One key to ballooning higher-ed costs? Administrative bloat
E. Thomas McClanahanThe Star’s editorial board is visited occasionally by top leaders from area universities, and the question always comes up: Why is tuition rising so fast? Usually you hear that this is because costs are rising and state funding hasn’t kept up.
That may be true as far as it goes, but this is something of a diversionary tactic — and a reminder that many people in the public sector suffer from a kind of tunnel vision. They can only see one part of the problem — the revenue side. They’ll say costs have gone up, and they’re right. But to a great extent, they’ve gone up because the university MADE them go up.
Take Timothy Sands, acting President of Purdue, the public university in Indiana. In a recent Business Week story he denies that tuition has gone up because of bureaucratic expansion. No: The problem is lagging state funding. The state pays 13 percent of Purdue’s budget, but it hasn’t kept up with costs.
But now look at the cost side of the ledger. Purdue has an acting provost who’s paid $313,000 and six vice and associate provosts and a diversity officer paid nearly $200,000. In the last decade, Purdue’s administrator ranks have grown by 54 percent, nearly 800 percent faster than the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty.
Business Week quotes a Department of Education study showing that Purdue is hardly alone. From 1993 to 2009, the number of administrators has grown by 60 percent at universities across the nation. That’s 10 times the growth of tenured faculty.
You see something similar in K-12 education. From 1950 to 2009, the student population grew by 96 percent, according to a study by the Friedman foundation. At the same time, the number of full-time equivalent school employees grew by 386 percent. Teacher numbers were up 252 percent, and administrator numbers up by 702 percent.
If you’re looking for remedies for the problem of skyrocketing college tuition, at good start would be administrative bloat and the higher costs that come with it.
Matt Henry
5 months, 1 week agoOf course the next question is WHY administrative costs at Universities have gone wild in the last couple of decades. Why now? What’s different?
The simple answer is that the free-flow of public money in the form of grants and student loans has provided a disincentive for Universities to find ways to be leaner in their processes and better at their jobs. They don’t need to compete with each other to provide better services for less when there is an ocean of money being thrown at all of them.
Unnecessary bloat is cut from any system that needs to survive in a competitive environment, but we have in recent years taken the efficiency pressures of the free market out of collegiate education. This is the same problem that we face in the public schools because schools and teachers simply don’t have to be good at their jobs to attract “customers.” They have become de-facto bureaucratic agencies.
This is why there is a student loan bubble in the trillions that is getting ready to pop, and is the next wave of political purchases. How can these poor little victims with all of these loans be expected to pay them back when they have no larger a skill-set than when they went in, especially when you spent your $100,000 in student loans on Women’s Studies courses? Wasn’t that half of what the occupy movement was all about, not having to pay back student loans?
The University system is messed up right now for one umbrella-ish reason and one only; government involvement in education. Get government out, solve the problem.
Phil Cardarella
5 months, 1 week agoMaybe the Mayans are right about the end — since I agree with Mac — at least in part.
Frankly, we would be better off if the Universities went back to the administrative levels of 1965. Mostly, they send each other e-mails and suck up money that ought to go to actual teachers. You do not need a Vice-Chancellor in Charge of Ordering School Supplies.
As for student loans? In 1973, they were made by the feds — at 3%, starting on graduation. That was when they were primarily designed to help educate students. Then the GOP let the banks in on the deal as unnecessary but well-paid middlemen who could charge 6-8% starting immediately and compounding quickly. This had less to do with students than giving money to the banks — so forgiving a bunch of those loans would actually be GOOD policy and free up a lot of money for the economy.
State schools — like MU and KU — were supposed to offer FREE secular public higher education to the State’s best & brightest. Kids that could not afford to go to Harvard, but who we could not afford to leave untrained in the important work of… well, thinking.(In fact, Missouri’s Constitution bars charging tuition — so they just call it “fees”.) The theory is that it is a GOOD thing for society to have educated members. Teach smart kids to think.
Why? Because critical thinkers are good for democracies.
Somehow, the idea got twisted into thinking that universities are just trade schools where individuals get trained for jobs, so it should be a private investment that ought to pay off that way. Devry trade school becomes Devry University (sic).
Of course, we need good tradesmen, good butchers, good teamsters. But, that is not the actual proper aim of higher education: Critical thinkers. Folks who know Plato is not just Beetle Bailey’s pal. People who understand why the Constitution is structured the way it is — and why the kids are in the streets in Cairo.
Charles Purvis
5 months, 1 week agoNo doubt about it, the Mayans MUST be right—I actually agree with Phil.
Tuition (I’m sorry; “fees”) have grown at an average rate of 10% per year for the last 33 years. If this keeps up, only the Super Rich or Super Borrowers will be able to send their kids to college.
But one of the most ludicrous statements ever made by a politician was that ‘every child deserves a college education.’ No, they don’t, nor will every child need a college education.