I have worked for seven different colleges over the past twenty years, teaching in the humanities and social sciences and working in various administrative positions. I have worked for huge public schools, small, elite private ones, a large Ivy, and for a for-profit college.
All are expanding meaningless administrative positions, and the biggest bloat is at the director/associate dean/assistant provost level.
I work now for a well-known university that is no better or worse than any of the other schools I have worked for. The leanest administrative machine was the for-profit school; they had shareholders to answer to.
The worst in terms of waste and bloat? The Ivy.
The single biggest cause of waste, in my experience, has been the detachment of faculty from administrative work. Adding these new layers of administrative professionals who do not interact daily with students in any meaningful way, and who create new task forces for this, or a strategic planning initiative for that, yet push the development office to bring in more and more dollars to fund these enormous wastes of time (and that never create meaningful change) is the biggest waste. Period.
I have also seen an incredible increase since the mid 1990s in legal and regulatory staff on campuses, from Academic Development offices to handle students with academic disabilities (ADHD, dyslexia, etc -- not traditional physical disabilities) to university lawyers to HR staff. Judiciary bodies used to discipline students; now they act more as safeguards against lawsuits.
But that expansion is minor compared to the higher-level bloat.
Also anecdotal, but there has been a massive increase in the offering of food at university events over the past 15 years or so. Food is everywhere. Everywhere! And the amount of food has increased. So a smal lecture that, in the past, wouldn't have any food might have had coffee, lemonade and cookies ten years ago, but now it has a spread of pastries, cookies, fruit, coffee and soda.
A faculty meeting that would have had nothing five years ago might include take-out now. Or a student movie night for the department might have had nothing ten years ago; now they have to have pizza and movie snacks.
It is crazy! Minor compared to other costs, but it is so pervasive, and the administrative support for the food, from staff who has to order it to accounting staff who have to process the paperwork for all these small events -- it adds up.
As Many Student-Loan Debtors as College Graduates
I was actually listening to a radio story one day about rising costs of higher education and they interviewed a guy who's basic argument was that the increase in staff is what's fueling the rise. He had actually gone then and reviewed the notes of staff meetings from several universities (I want to say they were UCs but I could be wrong). He said that one of the biggest meeting topics was: setting the agenda for the next meeting. Unbelievably inefficient.
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secretwealth
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prosaic basically said everything I have to say on the issue. All I would add is that I've worked in institutions outside of the U.S. that have not seen skyrocketing tuition costs (the UK has seen a huge rise in tuition fees, but that is directly traced to governments cutting funding--and even then research-based UK institutions cost a fraction of their American counterparts). Outside the US, you don't see pastries at meetings (the only food at meetings I ever saw was paid for by a separate grant or from faculty members themselves), developmental offices popping up to handle all sorts of issues, or the like. I'm not saying that UK institutions are particularly efficient, but they certainly hire less administration than American universities.
In the UK, the only rapid and aggressive growth of administration I saw was marketing efforts to lure more Chinese students to the school. Similar efforts to get tuition fees from Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean students were also present, but less visible. Since these were highly profitable operations (overseas students pay about 3x more tuition fees than UK or EU students), this was clearly a money-making operation, whereas American universities setting up a new office to assist students with learning disabilities isn't particularly profitable.
A pretty good example of what I'm talking about: CUNY's "Welcome Center" is at 42nd st., steps from Grand Central in one of the most expensive office spaces in NYC. They offer the following services (taken from their website):
Admission Support
Application Assistance
Citizenship and Immigration Advisement
Financial Aid Information
One-On-One Counseling
Scholarship Information
Veterans Counseling
Now, I'm not criticizing them for offering these services, and my wife recently went to the Welcome Center and said they were overworked. But it does seem like a lot of bloat for essentially pairing up educators with students.
In the UK, the only rapid and aggressive growth of administration I saw was marketing efforts to lure more Chinese students to the school. Similar efforts to get tuition fees from Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean students were also present, but less visible. Since these were highly profitable operations (overseas students pay about 3x more tuition fees than UK or EU students), this was clearly a money-making operation, whereas American universities setting up a new office to assist students with learning disabilities isn't particularly profitable.
A pretty good example of what I'm talking about: CUNY's "Welcome Center" is at 42nd st., steps from Grand Central in one of the most expensive office spaces in NYC. They offer the following services (taken from their website):
Admission Support
Application Assistance
Citizenship and Immigration Advisement
Financial Aid Information
One-On-One Counseling
Scholarship Information
Veterans Counseling
Now, I'm not criticizing them for offering these services, and my wife recently went to the Welcome Center and said they were overworked. But it does seem like a lot of bloat for essentially pairing up educators with students.
Man I wish I could find one of those meaningless, useless director jobs! I see other people with them and I want one too! That's basically my goal for ERE is to get paid at a job where I do almost nothing of any real difficulty or consequence. Prosaic, do you have a link to any job openings like this?
