Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top.
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...
For instance, at the University of Wisconsin, there is an VERY large, extremely expensive bureaucracy called DoIT. It stands for "Division of Information Technology". Basically... it is the department for all of the IT people at the University. It is enormously expensive because of the nature of the work they do. And that is just one of the operations level bureaucracies that the University needs. There is Facilities. There is Campus Police, which are very important at a place like UW. Student Housing. Health Services. The list goes on and on.
These sorts of costs are not cheap, but they are necessary. Be that as it may, honest people CAN debate whether or not operational arms like DoIT are functioning as efficiently as they could be. My main point here was only to shed light on operational costs that many universities have which tend to be overlooked in conversations like these. Especially as those expenses are most likely the key contributors to the cost rises being discussed.
[Edited for grammar]
Every few years there would be a reorganization to create a bunch of new job titles and new useless layers of bureaucracy, since that's the only way to give people more than a cost-of-living raise.
You could fire half of them, hold the other half accountable to a reasonable level of productivity, and notice no difference. There might be a net gain.
Not saying that is a bad thing; actually, it probably improves overall productivity vs the US model. But it's not a free lunch, and it's not the employer's charity - it's the money people actually worked for, equally distributed over working days and holi-days.
They only pay the value of the package - you can calculate your hourly rate on total yearly pay / yearly hours worked, or are free to imagine you get paid total yearly pay / total hours of the year, and then boom, you're also paid for the vacations, for weekends, for the nights and so on. But in fact you're only paid because your boss knows what value you provide and how many hours you'll be there that year.
The student employees weren't much better, because it wasn't ever established what their behavior should be. I remember a lot of time spent torrenting, watching movies, and playing games -- occasionally breaking to reimage a computer.
Are today's college students such thugs that we need fully equipped police departments on campuses? Police departments are usually the second most expensive part of a municipal budget. How many of the "neccessary" bureaucracies did we do without a generation ago?
Universities below the elite level are headed for a massive crash. They better start the rethink soon.
Safety is a big issue, especially for parents (who pay many of the bills), so universities view law enforcement and safety spending as a competitive advantage.
It is also the case that many universities are located in small, rural communities that might not have the police resources to handle the campus population (for instance, I went to a school that had about as many students as there were non-student residents of the town).
https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...
Duke: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-...
Barnard: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_boo...
Though the Text says out of 90k in spending $14,000 goes to pay a share of administrative and academic support salaries which puts just salary's for administration at 15.5 not including their share of the building etc.
So, a reasonable estimate ~25-40% of each dollar actually spent goes to administration depending on where you draw the line. AKA is a dean Administration or Faculty.
PS: Not that facility get to actually spend anywhere close to 100% of there time on teaching.
0) It is one of Columbia University's affiliated undergraduate schools, so facilities/athletics/administration/some budgets are tightly coupled to the mothership, which has approximately more money than god and subsidizes many things
1) It is in NYC, so the cost structure is not representative of the rest of America
2)) It is a Women's college, which probably changes some stuff (though I don't know what)
To clarify one thing: Columbia doesn't exactly "subsidize" Barnard - in fact, Barnard maintains its own independent endowment and board of trustees. Columbia and Barnard "partner" together to provide a number of joint services (for example, Columbia students majoring in theater take their classes at Barnard, and vice versa for some other departments, but many departments exist independently at each school). Barnard retains its own independent administration for most positions; there is very little sharing of administrative roles.
Student organizations are joint-funded through student fees, and almost all are open to both Columbia and Barnard students. In fact, there was some debate a few years back about the Barnard group overseeing student organizations not contributing its fair share towards Greek life[0], which was soon rectified. It is important that fund transfers between (e.g) Columbia College and Barnard are generally not considered internal transfers the way (e.g.) Columbia College and SEAS (the engineering school) would be.
This is not unlike the situation at certain other schools like Harvard and MIT, which sometimes allow cross-enrollment, or other schools which pool resources for student activities. The main difference is that Barnard professors are awarded tenure from Columbia University, not from Barnard (which cannot grant tenure independently).
That said, I agree that Barnard's expenses are not indicative, but that's more because they share many resources with another school (Columbia) and reap efficiencies that way, not because Columbia "subsidizes" their costs. Columbia saves a lot of money from these partnerships as well, and I doubt that they would keep the current setup if they didn't feel that they benefited from it financially as well.
[0] http://columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/26/inter-greek-council-...
Here's a summary of the conclusions
A recent study by two professors of economics attempts to arrive at the ideal ratio of tenured and tenure-track faculty to administrators in order to operate effectively. Analyzing data from 137 public universities from 1987 through 2008, they found that on average the ratio was two administrators to one full-time faculty member when the most cost-effective ratio is one administrator for every three full-time faculty members. They found that an imbalance between administrators and faculty where administrators outnumber faculty is what accounts for the rise in costs. Administrators and non-instructional staff have continued to rise despite less state funding. Furthermore, more part-time faculty are being hired at very low wages to offset the costs of administrators whose salaries tend to be much higher than faculty. Critics argue that the ratio should not be applied universally, as different types of universities have different needs when it comes to instructional vs. supervisory staff. But many agree that the goal of higher education is to focus on those who are in the classroom and not those pursuing an agenda of business development.
All government employee salaries in the state of Texas are public info [0], I used to check out how much my professors made. And how much my dad made. You can see salaries by employer as well. I'm not sure where to find historical salary data but it has to exist somewhere.
[0] http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee...