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2025 Hiring Pause

hr.cornell.edu

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Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#161

Post by op00to »

testfoobar wrote: post #118
Reason077 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1" > "This is insane." "This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University... School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and provide clinical care, financed by external research…

MIT 2024: 11,886 students. 17,490 Staff. MIT Staff to student ratio: 1.47 No medical school. The 17,490 number includes 4,500 Lincoln Lab staff. Backing those out. We get 12,990 MIT Staff. So an MIT Staff to student ratio of: 1.09 https://facts.mit.edu/employees/ https://facts.mit.edu/lincoln-laboratory/

Do you think that universities only exist to educate students or something? You do realize that many universities do research, right?

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#162

Post by op00to »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #154
fastaguy88 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be insane, if you believe that "staff" are all doing administrative duties. But, as was pointed out, "staff" are often anyone who is not a tenure track faculty. So librarians, research technicians, environmental health and safety, IT support, etc etc. A more useful comparison would divide staff into "supported by tuition" (should be related to student count) and "supported by external grants and clinical inc…

I think, however, the total count is extremely important. Every University’s purported mission is to educate students and advance our collective knowledge together with its students. That’s it. If the university makes more money from treating patients than teaching its students, then its mission can’t help but shift. Likewise if the bulk of the staff are not focused on teaching and educating, then its mission can’t h…

Is it? I disagree. The university I went to has a mission to “conduct research, provide education, and engage with the community to improve the lives of people and the environment”. MIT’s is to “educate students and advance knowledge in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship”.

It’s not a problem. You just have a narrow view of what you think our higher ed institutions should be.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#163

Post by op00to »

dingnuts wrote: post #122
trescenzi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities run small cities. That staff number includes the people who mow the lawn, cook food, clean dorms, work security, maintain their networks, etc the list is massive.

it's more like a resort than a city, which is the problem.

Assuming what you said to be true - and I don’t believe it is - why?

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#164

Post by op00to »

acdha wrote: post #128
dingnuts wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's more like a resort than a city, which is the problem.

This seems like a low-value comment without some data. For example, can you identify the specific jobs which you consider resort-like and how much of the growth they contribute to?

Start with the personal butlers and beach chair attendants at all the big R1 universities. Those positions should go.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#165

Post by op00to »

rpcope1 wrote: post #135
machinekob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contemporary academia especially in the West has a massive surplus of staff. Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other. Occasionally, folks outside of the circle come in and they start finding ton of fraud in the…

"Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other." I want what you're smoking because that might be one of the biggest fabrications I've heard in a long time.

lol I have never worked as hard as when I worked for an R1 university. My big tech job is way more like a resort vacation, complete with snacks and drinks.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#166

Post by op00to »

_m_p wrote: post #32
loganriebel wrote: post #6

Cornell has an endowment of 10.7 billion dollars. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowmen...

The government should levy an 80% tax on this and use it to pay for student loan forgiveness.

I’m fine with that if the government also levies an 80% total asset tax on high net worth individuals over $5 million, and uses all this money to adequately fund free education for all.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#167

Post by nobodyandproud »

op00to wrote: post #162
nobodyandproud wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, however, the total count is extremely important. Every University’s purported mission is to educate students and advance our collective knowledge together with its students. That’s it. If the university makes more money from treating patients than teaching its students, then its mission can’t help but shift. Likewise if the bulk of the staff are not focused on teaching and educating, then its mission can’t h…

Is it? I disagree. The university I went to has a mission to “conduct research, provide education, and engage with the community to improve the lives of people and the environment”. MIT’s is to “educate students and advance knowledge in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship”. It’s not a problem. You just have a narrow view of what you think our higher ed institutions should be.

You’re certainly welcome to disagree. But I strongly disagree that it’s not a problem.

If higher learning isn’t the core mission, then there are better ways to advance knowledge and improve the lives of people and the environment.

Per https://jsri.msu.edu/publications/nexo/vol-xxii/no-1-fall-20...

> This has had several consequences for the governance of universities: 1) the role of shared governance has receded in importance in the day-to-day governance of universities; 2) the balance of power and authority has shifted toward administrators; and 3) faculty have been subjected to a series of performance measures that disproportionately values productivity over shared governance participation.

Publish-or-perish and shoddy research is a direct result of this shift in the mission, as measurements became all but expected.

By the time I entered uni the 1990s, things were shifting negatively in higher institutions.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#168

Post by op00to »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #167
op00to wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I disagree. The university I went to has a mission to “conduct research, provide education, and engage with the community to improve the lives of people and the environment”. MIT’s is to “educate students and advance knowledge in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship”. It’s not a problem. You just have a narrow view of what you think our higher ed institutions should be.

You’re certainly welcome to disagree. But I strongly disagree that it’s not a problem. If higher learning isn’t the core mission, then there are better ways to advance knowledge and improve the lives of people and the environment. Per https://jsri.msu.edu/publications/nexo/vol-xxii/no-1-fall-20... > This has had several consequences for the governance of universities: 1) the role of shared governance has receded in i…

I've worked for both big R1 Universities as well as top-tier independent research institutes. I ran computing facilities that supported bioinformatics facilities, and spent my day interacting with both research leaders (PIs/faculty) and administration.

I don't believe point #1 - I have been involved in shared governance bodies as a student and staff, and at least where I've spent time, these bodies are strong.

For point #2, I never saw any shift of authority to administrators. In fact, I left academia because I was given a mission to centralize computing resources to ensure we're responsible stewards of the data we held. Instead, PIs would end-run around shared computing facilities, spending their own grant money on high end workstations, USB drives. I left and went into big tech because I was tired of fighting with essentially 50-100 small fiefdoms. The administrators were powerless, and if they tried to force the PIs to submit, they PIs would simply go someplace else.

For #3, while "impact factor" took on a larger role, I did not see a problematic shift in how we did science. Everyone was given adequate resources to participate in governance. If anything, the outsized influence individual PIs had over how they did their research made it more difficult to ensure data was stored safely, analyses were reproducible, and so on. That, to me, is a greater risk than the fear that administration was telling researchers what to research.

There are problems with higher ed in the US, but I don't understand how to equate a perceived shift away from "shared governance" with deep fundamental issues in the mission of our higher ed system. We need both a focus on educating young people (need to have fresh minds and bodies to keep the research machine churning) as well as basic AND cutting edge research to keep progress moving forward.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#170

Post by nobodyandproud »

op00to wrote: post #168
nobodyandproud wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re certainly welcome to disagree. But I strongly disagree that it’s not a problem. If higher learning isn’t the core mission, then there are better ways to advance knowledge and improve the lives of people and the environment. Per https://jsri.msu.edu/publications/nexo/vol-xxii/no-1-fall-20... > This has had several consequences for the governance of universities: 1) the role of shared governance has receded in i…

I've worked for both big R1 Universities as well as top-tier independent research institutes. I ran computing facilities that supported bioinformatics facilities, and spent my day interacting with both research leaders (PIs/faculty) and administration. I don't believe point #1 - I have been involved in shared governance bodies as a student and staff, and at least where I've spent time, these bodies are strong. For po…

For #2, are you saying the administration doesn’t hold the purse strings?

Why the resistance to the top-down approach?

Nobody resists if it means more resources; and faster procurement of resources.

Instead it seems researchers are forced to navigate politics and raise funding.

Or do you mean that each department has its own IT department and it’s resisting consolidation?

For #3: It’s not about resources but about how “impact factor” is measured, and whether it’s useful a useful metric.

Often, for example little attention is given to confirmation of a suspected dead-end. That still requires in-depth knowledge of the subject, is still research, and advances knowledge.

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