[Goose]

My largest beef with university expansion is that I think it's led to the rise of a of exceedingly large proportions bureaucratic administrative staff that tends towards mission creep away from the core mission of research and teaching. I'm presenting at a university where it feels like there are more administrators than faculty, and one wonders what % of student tuition actually goes toward someone teaching them something rather than filling out the staff of the office of [services/feelings/needs/inclusion/accommodations/paper-pushing].

I am very glad you said this. I hesitated to go in that direction, because I felt it might be construed as being too critical. However, both from personal experience and from the experience of people I know well, Stanford has become an inefficient bureaucracy, where the functionaries could be working at a department store (or worse still, a law firm  :) ) with no awareness of Stanford as a university. There are way too many of them, and all they do is get in the way. They are counting beans for others who are counting beans. Yes, all universities have always had some issues like this. However, Stanford is at least two orders of magnitude worse than it was in 1970. I would like to see employment figures for non-academic staff. It must have exploded.
If it helps any, USC is just as bad, maybe worse. At least Stanford hasn't had the scandals with med school deans. However, for bloated bureaucracy, we are probably in a dead heat.

[Goose]

My largest beef with university expansion is that I think it's led to the rise of a of exceedingly large proportions bureaucratic administrative staff that tends towards mission creep away from the core mission of research and teaching. I'm presenting at a university where it feels like there are more administrators than faculty, and one wonders what % of student tuition actually goes toward someone teaching them something rather than filling out the staff of the office of [services/feelings/needs/inclusion/accommodations/paper-pushing].

I am very glad you said this. I hesitated to go in that direction, because I felt it might be construed as being too critical. However, both from personal experience and from the experience of people I know well, Stanford has become an inefficient bureaucracy, where the functionaries could be working at a department store (or worse still, a law firm  :) ) with no awareness of Stanford as a university. There are way too many of them, and all they do is get in the way. They are counting beans for others who are counting beans. Yes, all universities have always had some issues like this. However, Stanford is at least two orders of magnitude worse than it was in 1970. I would like to see employment figures for non-academic staff. It must have exploded.
If it helps any, USC is just as bad, maybe worse. At least Stanford hasn't had the scandals with med school deans. However, for bloated bureaucracy, we are probably in a dead heat.

[TreesAndBirds]

Another example of Stanford's activity...buying an apartment complex in Los Altos to house staff/faculty.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/15/st...partments/

[TreesAndBirds]

Another example of Stanford's activity...buying an apartment complex in Los Altos to house staff/faculty.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/15/st...partments/

[BostonCard]

[quote author=2006alum link=topic=17921.msg211014#msg211014 date=1510014876]

My largest beef with university expansion is that I think it's led to the rise of a of exceedingly large proportions bureaucratic administrative staff that tends towards mission creep away from the core mission of research and teaching. I'm presenting at a university where it feels like there are more administrators than faculty, and one wonders what % of student tuition actually goes toward someone teaching them something rather than filling out the staff of the office of [services/feelings/needs/inclusion/accommodations/paper-pushing].

I am very glad you said this. I hesitated to go in that direction, because I felt it might be construed as being too critical. However, both from personal experience and from the experience of people I know well, Stanford has become an inefficient bureaucracy, where the functionaries could be working at a department store (or worse still, a law firm  :) ) with no awareness of Stanford as a university. There are way too many of them, and all they do is get in the way. They are counting beans for others who are counting beans. Yes, all universities have always had some issues like this. However, Stanford is at least two orders of magnitude worse than it was in 1970. I would like to see employment figures for non-academic staff. It must have exploded.
If it helps any, U$C is just as bad, maybe worse. At least Stanford hasn't had the scandals with med school deans. However, for bloated bureaucracy, we are probably in a dead heat.
[/quote]

This is hardly limited to Stanford and/or USC.  The first graph is Berkeley:



This one looks at the rise of administrata by university category.


I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500

BC

[BostonCard]

[quote author=2006alum link=topic=17921.msg211014#msg211014 date=1510014876]

My largest beef with university expansion is that I think it's led to the rise of a of exceedingly large proportions bureaucratic administrative staff that tends towards mission creep away from the core mission of research and teaching. I'm presenting at a university where it feels like there are more administrators than faculty, and one wonders what % of student tuition actually goes toward someone teaching them something rather than filling out the staff of the office of [services/feelings/needs/inclusion/accommodations/paper-pushing].

