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Comment by nerdsniper | Hacker News Reader

Depends on which administrators you're talking about. The army of staff at my Tier 1.5 university make about $60-90k in an MCOL area. High-level admins make more, of course, but there's not an army of them! There's really only 1-2 "highly" paid people making >$120,000 in the whole IT department.

I'm not sure which other universities have "absurdly overpaid and bloated armies of administrators".

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Brown University has 1 administrator for every 2 students.

This is a widely known and discussed phenomenon and is actually a running joke here in the comments.

Honestly, I'm shocked that you're unaware of this, to a degree where you're calling my comment out. I don't know what your news sources are, but they're not keeping you informed.

The "army" part largely resonates with me - I understand that universities have very high staff ratios. I even tried to openly acknowledge that in my response! I specifically used your language in my words: "the army of staff at my tier 1.5 university".

But whats the median pay for those staff members? I’m mainly arguing the “absurdly overpaid” part of the “army of absurdly overpaid admins” claim. Myself and many coworkers in this IT department have left high-pressure 60-80 hour/week jobs in tech / consulting / etc. We took a ~40% paycut (and reduction in benefits! my health insurance is very poor) in exchange for a much more relaxed environment. I was making $140,000 before this, but now I'm making $80,000 - and I'm one of the more highly-paid people in my department.

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