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2025 Hiring Pause

hr.cornell.edu

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Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#41

Post by giantg2 »

duskwuff wrote: post #22
mi_lk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's just misinformation. > In particular, the endowment supports roughly two-thirds of the budget for undergraduate and graduate financial aid, as well as a significant portion of faculty salaries, research, and key programs like libraries and student services. from https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring

The returns from the endowment are used to support university programs. The endowment itself is not spent - it's a long-term investment which produces dividends, not a spending fund.

Yeah, $500M (a 5% return) is still a lot of money.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#42

Post by userbinator »

EternalFury wrote: post #7

If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. And, obviously, the administration of education should never be a for-profit venture. Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.

If anything in any country should be free, it should be education.

It's called The Internet.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#43

Post by johnnyanmac »

_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.

To be fair, I hear the Ivies have extremely generous scholarships (probably amortized by the nepotism acceptances). Much fewer people of financial need are graduating these schools in massive debt.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#45

Post by grounder »

testfoobar wrote: post #9

Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.

We might need to know the FTE values to understand what this means. Are staff positions full-time FTE? Are faculty positions full-time, tenure positions? Have they added part-time staff, adjunct faculty, etc.?

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#46

Post by tdeck »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #36

Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber ------ On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League…

> I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card.

I'm curious if this is because you never heard about what was in Project 2025, or didn't think Trump would win, or didn't think he would enact it?

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#47

Post by sega_sai »

machinekob wrote: post #27
testfoobar wrote: post #9

Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.

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…

Wow, experts in academic careers are contributing here. Can you please give us a source of your knowledge of why people pursue academic careers?

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#48

Post by johnnyanmac »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #17

How are the ivy leagues NOT financially independent? People claw/cheat/do whatever it takes to get in. Ivy's employ some of the best raw IQ people we have. Endowment funds over years should blossom. Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and truly cannot afford things? if…

I imagine they are, but they will still have some mindset of a business and cut spending in lieu of economic headwinds. Like pretty much every industry in the last few years.

I think the ivies will be fine. It's 99% of other universities without 10b in endowments I'm worried about.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#49

Post by LeafItAlone »

testfoobar wrote: post #9

Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.

Total staff numbers are only marginally useful without further breakdown, as that article points out.

A family member works for an eatery at a large university. Technically they are employees (staff) of the university, but pretty much in name only. They work for a business unit which receives no financial support from the university. They are profitable on their own and if they aren’t, they would close down. They are provided benefits via the university, but it is part of their budget. Including them in the count relative to students is about as useful as including the employees of the (independent) Starbucks on campus.

(It’s not Stanford, so I can’t speak to that specific institution)

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#50

Post by freehorse »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #17

How are the ivy leagues NOT financially independent? People claw/cheat/do whatever it takes to get in. Ivy's employ some of the best raw IQ people we have. Endowment funds over years should blossom. Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and truly cannot afford things? if…

I assume they, like most orgs, make a planning based on some available budget. If the budget gets higher, they will expand. If it gets lower, they will reduce their expenses/spread. I also assume that the reduction of overhead in particular is gonna hurt such institutions _a lot_ because they have exactly planned based on that.

I cannot speak about Cornell specifically, I do not know if they have a bloated administration or superfluous expenses. But the truth is that admin stuff are necessary for supporting education and research. Having been in universities during admin reforms reducing admin stuff (claiming that they make "smart restructuring") it always negatively affects work done in the university in one way or another. Usually, it means that research staff will have to pick up some of the admin work themselves, or be offered less support doing it. As research staff are usually paid more than admin stuff, that is not necessarily effective (unless it is assumed that research stuff will be working overtime anyway). In any case, it does not seem like an efficient move most of the times, even if it seems so to the bureaucrats who make these plans.

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