I am very glad you said this. I hesitated to go in that direction, because I felt it might be construed as being too critical. However, both from personal experience and from the experience of people I know well, Stanford has become an inefficient bureaucracy, where the functionaries could be working at a department store (or worse still, a law firm  :) ) with no awareness of Stanford as a university. There are way too many of them, and all they do is get in the way. They are counting beans for others who are counting beans. Yes, all universities have always had some issues like this. However, Stanford is at least two orders of magnitude worse than it was in 1970. I would like to see employment figures for non-academic staff. It must have exploded.
If it helps any, U$C is just as bad, maybe worse. At least Stanford hasn't had the scandals with med school deans. However, for bloated bureaucracy, we are probably in a dead heat.
[/quote]

This is hardly limited to Stanford and/or USC.  The first graph is Berkeley:



This one looks at the rise of administrata by university category.


I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500

BC

[TreesAndBirds]

I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

[TreesAndBirds]

I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

[jacketree]

The backlash against a university that has been a major driver of The industry that has made the Bay Area an economic juggernaut dumbfounds me. 99.9% of the country would kill to have Stanford in their backyard, and would greet the influx of 10k new highly educated, tax paying and economy driving residents as a godsend.

We get that infrastructure in the bay is taxed already. The solution is to upgrade infrastructure, not to block growth.

Having worked up and down the Peninsula and greater Bay Area/California, peripherally involved in land use decisions for more than 30 years now, this does not surprise me at all.  Been to plenty of pitchfork meetings where the local sentiment is "I've got mine; the rest of you Jabronis stay the hell out!!"

I've always thought growth control is vaguely unconstitutional, but that's not what they pay me to worry about.

Toss out the word "sustainable" a lot. Trip generation is usually the key to mitigating the impacts of a more dense urban core.  Several shell games they can play with the CEQA docs. "Caltrain! No, um, bicycles!!  Yeah, that's the ticket!!!"  Shhhhh......

Snappy graphics never hurt either. These guys received permission to build essentially a space station smack dab in the middle of a congested commute corridor.



Alternatively, Stanford could threaten to move to Cupertino.

[jacketree]

The backlash against a university that has been a major driver of The industry that has made the Bay Area an economic juggernaut dumbfounds me. 99.9% of the country would kill to have Stanford in their backyard, and would greet the influx of 10k new highly educated, tax paying and economy driving residents as a godsend.

We get that infrastructure in the bay is taxed already. The solution is to upgrade infrastructure, not to block growth.

Having worked up and down the Peninsula and greater Bay Area/California, peripherally involved in land use decisions for more than 30 years now, this does not surprise me at all.  Been to plenty of pitchfork meetings where the local sentiment is "I've got mine; the rest of you Jabronis stay the hell out!!"

I've always thought growth control is vaguely unconstitutional, but that's not what they pay me to worry about.

Toss out the word "sustainable" a lot. Trip generation is usually the key to mitigating the impacts of a more dense urban core.  Several shell games they can play with the CEQA docs. "Caltrain! No, um, bicycles!!  Yeah, that's the ticket!!!"  Shhhhh......

Snappy graphics never hurt either. These guys received permission to build essentially a space station smack dab in the middle of a congested commute corridor.



Alternatively, Stanford could threaten to move to Cupertino.

[jacketree]

I think we'll have teleporting before we have high speed rail into Palo Alto.

I'm good either way.

Have to say that I thought California HSR was a senseless boondoggle (not that I won't participate in said boondoggle on occasion, mind you) until I rode the Frecciarossa in Italy.  Italy is laid out a lot like California really.  Maybe 50 Euro for a first class seat far more comfortable than any airline, you can just show up at Milano Centrale basically whenever and you're in Florence in less than two hours.  We went from Napoli Centrale to Roma Termini in the middle of a weekday morning in barely an hour.  Zero security to get through other than Carabinieri with their Heckler & Koch MP5s giving you the stank eye. Snacks included and all the overhead Italian news crawls you want to watch.  Little speedometer too.  Very cool.  And if you long for that dirty train ride looking through a spray-painted window straight from the opening to Welcome Back Kotter, plenty of connecting opportunities!

[jacketree]

I think we'll have teleporting before we have high speed rail into Palo Alto.

I'm good either way.

Have to say that I thought California HSR was a senseless boondoggle (not that I won't participate in said boondoggle on occasion, mind you) until I rode the Frecciarossa in Italy.  Italy is laid out a lot like California really.  Maybe 50 Euro for a first class seat far more comfortable than any airline, you can just show up at Milano Centrale basically whenever and you're in Florence in less than two hours.  We went from Napoli Centrale to Roma Termini in the middle of a weekday morning in barely an hour.  Zero security to get through other than Carabinieri with their Heckler & Koch MP5s giving you the stank eye. Snacks included and all the overhead Italian news crawls you want to watch.  Little speedometer too.  Very cool.  And if you long for that dirty train ride looking through a spray-painted window straight from the opening to Welcome Back Kotter, plenty of connecting opportunities!

