Faculty reflect on two decades of rapid expansion
yaledailynews.com
yaledailynews.com
I'd have framed the analogy in the terms of a tick climbing a tree for the opportunity to latch onto a large, diseased animal.
A prospector might go on to do something great with what he's extracted. A tick just wants to survive, and hopes that his meal will outlast him.
The only time I here anyone speak favorably about owning a business that's protected by regulation or milking a professional license is if it's part of some grand scheme to make a ton of money and then cash out of <coastal state goes here>.
Whenever “education is the key to prosperity” is sold as a panacea, it is always sold as a way to go work for easy cash with a credentialist moat.
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_sta...
And, honestly, I liked the times of building shit much more.
> University President Peter Salovey emphasized that the administrative growth has been proportional with the growth in faculty size and in University revenue. He reiterated that the growth in the Yale School of Medicine’s clinical practice has been a significant and worthwhile cause of the administration’s increased size.
Whereas the reactions in the article and in this thread seem to be focused on other positions.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a5/74/e9a57450043a4af5725c...
The level of service expected, especially at an Ivy League school is very different today then it was 20-30 years ago. It is a much more complex operation.
It would be a very sobering experiment to make these services optional and independently billed.
Otherwise it sounds like the typical bureaucratic excuse for creating more bureaucracy.
Also "community college" these days is an euphemism for "the cheapest degree one could get that formally counts as one", so it is perceived accordingly.
Ivy League schools are tied together by their athletics league. For most Ivy League schools tuition is a nominal part of their overall revenue. Those same schools are largely free if you are low to medium income (and are able to be accepted).
You state it in your reply, “community colleges are an euphemism for the cheapest degreeone could get that formally counts as one, so it is perceived accordingly.”
A college’s precieved educational value is more important than actual educational value as it pertains to attracting students. Therefore schools cannot afford to be precieved as “cheap” or “bargain-based” if they want to have a reputation for strong academics.
Well, this kinda confirms that the "student services" are mostly a sham used to inflate the "perceived value" of the education, doesn't it?
Edit: https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-...
The article also notes:
> University spokesperson Karen Peart pointed out that while the University’s managerial staff has increased over the last two decades, so too has the faculty, which has grown by 54 percent.
If the faculty have increased by that much, I would hope the staff would increase a similar amount.
Neither of the experts quoted in the article are particularly focused on higher ed economics, either:
Campos's google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=1Geb1zAAAAAJ...
James C. Scott is an influential scholar on power structures and the often antagonistic relationship between governors and the governed. His book Seeing Like a State in particular is widely read and mentioned on HN frequently.
What is most interesting about this article is that there is, at least among the quoted faculty, zero support for the administrative growth and a universal sentiment that it is harmful to the University and places undue burdens on faculty and students, and the quotes are quite vitriolic (this is not normally how professors talk in public about their schools). The Administration's explanations are hilariously weak (Additionally, the growth may have partially stemmed from student requests. Hannah Peck, the assistant dean of student affairs at Yale College, told the News that the Student Affairs team added four new health promotion positions as part of the YC3 program. “Students have consistently requested more mental health support on campus and we are thrilled to be able to provide it,” Peck wrote. So, that's 4 out of >1,500!).
It really does look like a struggle for power and billions of dollars in revenue, and the faculty are losing.
What I have generally seen is that the faculty aren't seeing increases in staffing that appear to accrue to their benefit, but they also aren't as exposed to the parts of campus where the increases are happening either. Universities are much more complicated than they were 40 years ago, and they are serving a much more diverse, dynamic and broad student base. Schools aren't attended by primarily upper-class white men anymore. Many of the students really benefit from the additional resources available, whether that's mental health support, academic support, financial aid, etc. etc.
Yale also has a medical school and hospital, which always adds a huge amount of complexity to the finances of the organization.
It makes our colleges' education poorer because these non-tenured contract profs are making a lower quartile salary with no benefits after 4+ years of being underpaid as a grad student while also pursuing and interviewing for tenured positions/working on their research.
Universities have two jobs: 1. teach the populous, but also 2. be a leader in understanding the corner of the world they are focused on. We have been a leader in the latter and the less we invest in it, the more problematic a future we'll face as a nation.
Although: “The total number of instructional staff teaching the 5,964 undergraduate students at Yale University is 1,915 . When this is adjusted to account for those with part-time status, the result is the "full-time equivalent" (FTE) count. Using the FTE count for students and staff results in a "student to instructor" ratio of 6 to 1 which places Yale University among the best concerning instructional attention.” - from another site.
While your overall point is well taken, UBC is not a comparable institution to Yale. UBC has an acceptance rate of around 50%, Yale has an acceptance rate of around 5%. UBC has an endowment of around $2 billion, Yale has an endowment of around $40 billion. These are order of magnitude differences. We can debate whether Yale should have that level of selectivity or endowment, but it's to be expected that a way more selective school with way more resources will spend more on human resources per student.
If you want to make a comparison, it would make more sense to compare something like a selective large state university in the United States to UBC, not Yale.