> Stanford’s foremost problem is administrative bloat. The University employs 14,448 non-teaching employees, more than double the 6,769 it had on the payroll in 1984
That sounds like a big deal, but it doesn't mean anything. Stanford is among the top research universities in the world. Of course they're going to have a lot of non-teaching employees. The institution primarily exists for research, not teaching.
During the pandemic when our universities were rumbling about furloughing staff, the governor told them they had to divest themselves of excess property holdings first.
After that, there was no furlough, and no properties were sold. However, almost universally, the boards that proposed the furloughs all took PPP loans for themselves.
EXACTLY, sad to say. If $Bobville_University operates $Bobville_Hospital - then how should you count the full-time medical, facilities, security, administrative staff at the hospital? At most a puny percentage of them are $Bobville_Professors.
Which is not to say that administrative bloat - both headcount and top-job salaries - isn't an existential problem in American academia. But to identify (& hopefully kill) it, you have to do some actual work, sorting through the details.
That one. And thank you. I wasn't familiar with the SLAC. Interestingly according to Wikipedia "As of 2005, SLAC employed over 1,000 people, some 150 of whom were physicists with doctorate degrees"
Exactly, as someone who was non-teaching research faculty (not at Stanford), I can say there are lots of people in research institutions who don't teach. That's a different issue than the real issue of growth of the number of administrative staff. It isn't useful to lump all "non-teaching employees" as a group.
I see these numbers but it doesn't hold much weight for me. My wife is an admin for a non-profit atmospheric research company and I see all of the work they have to do.
Endless paperwork and red tape to raise money, to pay money, to orchestrate travel, plan events, and more.
Stanford has a $40B endowment and enough real-estate and land value to put a damn 10x multiplayer on that. They should probably employee more people and further distribute all that capital they're sitting on.
Well they could and should employee more people, but is it really better for society if all those added people are administrative assistants versus say... physics researchers?
A soceity made up of all physicists and no office managers wouldn't work. We need multiple office managers per physicist for our economic model to work.
Administrative bloat is out of control all across education. From state primary schools to the world's best private universities. The problem to solve is how to we increase the quality of education while decreasing bloat and costs. It's proving to be a tough problem to solve.
no surprise there. administrations, like governments, first start to serve people. they grow. and after some time, they grow to fulfill themselves and their own needs. and soon, the people or their "clients" become the ones paying for the administration ever growth, and the main goal of the administration is to serve itself and its growth.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 65.5 ms ] threadThat sounds like a big deal, but it doesn't mean anything. Stanford is among the top research universities in the world. Of course they're going to have a lot of non-teaching employees. The institution primarily exists for research, not teaching.
References:
https://www.kqed.org/news/11781771/how-stanford-became-the-l...
https://revealnews.org/article/the-stanford-empire/
After that, there was no furlough, and no properties were sold. However, almost universally, the boards that proposed the furloughs all took PPP loans for themselves.
EXACTLY, sad to say. If $Bobville_University operates $Bobville_Hospital - then how should you count the full-time medical, facilities, security, administrative staff at the hospital? At most a puny percentage of them are $Bobville_Professors.
Which is not to say that administrative bloat - both headcount and top-job salaries - isn't an existential problem in American academia. But to identify (& hopefully kill) it, you have to do some actual work, sorting through the details.
Endless paperwork and red tape to raise money, to pay money, to orchestrate travel, plan events, and more.
Maybe the world has just gotten more complex?
In the US, it's a reflection of the regulatory environment that colleges now have to operate in, vs. say, the early 1960s.
A soceity made up of all physicists and no office managers wouldn't work. We need multiple office managers per physicist for our economic model to work.