Yes, and he’s not the first to bring this up. He’s just getting it out into pop culture conversations- for a day. Jordan Peterson has been railing about this for a few years but even he isn’t the first. At Peterson’s university, he teaches graduate students so they need a lot more face time with professors to complete their dissertations and explore deep topics and learn advanced skills. Over the years students and the administrators have doubled, but the professorships have stayed the same. They have asked these profs to take on double the students. The profs grudgingly go along but Peterson begged his department to try to put a stop to it. They cannot give a quality education and skills training to that many people; it’s a disservice to the kids and to their future patients, and to the professors! We’re not talking “psychology 101”, these are the kids who are close to getting their PhD and becoming licensed therapists. He demanded that if the university wants to double its enrollment they need to double the teaching staff. The university told him they don’t have the budget for that. He replied that they need to fire more administrators to make the budget. They are just bureaucrats. High paid paper pushers. They are there to coddle the kids, not teach them how to live in and get around in the real world. It’s actually a disservice to the kids because they leave with an attitude and expectation of how the real world works and how people interact, probably a main reason why there are so many snowflakes.
It’s like government. I had a lady friend decades ago. Great person. She got an advanced degree from a top university and was immediately hired by a big state. When she showed up for work she learned they hired 8 others, too. And for a year they had no work to do. Literally nothing. Finally the group got together and asked the boss “why did you hire us if there is no work?” He flat admitted “we had extra money in the budget and if we didn’t spend it they would have cut our budget”. So they hired 9 more people just to create the illusion they needed increased funding. It’s like departmental rivalry who can get the biggest budget increase from the legislature. This was 30 years ago. It’s probably the same thing only exponentially worse now. And at the university they want 5000 more students, well then all these departments need 2500 more administrators. But not 500 new teachers. The teachers are there just to attract the students and increase the budget for the bureaucrats.
It’s called “Featherbedding”. The Communists were notorious for doing this so they could claim they had no unemployment.
Hence the saying, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
“This was 30 years ago. It’s probably the same thing only exponentially worse now. And at the university they want 5000 more students, well then all these departments need 2500 more administrators. But not 500 new teachers. The teachers are there just to attract the students and increase the budget for the bureaucrats.”
I was exposed to this college thievery logic 20+ years ago.
My company offered an incredible early retirement package with lifetime health care for myself and my wife. So I took it and never looked back.
Our accountant recommended no salary work for the first year as my former company offered basically a full year’s salary and full health benefits and then a pension for the rest of my life.
So I fished and hunted and traveled for a year and drove my wife nuts.
I had an MBA and could see conducting focus groups being a good way to work part time. I connected with a management advisement group and conducted focus groups with future customers and current customers. I did that for 2-3 days per week for about 10 years.
Before I was hired for the focus groups, a couple of friends at the local college pleaded with me to become an associate
professor at the local college. So I interviewed with an MBA
I was offered a position which was basically for 6 hours a week, (2 three hour courses a semester). At first, I would have about 6 students per class while basically getting paid for being a full professor, a MBA not a PhD.
In the meantime,the local college kept upping their offerings.
Which I turned down, several times. I still received several job offers to be a professor with only an MBA.
The college was really in the business of creating courses, hiring non professors to lecture and then hire more supervisors, aka Asst. Deans.