[Goose]

I'm good either way.

Have to say that I thought California HSR was a senseless boondoggle (not that I won't participate in said boondoggle on occasion, mind you) until I rode the Frecciarossa in Italy.  Italy is laid out a lot like California really.  Maybe 50 Euro for a first class seat far more comfortable than any airline, you can just show up at Milano Centrale basically whenever and you're in Florence in less than two hours.  We went from Napoli Centrale to Roma Termini in the middle of a weekday morning in barely an hour.  Zero security to get through other than Carabinieri with their Heckler & Koch MP5s giving you the stank eye. Snacks included and all the overhead Italian news crawls you want to watch.  Little speedometer too.  Very cool.  And if you long for that dirty train ride looking through a spray-painted window straight from the opening to Welcome Back Kotter, plenty of connecting opportunities!

I too enjoy the fast trains in Italy. However, the trip from Milano to Roma is almost 3 hours. That is fine for tourists, but it doesn't work for business people, in general. Conventional wisdom, which in this case seems to actually mirror reality, is that fast trains can compete with air on trips of about 2 hours (by train) or less. It is somewhat worse in California where the train letting you out in the city center is not as valuable as on the east coast or in Europe (center of LA is pretty much undefined). The good news in Italy is that there are places to stop along the way that generate traffic (and trip times under the magic 2 hours). Not so much in California's central valley. If we ever do get an operational high speed rail approximately on the current planned route, it will operate at a large loss. Subsidies will be required, which is fine as long as we know that going in. The current fiction that no such subsidies will be needed defies logic.

[Goose]

I'm good either way.

Have to say that I thought California HSR was a senseless boondoggle (not that I won't participate in said boondoggle on occasion, mind you) until I rode the Frecciarossa in Italy.  Italy is laid out a lot like California really.  Maybe 50 Euro for a first class seat far more comfortable than any airline, you can just show up at Milano Centrale basically whenever and you're in Florence in less than two hours.  We went from Napoli Centrale to Roma Termini in the middle of a weekday morning in barely an hour.  Zero security to get through other than Carabinieri with their Heckler & Koch MP5s giving you the stank eye. Snacks included and all the overhead Italian news crawls you want to watch.  Little speedometer too.  Very cool.  And if you long for that dirty train ride looking through a spray-painted window straight from the opening to Welcome Back Kotter, plenty of connecting opportunities!

I too enjoy the fast trains in Italy. However, the trip from Milano to Roma is almost 3 hours. That is fine for tourists, but it doesn't work for business people, in general. Conventional wisdom, which in this case seems to actually mirror reality, is that fast trains can compete with air on trips of about 2 hours (by train) or less. It is somewhat worse in California where the train letting you out in the city center is not as valuable as on the east coast or in Europe (center of LA is pretty much undefined). The good news in Italy is that there are places to stop along the way that generate traffic (and trip times under the magic 2 hours). Not so much in California's central valley. If we ever do get an operational high speed rail approximately on the current planned route, it will operate at a large loss. Subsidies will be required, which is fine as long as we know that going in. The current fiction that no such subsidies will be needed defies logic.

[2006alum]

I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

Yeah, both of those factors sounds right. There's become such an arms race for services to set colleges apart from one another that the educational mission has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. And I think it's a vicious cycle, because as students pay more for these services, they expect more, universities become more dependent on this source of funding, and don't want to do anything to piss students (and their parents) off. It's a bit like letting the patients run the asylum.

Notwithstanding my love of Stanford sports, I think the expansion of college athletics is unfortunately another byproduct of all this, where more athletic departments are deeply in the red and need help, but they're not actually core to the university mission. The Berkeley stadium funding fiasco is a perfect example - they're now robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Peter exists for the sole purpose of education and research, whereas Paul is simply one of a number of sports venues in the bay area, and one of the worst performing ones to boot.

I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500
BC

The 3:1 ratio is interesting. It certainly suggests that UCB is waaaay oversaturated. The bizarre irony, too, is that I found UCB to have far and away the worst, most unfriendly, unhelpful, and downright mean administrators and support staff I've ever encountered.