This rather disdainful review of higher ed in the US and UK makes some of the same points made in this thread with regard to administration cost and student loans. It also adds the concept of depreciation of that college degree, requiring retraining or another degree after so many years if the lust for credentialism continues among employers. That would make a degree something like a car, where the old loan is rolled over into the new one, because the wheels fell off the old one before the loan was paid.
http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/th ... t_id=10652
http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/th ... t_id=10652
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jacob
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Also speaking of star researchers, grantsmanship (ability to sell) is highly valued. More so than the ability to teach or advice students. More so than the ability to do stellar research. If you can sell a project and bring money in, you're more valuable to the university than someone who can teach or someone who has original ideas. Of course it helps to do all three, but all things being equal ... Once at a conference, there was a shouting fight with one of the grand old researchers complaining that too much money now went to those who spent too much time grubbing for money in DC instead of doing research. To the detriment of the entire system.
I've also observed ever more middlemen on the road to a job. First, there was the need to get a degree to substitute for 6 months on the job training (floor manager job: must be have bachelors degree and be able to lift 50 pounds). Then everybody got degrees and degrees became useless to differentiate the applicants. Thus, now people need an independent "professional" certification. If one cert is not enough, they need two. Also, people can no longer apply directly to the company---they have to go through a recruiter.
I gotta say the employment ecosystem follows the maximum entropy principle beautifully.
I've also observed ever more middlemen on the road to a job. First, there was the need to get a degree to substitute for 6 months on the job training (floor manager job: must be have bachelors degree and be able to lift 50 pounds). Then everybody got degrees and degrees became useless to differentiate the applicants. Thus, now people need an independent "professional" certification. If one cert is not enough, they need two. Also, people can no longer apply directly to the company---they have to go through a recruiter.
I gotta say the employment ecosystem follows the maximum entropy principle beautifully.
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secretwealth
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"Also speaking of star researchers, grantsmanship (ability to sell) is highly valued. More so than the ability to teach or advice students. More so than the ability to do stellar research. If you can sell a project and bring money in, you're more valuable to the university than someone who can teach or someone who has original ideas. "
There's also the issue of friends recommending funding of friends' research projects, friends hiring friends, family, or spouses to postdoc and tenure track positions (Take a look at this: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Intric ... sal/65456/ ), and other issues of dubious morality/efficiency that are commonplace in universities.
There's also the issue of friends recommending funding of friends' research projects, friends hiring friends, family, or spouses to postdoc and tenure track positions (Take a look at this: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Intric ... sal/65456/ ), and other issues of dubious morality/efficiency that are commonplace in universities.
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secretwealth
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Here's a relevant, and interesting, interview: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/educa ... l?src=recg
A program I saw the other week showed that many universities are now decked with fancy cafetarias, spas, zen rooms (sigh), eco design, etc in order to attract more students. While that trend irritates me, what annoys me the most is the "university career counsellors" who are as useful as an air conditioner in the north pole. I don't have higher-education experience here but in Australia, the biggest thing they do is annual job fair, which doesn't help the majority of the students. The graduates are not prepared for the real work despite the high education fee they pay.
I find the vocational education and training providers offer MUCH better return for your time and money as you are trained to be work-ready and the schools connect you to the potential employers while you're still studying. The orientation is skill implementation, not getting your essay done before the due date.
I find the vocational education and training providers offer MUCH better return for your time and money as you are trained to be work-ready and the schools connect you to the potential employers while you're still studying. The orientation is skill implementation, not getting your essay done before the due date.
Technology wrings inefficiencies from systems. Some systems adopt new technologies well while others resist change at every turn.
Up to now education has been a reluctant adopter because it has been the educators themselves doing the adopting. They ask, "How can this help me to teach better?" Essentially, they are shoe-horning new technologies into the old model.
Ultimately, technology kills inefficiencies by creating entirely new models. Today we are just starting to see that happen with education. Little by little. The biggest hurdle is that traditional universities hoard the ability to credential. They can give degrees and they defend that right fiercely.
They better be careful. We will soon begin to see whole new forms of "credentials" that will be completed with near-zero human interaction. Right now we are at the vinyl-record stage of education. It won't be long until we are at the digital-download stage where we think of universities in the same way we think of Tower Records.
Up to now education has been a reluctant adopter because it has been the educators themselves doing the adopting. They ask, "How can this help me to teach better?" Essentially, they are shoe-horning new technologies into the old model.
Ultimately, technology kills inefficiencies by creating entirely new models. Today we are just starting to see that happen with education. Little by little. The biggest hurdle is that traditional universities hoard the ability to credential. They can give degrees and they defend that right fiercely.
They better be careful. We will soon begin to see whole new forms of "credentials" that will be completed with near-zero human interaction. Right now we are at the vinyl-record stage of education. It won't be long until we are at the digital-download stage where we think of universities in the same way we think of Tower Records.