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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

It's happening in the UC system too, I feel...though I don't have data.

Edit: https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-tripled-...

For a lot of these schools, it helps to look at the increase in research dollars that they're bringing in. I expect some fraction of the new administrators are necessary to manage the research funding, which has a limited affect on tuition costs. Federal grants in particular have a lot of reporting and compliance that has to be produced.

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:

https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=10

https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/james-scott

For a lot of research it is good to look at who will NOT be doing the research anymore because ... wtf; Tenured Administrators and "Pro Tem" Faculty ... which is the Grey Poupon (tm Kraft/Heinz) way of saying the corporation administrators have turned their own HR into a "Kelly Girl" office to commoditize their complement, the schools teachers.

You've overloaded this run on sentence with so many metaphors that I have no idea what you are trying to say.

I think what they are trying to say that the people doing the teaching in the university are not research professors and that there is some kind of classism involved. I don't know about tenured administrators though, I don't think admins get tenure but maybe if you count Deans and Chancellors who might be faculty.

I'm thinking this might be what they meant by "Kelly Girl": https://www.kellyservices.com.pr/pr/about-us/company-informa...

You've got to look at the scholarly work rather than their faculty web pages. Campos has written a number of recent papers in the broad area of higher ed economics (particularly law school), but in the grand tradition of American law professors also clearly feels entitled to write about things such as public health that are well outside of his formal training.

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 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).

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.

The question I was immediately struck by was "how many of those are tenured?". For the last decade+ we've seen the same flow of contract gigs rather than jobs with assured benefits proliferating higher education.

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.

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