[2006alum]

I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

Yeah, both of those factors sounds right. There's become such an arms race for services to set colleges apart from one another that the educational mission has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. And I think it's a vicious cycle, because as students pay more for these services, they expect more, universities become more dependent on this source of funding, and don't want to do anything to piss students (and their parents) off. It's a bit like letting the patients run the asylum.

Notwithstanding my love of Stanford sports, I think the expansion of college athletics is unfortunately another byproduct of all this, where more athletic departments are deeply in the red and need help, but they're not actually core to the university mission. The Berkeley stadium funding fiasco is a perfect example - they're now robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Peter exists for the sole purpose of education and research, whereas Paul is simply one of a number of sports venues in the bay area, and one of the worst performing ones to boot.

I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500
BC

The 3:1 ratio is interesting. It certainly suggests that UCB is waaaay oversaturated. The bizarre irony, too, is that I found UCB to have far and away the worst, most unfriendly, unhelpful, and downright mean administrators and support staff I've ever encountered.

[Mick]

[quote author=TreesAndBirds link=topic=17921.msg211029#msg211029 date=1510021283]
I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

Yeah, both of those factors sounds right. There's become such an arms race for services to set colleges apart from one another that the educational mission has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. And I think it's a vicious cycle, because as students pay more for these services, they expect more, universities become more dependent on this source of funding, and don't want to do anything to piss students (and their parents) off. It's a bit like letting the patients run the asylum.

Notwithstanding my love of Stanford sports, I think the expansion of college athletics is unfortunately another byproduct of all this, where more athletic departments are deeply in the red and need help, but they're not actually core to the university mission. The Berkeley stadium funding fiasco is a perfect example - they're now robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Peter exists for the sole purpose of education and research, whereas Paul is simply one of a number of sports venues in the bay area, and one of the worst performing ones to boot.

I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500
BC

The 3:1 ratio is interesting. It certainly suggests that UCB is waaaay oversaturated. The bizarre irony, too, is that I found UCB to have far and away the worst, most unfriendly, unhelpful, and downright mean administrators and support staff I've ever encountered.
[/quote]

Based on my dealings with my alma mater, I would have thought all the extra employees were hired to turn me upside down, shake me until my teeth rattled and a few unaccounted-for coins fell out.

Maybe not a bad idea for UC-Antifa, come to think of it.

[Mick]

[quote author=TreesAndBirds link=topic=17921.msg211029#msg211029 date=1510021283]
I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

Yeah, both of those factors sounds right. There's become such an arms race for services to set colleges apart from one another that the educational mission has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. And I think it's a vicious cycle, because as students pay more for these services, they expect more, universities become more dependent on this source of funding, and don't want to do anything to piss students (and their parents) off. It's a bit like letting the patients run the asylum.

Notwithstanding my love of Stanford sports, I think the expansion of college athletics is unfortunately another byproduct of all this, where more athletic departments are deeply in the red and need help, but they're not actually core to the university mission. The Berkeley stadium funding fiasco is a perfect example - they're now robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Peter exists for the sole purpose of education and research, whereas Paul is simply one of a number of sports venues in the bay area, and one of the worst performing ones to boot.

I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500
BC

The 3:1 ratio is interesting. It certainly suggests that UCB is waaaay oversaturated. The bizarre irony, too, is that I found UCB to have far and away the worst, most unfriendly, unhelpful, and downright mean administrators and support staff I've ever encountered.
[/quote]

Based on my dealings with my alma mater, I would have thought all the extra employees were hired to turn me upside down, shake me until my teeth rattled and a few unaccounted-for coins fell out.

Maybe not a bad idea for UC-Antifa, come to think of it.

[gocard14]

I wonder if there will be a market for a new type of university, somewhere between a traditional research university and a junior college. Basically it would be a no frills, academic focused, mostly non-residential experience like a high end JC but with the research aspects of a university, more like universities in European countries. If we’re maximizing cost effectiveness it could incorporate online components along with the traditional classes and sections.

I’m not sure about how much administration and regulation could be avoided with this model, but with the cost of even public colleges rapidly approaching 200k combined with the increasing necessity of a college degree the current mode seems completely unsustainable.

[gocard14]

I wonder if there will be a market for a new type of university, somewhere between a traditional research university and a junior college. Basically it would be a no frills, academic focused, mostly non-residential experience like a high end JC but with the research aspects of a university, more like universities in European countries. If we’re maximizing cost effectiveness it could incorporate online components along with the traditional classes and sections.

I’m not sure about how much administration and regulation could be avoided with this model, but with the cost of even public colleges rapidly approaching 200k combined with the increasing necessity of a college degree the current mode seems completely unsustainable.