johnwesley

^^^amherst is about 25% larger than Swarthmore, so it makes perfect sense that Amherst would, on the surface, appear more efficient.

alGorescousin

You know what they say about statistics, don't you? So be wary of any statistical analysis that "proves a point."

The fact remains that colleges are bastions of inefficiency: tenure is a system that protects deadwood teachers; professors go on wasteful trips to "present white papers" or "give speeches" or "attend conferences" or whatever that cost tens of thousands of dollars and that money comes out of the "tuition money" we all pay.

The SHARP increase in tuition the last 10 years or so is almost inexplicable as salaries have not gone up, and endowments have balloooned. They are making a college education elitist by cost for the vast majority of middle class americans (except of course to the very poor who will get a full ride). The rich dont care because for them its mostly about status anyway.

This will have an enormous negative impact upon our social and economic fabric.

collegehelp

Let's try looking at this a different way.

The following list of LACs is sorted by the percent of total full-time staff who are full-time faculty.

Schools at the top have the lowest percent faculty and the highest percent non-faculty (the most bloat). I think this is also an index of efficiency and leanness.

I wonder how it compares to the list based on administrative salaries.

Wells College 21.4%
Davidson College 23.7%
Middlebury College 24.0%
Bowdoin College 24.6%
Virginia Military Institute 24.7%
Haverford College 24.7%
Bates College 24.8%
Colorado College 25.1%
College of the Holy Cross 25.4%
St Lawrence University 25.6%
Bennington College 25.8%
Sewanee: The University of the South 26.2%
University of Richmond 26.3%
The College of Wooster 26.8%
Amherst College 27.2%
Birmingham Southern College 27.3%
Smith College 27.9%
Sweet Briar College 28.5%
Wheaton College 28.6%
Connecticut College 28.6%
Dickinson College 28.7%
New College of Florida 28.9%
Occidental College 28.9%
Swarthmore College 29.0%
Hollins University 29.0%
Skidmore College 29.0%
Gettysburg College 29.1%
Agnes Scott College 29.3%
Bucknell University 29.4%
Mount Holyoke College 29.4%
Vassar College 29.4%
Colby College 29.5%
Hendrix College 29.5%
Wheaton College 29.6%
Trinity College 29.7%
Williams College 29.8%
Millsaps College 29.8%
Beloit College 29.8%
Mills College 29.9%
Lafayette College 29.9%
Furman University 30.0%
Barnard College 30.2%
Juniata College 30.2%
Southwestern University 30.3%
Randolph-Macon College 30.5%
Ohio Wesleyan University 30.6%
Kenyon College 30.6%
Goucher College 30.7%
Presbyterian College 31.0%
Macalester College 31.3%
Colgate University 31.5%
Bryn Mawr College 31.5%
Washington and Lee University 31.6%
Oberlin College 31.6%
Spelman College 31.7%
Knox College 32.0%
Wellesley College 32.1%
Centre College 32.3%
Augustana College 32.3%
Bard College 32.5%
Pitzer College 32.5%
Grinnell College 33.0%
Austin College 33.0%
Wofford College 33.0%
Saint Johns University 33.1%
Earlham College 33.4%
DePauw University 33.6%
Union College 33.7%
Gustavus Adolphus College 33.9%
College of Saint Benedict 34.1%
Hanover College 34.4%
Muhlenberg College 34.7%
Albion College 34.7%
Wesleyan University 34.8%
Hobart William Smith Colleges 35.5%
Illinois Wesleyan University 35.6%
Drew University 35.6%
Hamilton College 35.7%
Rhodes College 36.0%
Willamette University 36.0%
Sarah Lawrence College 36.0%
Franklin and Marshall College 36.2%
Lawrence University 36.3%
Kalamazoo College 36.4%
St Mary's College of Maryland 36.5%
Scripps College 36.9%
Denison University 37.0%
Harvey Mudd College 37.0%
Reed College 37.3%
Claremont McKenna College 37.5%
Allegheny College 37.5%
St. Olaf College 38.3%
Pomona College 38.7%
Wabash College 38.9%
Whitman College 39.0%
Ursinus College 39.3%
University of Puget Sound 40.4%
Carleton College 40.7%
Thomas Aquinas College 41.7%
Hope College 43.7%

collegehelp

For private universities, the percent of full-time staff who are fulltime faculty.

Vanderbilt University 15.5%
University of Notre Dame 19.6%
Duke University 19.9%
Dartmouth College 20.3%
Syracuse University 23.1%
Tufts University 23.6%
George Washington University 23.7%
Columbia University in the City of New York 25.0%
Wake Forest University 25.0%
Brandeis University 25.2%
Harvard University 26.0%
Yeshiva University 26.4%
Pepperdine University 26.8%
Johns Hopkins University 27.0%
Washington University in St Louis 27.1%
Princeton University 27.2%
University of Rochester 27.4%
Tulane University of Louisiana 27.6%
Georgetown University 27.7%
Cornell University 27.7%
Carnegie Mellon University 27.8%
Case Western Reserve University 28.1%
University of Southern California 28.5%
Brown University 28.6%
University of Denver 28.7%
Stanford University 28.9%
Boston College 29.0%
University of Pennsylvania 29.2%
Southern Methodist University 29.7%
American University 30.1%
Northwestern University 30.3%
New York University 30.4%
Yale University 31.1%
Clark University 31.6%
Rice University 31.8%
California Institute of Technology 31.9%
Brigham Young University 31.9%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 32.7%
Marquette University 32.8%
Boston University 33.6%
Saint Louis University-Main Campus 33.6%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 33.8%
Fordham University 34.1%
Emory University 35.4%
University of Miami 36.2%
University of Chicago 36.3%
Lehigh University 37.6%
Baylor University 38.0%
Stevens Institute of Technology 41.4%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 48.0%

collegehelp

For public universities, the percent of fulltime staff that are fulltime faculty.

Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 17.6%
The University of Texas at Austin 21.7%
Ohio State University-Main Campus 21.8%
University of California-San Diego 21.9%
The University of Tennessee 22.4%
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 22.5%
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 22.8%
University of California-Berkeley 23.5%
Indiana University-Bloomington 23.7%
University of Wisconsin-Madison 24.7%
Auburn University Main Campus 24.8%
University of California-Los Angeles 25.1%
University of California-Santa Cruz 25.2%
Miami University-Oxford 25.5%
University of Missouri-Columbia 25.6%
Michigan State University 25.6%
Purdue University-Main Campus 25.6%
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 25.7%
University of Georgia 25.7%
Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus 25.8%
University of Virginia-Main Campus 26.9%
University of Iowa 27.0%
University of California-Davis 27.5%
Texas A & M University 27.9%
Clemson University 28.2%
University of California-Riverside 28.6%
University of California-Santa Barbara 28.6%
SUNY at Binghamton 29.0%
University of Delaware 29.5%
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 29.7%
Rutgers University-New Brunswick 29.8%
College of William and Mary 29.8%
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 30.0%
University of Connecticut 30.2%
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 31.3%
University of California-Irvine 31.6%
University of Florida 33.1%
University of Maryland-College Park 37.4%
Iowa State University 38.3%
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 40.1%
University of Colorado at Boulder 43.5%

barrons

I think you may me going down the wrong path on the last one. Big research U's have thousasnds of full-time research associates and technicians who are not faculty. Theyare paid out of millions in grand funding for research and would not be there without the research funding. It's nearly a separate component of the U operations.

interesteddad

collegehelp:

I believe those are FTE employment numbers (full-time equivalent), not full-time employee numbers, correct?

It's an important distinction because "x" number of part-time adjunct professors add up to one full "FTE" position.

johnwesley:

amherst is about 10% larger than Swarthmore: 1637 versus 1475 or so in recent years.

hoedown

Salaries have not gone up? Based on what analysis?

I'd also be careful about dismissing conference travel as useless. Academic conferences can be the source of inspiration and renewal and offer valuable opportunities for interaction and collaboration with other scholars in the field. I would be concerned about a campus which discouraged attendance at academic conferences and regarded faculty publishing of white papers as frivolous. Furthermore, I doubt the faculty travel budget is taking THAT much out of the general fund.

vossron

Yes, it's another misapplication of the "bloat" pejorative.

I think the problem is that without assigning some kind of value judgment, the numbers are quite meaningless.

collegehelp

vossron-
I think "bloat" is an apt expression for what I am trying to capture. I don't know how you can put a positive spin on it when 15-25% of your expenditures are on administrative overhead. What would the for-profit private sector think of a business run that way? What would parents think if they know how tuition money was being allocated? You can call it inefficient, topheavy or whatever. It is not a good thing.

I think concept of "Institutional Support divided by Total Expenses" is a pretty common way to measure the "leanness" of operations although it is evidently more complicated than I first thought.

interesteddad-
I think they are simply full-time, not FTE, because there were separate figures available on the IPEDS website for part-time.

hoedown-
I think academic conferences and the like can potentially be stimulating and rewarding. They have the potential to be valuable to the students back on campus if the faculty attending finds cutting edge presentations, useful ideas. Whether there is, in fact, a payoff depends on the participant's active engagement and on whether the conference is cutting edge. But administrative conferences are generally a waste.

vossron

ch, I agree that you've gone looking for bloat, and it is a fine expression of waste, but so far the numbers don't support it, for all the reasons given. Maybe you can find a way to get to apples-to-apples!

collegehelp

I know how to get the data from the IPEDS website, but I am not an expert on higher ed finance. If you care to take a look at what is in the IPEDS Finance Report data, here is a link to the forms and instructions. Finance FASB is for private schools, Finance GASB is for public schools. Feel free to take a look and recommend a meaningful method for comparing schools on administrative overhead expenses.

I hope the link works.

Ipeds Web-Based Data Collection Information Page

alGorescousin

These stats are useful as general guides and indicators but not gospel truth or to put it better, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. The attempt was helpful and appreciated, never the less.

I just wish there was a rational explanation for the extreme increase in tuition the last 10 years or so. State schools are subsidized by taxpayers so the "increase" is spread to everyone paying income, sales and real estate taxes in your state, but the REAL cost has also skyrocketed at state schools too.

There is a lot of bloated faculty and programs as well....topics that are, shall we say, a little soft on relevance and reality. We all have our own pet peeves on this matter and what strikes us useless waste. I am not hard core on this, giving leeway to a number of departments...but still yet, its hard to justify a lot of what is passed off as a "college education".

Its nice to see Fordham in the middle of the pack on a number of these statistical analysis. wink.

interesteddad

As a parent, I was thrilled with the allocation of tuition money for "bloat". The breadth and depth of student-centric support from the administation was, IMO, one of the school's defining characteristics.

The thing you are missing in your analysis is that, by and large, the extras at a luxury school don't actually cost the customer any more money than at an economy brand school.

collegehelp

interesteddad-
How would having more vice-presidents, senior associate vice-presidents, associate vice-presidents, assistant vice-presidents, associate provosts, assistant provosts, associate deans, assistant deans, assistant department chairpeople, and so on benefit your child more than having additional faculty, more academic advisors, more opportunities for research, and so on? I don't think you should be so thrilled.