I am sorry if I seem cynical, it isn’t my nature, but I am reading about the budget woes of Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo and from what I can see they have hired two more ‘administrators.’ Doesn’t sound like a problem to me… at least for administrators.
Cal Poly is not alone, the entire State University system has gone crazy in their pursuit of building little administrative empires. Forbes.com just published a fascinating article on what they call “Bureaucratic U.”
Here are a couple of excerpts:
The ballooning of college administration has resulted in a sharp decline in labor productivity at colleges during a period of technological advancement that has improved productivity in most other industries. It has also occurred at a time when students are getting less for their money: Instruction has shifted from full-time professors to underpaid and overworked adjunct faculty. Three-fourths of new instructor jobs created over the past 20 years have been part-time positions. If the employment trends of the last decade are sustained, then administrative employees will outnumber instructors at four-year colleges by 2014.
Did you know that an academic dean at a doctoral institution receives a median salary of $190,000 (plus generous fringe benefits) or that the median salary of an assistant dean is above $116,000? The College & University Professional Association for Human Resources found that last year senior administrators recorded a third consecutive year of 4% pay increases and a twelfth consecutive year of pay increases above inflation. Nearly 10% of the 425,000 administrative and support staff employees at 272 research institutions earned a salary above $100,000 last year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
So, did you know that all of the discussion has surrounded cutting faculty and nothing has been offered regarding administration reductions.
Oh yeah, I forgot… they hired more administrators at Cal Poly.
Roger Freberg
