Hacker News Reader

While in general I agree that there are too many administrators at many universities, this type of argument is ineffective without pointing out exactly which administrators. And I find that once you try to do that, no one agrees which administrators should be cut. Do you want to cut the administrators responsible for diversity and inclusion? Or the administrators responsible for tech transfer? Or the Dean of the College? Or administrators that manage grants? Or administrators of admissions, or athletics, title IX, or school of medicine?

For a start, let's cut any administrator that was not considered needed for the proper running of a university 30 years ago. So we can start with the administrators responsible for diversity and inclusion and tech transfer. You can probably also get rid of most of the administrators administering grants, athletics, and title IX.

Give us some specifics to discuss. Because while almost everyone agrees administration needs to be trimmed, if everyone just wants to keep the ones they think are important and there's not much overlap, then there's clearly no way to do this.

The argument, "We can't cut anyone if we can't all agree on who to cut" is a recipe for, "We will cut everyone after we go bankrupt." Those bankruptcies are already starting. And before COVID-19 is over, plenty of universities that can't figure out how to do layoffs of administrators are going to have to do just that.

Education has been on an unsustainable path for decades. It is widely recognized that it is unsustainable. As Stein's law says, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." But before we get there we get to see the truth of Stanisford's corollaries, "It will go on a lot longer than we think" and "It will end badly when it does stop."

It has gone on a lot longer than I thought it could 20 years ago. However COVID-19 has changed the equation enough to end business as usual, and now we get to see how bad the ending is. The more that administrators cling to keeping business as usual, the worse that they will make things for themselves.

> For a start, let's cut any administrator that was not considered needed for the proper running of a university 30 years ago.

What makes you so sure universities were sufficiently well-run 30 years ago? And what makes you so sure other people agree with you?

Well, I agree, so that's a start.

Nobody is suggesting that universities were perfect 30-40-50 years ago. But... the parents of millenials seemed to thoroughly enjoy college back then, so they couldn't have been run that badly.

On top of that, when I compare my undergrad experience, 20 years ago, to that of my nieces and nephews attending today (or cousins who attended 10 years before me), I fail to find substantive differences.

Sure, there is a general trend that cafeteria food has improved (or, at least, schools brag about it more), and dorms are a little fancier, but how does that justify the administrative bloat?

Well, maybe the programs just weren't aimed at you or your family? Maybe diversity programs had a large impact on other people and it would be useful to learn their views before discarding diversity administrators because we don't see the point.

I was in university 30 years ago. It was sufficient to educate me.

Going from that point to this, the cost of university has more than tripled in real dollars. A significant portion of that change is increases in money spent to administrators. It seems absurd that anyone would think that the education received today is worth over triple the education received 30 years ago.

I know, as a parent, given the choice I would cheerfully prefer to pay for my kids to get the university experience that I received and have no debt than I would have them get stifling loans for the modern university experience and start their lives in debt. I know very few parents that disagree with me on that.

I don't think this needs to be settled ahead of time. If we shut off the tap of infinite student debt funding I guarantee the universities will magically discover what administrators and departments are dispensable quicker than you can imagine.

I don't see what assurances you have of this guarantee you give. As so far it seems like when funding is cut, faculty (teaching and research) and academic departments are cut and financial aid is reduced, rather than major cuts in administration. So it's worth discussing what administrative units are cuttable, or come to the realization there is no free cuts to make to administration without sacrifices to some existing principles.

If we can't trust these organizations to make the right (and obviously needed) cuts in order to still realize their value to society in the face of reduced funding, then they don't deserve to be the ones teaching our children in the first place.

I think we just keep going back to the same issue -- people agree that administration is too big. But if you break it down to actual positions or administrative units, it's not clear there is any agreement. There is no such thing as "right cuts" because that implies it's clear which parts of administration should be cut.

Same with government. Government waste is bad? Of course! Trim unnecessary government spending and pork barrel? Yes!! And which branches and positions should we cut? The Right Ones!! [cue nothing actually happens]

What I'm getting at though is that it's a distributed problem and that I frankly don't care if everyone gets it right.

Shut off the money first. Some of the universities will make their cuts in academic and research departments. That's fine. I don't expect we'll hear too much from them after a while. Good riddance.

