Posted on 01/20/2024 8:22:20 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The College Fix has done a series of articles recently estimating the number of administrators at various colleges compared to the number of students. The numbers are pretty surprising.
The University of Virginia employs one full-time administrator for every three undergraduates at the school, according to an analysis conducted by The College Fix…
During the 2013-14 school year, there were 291 full-time administrators and support staff employees per 1,000 undergrads, and in 2021-22, the most recent year for which data are available, there were 318 full-time administrators and support staff employees per 1,000 undergrads.
Meanwhile, the number of full-time educators per 1,000 undergraduates has stayed roughly the same over the last 10 years, hovering at an average of 103 instructors per 1,000 students, according to the data.
And in case you’re wondering the school has 55 DEI positions at an annual cost of $5.8 million. What in the world do these administrators do all day? My guess is count their money in their copious free time.
But things at UVA aren’t quite as bad as they are at Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt University employs more than one full-time administrator for every two students, a College Fix analysis found.
During the 2021-22 academic year, the most recent for which data are available, the private Nashville university employed 3,516 full-time administrators and support staff, according to information the school filed with the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
The school has fewer than 7,000 undergrads. How can it possibly required 3,516 administrators to keep the place going? Glenn Reynolds who teaches law at a nearby university offered an explanation.
“No school should have that many administrators,” he wrote. “Since universities are nonprofits, they don’t pay dividends to shareholders. Instead, they tend to plow ‘profits’ into staff and buildings.”
“The bloated staff has been a major cause of skyrocketing tuition and student debt,” he said.
Ironically, when the College Fix asked Vanderbilt for an explanation none of the 3,500 staff members could find time to respond.
Finally, last week the site did a similar analysis for the University of Michigan, this time focusing on DEI staffers.
The University of Michigan continues to exponentially grow the number of staffers dedicated to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, with at least 241 paid employees now focused on DEI and payroll costs exceeding $30 million annually, according to an analysis conducted for The College Fix.
The payroll costs are $23.24 million for salaries and $7.44 million for benefits, or $30.68 million, an amount that would cover in-state tuition and fees for 1,781 undergraduate students.
The Fix points to a January 2023 review of the first five years of UM’s diversity plan which ran from 2016 to 2021:
Despite the fact that students were less likely to feel discriminated against on the bases of race, sex, religion, and political beliefs (though more likely on the basis of ability, sexual orientation, national origin, and social class), the student body as a whole experiences campus in a worse way than it did in 2016.
By nearly every metric in the survey, students have become less happy since the beginning of DEI 1.0. They are less likely to believe that U-M has an institutional commitment to DEI and less likely to feel valued or that they belong on campus. The number of students who felt that they were treated fairly and equitably at Michigan fell by over 3 percent. Finally, the number of students satisfied with the campus climate overall fell by almost 11 percent.
The one area that has not worsened is the general DEI elements of the climate (e.g., whether the campus is hostile or friendly, racist or not racist, contentious or collegial). There was no statistically significant difference between the 2016 and 2021 samples.
The article concludes the result of all of this was a school, “that is a bit more diverse, much more insulated, and significantly less happy.” Is anyone really surprised by that? It’s hard to imagine a DEI program producing any other results than those. DEI isn’t meant to make the campus a happier place it’s meant to feed student grievances against the school, fellow students and society at large. I think it’s fair to say if the campus got happier that would be deemed a failure by most DEI administrators.
Anyway, if you’re wondering why colleges keep getting more expensive and more woke at the same time, this is why.
That’s why Joe Biden wants the loans to be paid off. So the college students won’t complain. Gotta keep up the DEI programs at the Universities.
Trump should make this college waste one of his big talking points. I really don’t think anyone who is not directly getting paid would think this was ok
I worked in both public and private schools. The public schools have Principals, Vice Principals, Associate Principals, and on and on. Many private schools have a Principal, the Principal’s Secretary, and every other dime goes into the classroom. Private school teachers perform all kinds of ‘other duties’ and do not mind. It’s about the students, not tenure, retirement, etc.
I recently read in the Wall Street Journal that Stanford University had more administrative staff and faculty than it did students. Specifically, there were 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16,937 students. The paid help of 18,038 (administrators plus faculty) outnumbered the customers (students) by 1,101. That gave me an idea for a stunning administrative reorganization: give each student a paid concierge—an academic butler, if you will—to help navigate the pain of collegiate living in Palo Alto.
Useless college administrators are not a new development.
Universities are a very important intellectual and propaganda base of the Left/Democrat Party
Even though tuitions have risen faster than health care, pharmaceuticals, certainly energy (all stuff libtards complain about) no one makes a peep about tuition costs.
Just shovel the young idiots out the door, stuffed to the gills with debt.
We need more doctors, engineers, etc. But we should go after the Universities.
Perhaps it's time to stop supporting college sports. I think we're heading that way anyway. Everyone is a professional. So what's the point?
In our big, blue-city failing public school district, the public schools spend more per student, than even the tuition of the most expensive private school in our area.
