10:16 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #8

danieltillett wrote: post #5

As a former tenured professor I thought a lot about this issue. The underlying problem is that administrative staff create work to justify their existence. The more administrative staff you employ the more you need to employ. I was on the academic council for a couple of years (itself a huge waste of resources and time) so I got to put up a proposal that we get rid of all administrative staff and replace them with ac…

The proposal was immediately dismissed because it was a stupid idea. There is a tremendous amount of administrative work related to academics that most professors never notice because they're not the ones doing the work. If the professors had to do all of the administrative work themselves--even just the bare minimum--they would barely have any time to teach. Moreover, a substantial amount of money would be wasted on…

Or maybe you have no idea. Consider how absurd it's gotten (http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-decl...):

"My own knowledge comes from universities, both in the United States and Britain. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide.

"The growth of administrative work has directly resulted from introducing corporate management techniques. Invariably, these are justified as ways of increasing efficiency and introducing competition at every level. What they end up meaning in practice is that everyone winds up spending most of their time trying to sell things: grant proposals; book proposals; assessments of students’ jobs and grant applications; assessments of our colleagues; prospectuses for new interdisciplinary majors; institutes; conference workshops; universities themselves (which have now become brands to be marketed to prospective students or contributors); and so on."

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#17

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 10:24 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #5

As a former tenured professor I thought a lot about this issue. The underlying problem is that administrative staff create work to justify their existence. The more administrative staff you employ the more you need to employ. I was on the academic council for a couple of years (itself a huge waste of resources and time) so I got to put up a proposal that we get rid of all administrative staff and replace them with ac…

It is a little off-topic but why did you give up a tenured position? Don't those take literally years and a great deal of work to earn? Or did you mean to say tenure track professor (which is still an achievement, but most people drop off of tenure track than out of tenure).

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#18

Post by ashark » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 10:30 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #4

narrator wrote: post #3

This sounds like more evidence the new and growing phenomenon of "bullshit jobs" http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ .

My brain can't handle neon yellow background, but I don't think bullshit jobs are a new phenomenon. I think there was a huge bloat in bullshit jobs from the 1980s-2008. A lot of jobs that should have been lost due to productivity gains because of computers and networking were converted into bullshit jobs. We went to so long with a real significant recession, it was like a forest that hasn't had a fire to clear the br…

Revolutionary Road[1] by Richard Yates, published 1961, prominently features passages about how useless most of the jobs in the protagonist's office are, including his. Aside from the specifics of how the office operates (paper versus email) it could have been written today.

Whole book's a great, though painful, read.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Road

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#19

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 10:32 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #10

I once had an argument with one of these people (Not being a grad student, I was not allowed to take a class that taught cluster computing, on a cluster that I had built and had written about half the linux distro for). So I gave the guy a hug. A professor had to come over and persuade me to put the admin guy back on the ground again a few minutes later. I took that class and got a B+. Lesson learned: Punch less, hug…

[deleted]

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

#20

Post by jacalata » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #10

I once had an argument with one of these people (Not being a grad student, I was not allowed to take a class that taught cluster computing, on a cluster that I had built and had written about half the linux distro for). So I gave the guy a hug. A professor had to come over and persuade me to put the admin guy back on the ground again a few minutes later. I took that class and got a B+. Lesson learned: Punch less, hug…

Oh hey, it's that sociopath dude again.