[qwerty49]

Ditto. My team at PwC was 90 total, 40 staff employees, 50 contractors. When times whent bad, we got rid of all the contractors. When times got worse, we cut 20% of the employees...but not until every single contractor was gone.

One big difference is that at Stanford, "times" generally don't go bad. The University isn't tied directly into the short-term economy. When the return on the endowment goes down (due to a general economic downturn) they don't shed staff, because their staff is not coupled to "profitability" or even "productivity". While a position on the Stanford staff isn't "tenured", it is close. Their are some positions that are tied to grants, and these positions are at risk if grant money dries up. Those are really the only "layoffs" that happen, and Stanford does a pretty good job of shuffling people around to avoid those.

Kind of like the Civil Service, I guess. 

But hey, maybe the funding bureaucracy is beyond me, but it sure seems like if you replace some staff with contractors you don’t have to make decisions like cutting 11 sports.

[qwerty49]

Ditto. My team at PwC was 90 total, 40 staff employees, 50 contractors. When times whent bad, we got rid of all the contractors. When times got worse, we cut 20% of the employees...but not until every single contractor was gone.

One big difference is that at Stanford, "times" generally don't go bad. The University isn't tied directly into the short-term economy. When the return on the endowment goes down (due to a general economic downturn) they don't shed staff, because their staff is not coupled to "profitability" or even "productivity". While a position on the Stanford staff isn't "tenured", it is close. Their are some positions that are tied to grants, and these positions are at risk if grant money dries up. Those are really the only "layoffs" that happen, and Stanford does a pretty good job of shuffling people around to avoid those.

Kind of like the Civil Service, I guess. 

But hey, maybe the funding bureaucracy is beyond me, but it sure seems like if you replace some staff with contractors you don’t have to make decisions like cutting 11 sports.