I was finance director at a private college. For each student there was a commutation of ability to pay compared to a budget of tuition, fees, housing, etc. The difference was then filled with grants and loans and usually there was an unmet need. In spite of this deficit families found a way to pay the bill. When the government came up with another grant or an increase in existing grants or loans, then we reduced the amount we as the college would contribute and the student and family still dealt with the same or similar unmet need. We always managed it so the college usually benefited and not the student and family. I am sure I was not the only one. If you want to control costs, stop shoveling to colleges.
It is nice to go to game day in Oxford, Tuscaloosa, Fayetteville, College Station, etc. Wealthy towns because of the universities. New luxury condos and the like.
Just a question:
Much of this “wealth” is driven by government grants and loans. Lots of useless “fat” in these institutions paid for by FedGov. But the government is $34 trillion in the hole and getting worse quickly as compound interest kicks in.
So what will become of these places when the easy money is gone?
Seriously, would they be a good place to retire or will these universities and towns go bust? (Vandy is the same in this regard as other universities, so it’s not just them)
You could cut 90% of any School District Administration and not miss a beat.
Students and parents mistakenly think education is the product when the students are actually the product.
So have we conservatives yet figured out that EVERY DIME of ‘student aid’ (loans, grants, etc.) goes right into hiring more staff at our esteemed academe? Or are we still working on it?
All principals back then were men and just about all the teachers in grade school were ladies. Our principal lived right next door to my home. We had one male that taught 6th grade science and took care of the boys for flag football. He had a really cool Allis-Chalmers tractor and raised wonderful black diamond watermelons in the summer selling them by the roadside. I can't remember that man ever appearing unhappy or less than friendly. He was married with children and a stay at home wife. A lady teacher took care of the girls PE.
We had the standards of reading, writing and arithmetic. Starting about 3rd grade we began to rotate class rooms for subjects with a math teacher, one for language and then science, social studies, geography, art and music. We had recess twice a day and at lunch. Short breaks but enough to blow off some steam. Seldom did anyone get hurt. If they did a parent came to get them when necessary. Every morning just like clockwork the Cub Scouts raised the flag and the principal came out of his office and stood on the steps of the front porch and saluted the flag with the rest of us. We also stayed outside until the bell to start school rang never mind the weather unless it was just downright storming then we got to go to our home room and wait. We had these big coat closets with massively heavy panel wood doors.
Home was just three blocks away and I went there for lunch. Lunch in the cafeteria was not bad though and was clean, tasty, ample and inexpensive at 25 cents a day. Much of the food was from commodities. The cheese was good as was the ground beef. Milk was from a local dairy. There were few busses, only for the kids that lived way out of town, the rest of us walked to school or rode our bikes that were kept in big rows of bicycle racks, sturdy galvanized steel pipe affairs. I will always recall how well built they were.
There may have been a nurse that rotated amongst the various schools in town. There was no assistant principal, no counselor, no resource officer, nothing else. Just a principal and his secretary.
After school we walked home, walked to Cub Scouts and Brownies, walked or rode a bicycle to piano lessons, walked or rode to baseball practice and the same to go downtown to get a haircut or sneak into the slot car place. My best friend and I threw the paper on each of two streets very early in the morning from the time we were in 4th grade and we threw the little Grit paper on the weekend. We would also ride our bicycles out south of town to the airport and go by the stockyards for a hamburger on Saturdays.
I think we got a good education. We didn't have LGBTQRSTUVW, Furries, gender dysphoria or any other crap to worry about. We were happy and well occupied just being children. I am all but absolutely certain no body ever gave a thought to the possibility of someone coming into the school and shooting any of us.
Wish I knew what happened to US and how we could go back. I really do think children and people would be much happier.
“”Every morning just like clockwork the Cub Scouts raised the flag and the principal came out of his office and stood on the steps of the front porch and saluted the flag with the rest of us.””
Yes, we did that also. EVERYONE was proud and grateful. When the Olympics were happening, we made large displays and kept track of all the USA Gold.
“”no body ever gave a thought to the possibility of someone coming into the school and shooting any of us.””
In high school we had a gun club. Students would walk to school with their rifles (unloaded of course). I imagine any wacko crazy enough to consider shooting anyone witnessed all the guns and ran like a girlieman.
What do all these administrators do? Compile compliance reports to various government regulators, most likely.
Can’t just say undergraduates. Graduate students are as numerous or even more so than undergraduates at the higher end universities.
You know who tells the "best" story? The last one.
A lot of us carried a shotgun and / or rifle in season in a gun rack in the pickup along with a fishing rod. Never know when you may need any of them. Nobody ever thought a thing about it that I know of. My younger brother even traded pistols with one of his teachers keeping the gun in his locker and bringing it home on the bus.
Yeah, long ago and far away, then some of us went to Vietnam and I went to college, then it was over.
“administrators administrating administrators is akin to the department of redundancy department” L.Star
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