This frames the question wrong and deceptively so. When you say "cut the administrators responsible for diversity and inclusion", you frame it as getting rid of diversity and inclusion. But you can go without an administrator whose sole purpose is diversity and inclusion and still have diversity and inclusion be handled. That sounds like the kind of thing the administrators in admissions ought to be handling. Why can't the Dean of the College also handle grants for their college? Why is there a Dean of the College of Athletics that isn't also handling athletics and the parts of title IX that are relevant?

I didn't frame it as getting rid of diversity and inclusion, that's just usually how the roles are defined. But you're missing my point completely (maybe intentionally?). I'm just saying that we should talk about specific administrators or administrative units, not "administration is too big". So let's talk about that, not whether your framing of my framing of the university's framing is accurate.

And you'll see that this is effective, because now when you ask those more specific questions, there are potentially good discussions.

Like "Why is there a Dean of the College of Athletics that isn't also handling athletics and the parts of title IX that are relevant" and someone might wonder if it makes sense (based on your proposed structure) for the Dean of Athletics to be handling rape cases, and whether they have the expertise to deal with the federal regulations that come with Title IX.

Or "Why can't the Dean of the College also handle grants for their college?" and someone might wonder why it makes sense for someone responsible for undergraduate education (which might not involve research in some universities) to handle grants, which is usually related to graduate education and research (and in many fields, don't involve students at all).

Or "administrators in admissions ought to be handling [diversity and inclusion]" and someone might wonder if there should not be someone also responsible for diversity and inclusion in faculty/staff/administrator hiring, or in campus policies around inclusion (like accessibility services), which are post-admissions.

If, as other commenters have said about their schools, there are double-digit numbers of administrators making over $1m, why not just cut their compensation to near that of lecturers?

No, it does not make sense for the Dean of Athletics to handle rape cases other than for them to kick out the athlete that has been convicted of rape by a court of law after an investigation by the police. An argument can be made as to whether those are University police or non-University police, but the investigation shouldn't be done by the Dean or any other administrator. If the Dean of Athletics has questions about federal regulations, that's what lawyers are for, which don't need to be in house administrators either.

Administrators in admissions handle diversity and inclusion for students. Whoever is already in charge of hiring faculty/staff should also be handling diversity and inclusion there as well.

I get that specialists are needed at times, and having one person (or group of persons) can help in getting a singular focus and consistent strategy. But there's nothing wrong with people wearing multiple hats in a job and communicating with peers as they do so.

There also can't be a discussion of which adminstrators to let go until we are talking about specifics. Each University will have different circumstances, priorities, problems and budgets, and each individual adminstrator will have their own skills, expertises, and abilities to handle certain workloads. What changes Harvard would make are going to be different than the changes Notre Dame would make. That's why you can't have those specific "which administrators" conversations. It's not because we can't decide whether to cut administrators in charge of diversity or administrators in charge of athletics. Any given administrator can have multiple roles. They don't need to specialize in one. Which grouping of roles occurs will be determined by a very specific set of circumstances for a given University and its people, which is going to depend on knowledge that neither you nor I have.

> No, it does not make sense for the Dean of Athletics to handle rape cases other than for them to kick out the athlete that has been convicted of rape by a court of law after an investigation by the police. An argument can be made as to whether those are University police or non-University police, but the investigation shouldn't be done by the Dean or any other administrator. If the Dean of Athletics has questions about federal regulations, that's what lawyers are for, which don't need to be in house administrators either.

A student's behaviour can generally get them kicked out of a university, despite not being convicted by a court of law. Just like you can be fired from your job, without a jury-of-twelve-peers conviction, if you've broken your employer's code of conduct.

So, no, the dean's job in this case is to not to simply grep through the list of state felons, and match them against the student roster. There's broader discretion in the kind of censure that private individuals need to apply, that does not begin and end at the courts.

> Why can't the Dean of the College also handle grants for their college?

Among other reasons: It takes an entire team to manage the lifecycle of grants, it's too much work for a single person to accomplish. In addition to the work needed to apply for a grant, there is also mandatory reporting and compliance to that needs to be completed. Additionally, a dean doesn't have the capacity to bind the entire university to the terms of a grant (nor the awareness to safely do so), so you run into problems with interdisciplinary research, which is increasingly encouraged.