The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

Post by spiritplumber » Sat, Jan 10, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #88

spiritplumber wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time, I felt that a bear hug was the best way to avoid an actual fight, and it worked. If you want to co-write a post on de-escalation techniques, I'd genuinely love to! What would you have done in that situation to defuse it?

Walked away? I don't think I'm the slightest bit interested in ever collaborating with you on anything, sorry.

So, you wouldn't have gotten what you wanted, and the other person would've gotten the wrong lesson from this episode. Got it. Given your tactics, I don't think I want to collaborate with you either. Maybe a discussion/debate?

Post by tmalsburg2 » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 12:14 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…

> a proposal that we get rid of all administrative staff and replace them with academics

This is similar to how Colleges in Oxbridge are administered. They do have full time administrative staff but only the bare minimum and the academic staff has more administrative responsibilities. This arrangement is very effective at keeping red tape under control. Example: at a German university if you need a new printer, you have to fill endless forms (finding out which can be non-trivial) and you have to wait weeks for the approval. I you want to order a printer in November or December, that's simply impossible because of end-of-year accounting. At the college in Oxford where I worked, I went to the IT person and said that I need a printer. He gave me a new printer right away and I was good to go. Not even a signature was required. I have many more such examples. It's not clear though to what extend this common-sense-driven approach to administration can be scaled up to bigger institutions like universities.

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities

Re: The Growth of Administrative Staff in Universities