Yes - as career higher ed (staff, but am coded under ‘academic admin,’ decidedly NOT a dean/provost/ etc!) there has been a lot of growth in staff for student support and other services. My job is a technology role that didn’t exist when I was in college, because we didn’t have the technology needs 30 years ago that we do now!
ANd when I read posts that shower love on a school that has low student/faculty ratios, excellent student supports, a supportive health center and all of that (ALLL things I appreciate as a parent and think are essential to student success for a college campus) and then shade the same school for “administrative bloat,” well… you can’t have it both ways. Services cost money, and it can get murky in the middle if those roles get lumped under “academic admin.”
Exactly. 30 years ago IT departments didn’t exist! Nor did school websites. Livestreaming of performances and other events wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. Online learning, and Zoom – nothing.
This is just one small corner of the nonfaculty growth area.
Now, not only do you need really strong technology infrastructure, you need all the follow on things that come from technology. Now, you need a communications department that creates and updates a great website. That posts several times a day on social media, which means someone has to create that content. Which may mean the school now has photographers, videographers and graphic designers on staff.
Same with the livestreaming – now you need game graphics, announcers etc.
30 years ago, sexual harassment wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been. Now you need someone to follow up and investigate allegations. Both those made by students but also staff/faculty. As a result, HR depts have to grow.
Numbers of applications have soared. Now you need more readers.
Etc etc etc . . . .
The flip side of that is universities have greatly reduced their printing and mailing costs. Many online publications used to be printed so the content would have been created regardless of format. Also, with online courses and degrees there is less need for physical classrooms as enrolment grows. Library stack areas have been converted to other uses too. Etc.
Etc, etc, etc,
I don’t think anyone denies there has been a significant increase in the number/proportion of administrator jobs. The real question is which of these jobs do you feel the colleges can eliminate? Or what proportion of these jobs do you feel can be eliminated? As others have shared there has been an increase in government mandated reporting requirements (Clery, CDS, Athletics, etc) and necessary support services (mental health, title IX, technology, etc) and the like.
I don’t know enough to know whether or not any of the growth in these jobs is not necessary…hence my question of what jobs can be eliminated.
The number one cost in an org will always be personnel - so growing enrollment in online = more faculty/adjunct, tech support, student support, etc. And I know we still got a good deal of printed material from schools!
My overall statement is “admin” can mean different things in different places and isn’t as discrete a term as ‘student.’
I don’t know that anyone argues that the tasks covered by various administrative positions are unimportant, outside of very rare cases. However, there is the question of whether they could reasonably be combined.
For example, historically there used to be a Dean of Students (or similarly focused) position across academia, generally assisted by a couple or three associate deans, depending on the size of the institution. Now, at the small- to mid-sized university I’m most familiar with, we have the following: Dean of Students, Executive Director of Student Engagement & Inclusion, Vice Provost for Student Success, and Executive Director of Academic Equity & Student Support (plus a Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs that a couple of these report to). With the exception of that last parenthesis, BTW, none of these report to each other—these are fully independent administrative positions.
Do they do good work? Heck yeah! Has the work increased to the point that what used to be one position now needs four or five lines, depending on how they’re counted? I don’t think so, especially since I very purposefully didn’t count positions like the Director of Multicultural Student Services and the Director of Equity & Compliance, which you could reasonably argue have been mandated by changing educational norms and regulations.
It is widely observed that work expands to fill resources. These positions were created to fill perceived gaps, and then the work expanded accordingly. This means that once an administrative position is created, it is very difficult to argue that it needs to be eliminated, because it is accomplishing good things. But looking back ten or twenty years, I do have to wonder how necessary the work being done always is, nice as it is to have it.
Is this true though? (really asking, I don’t know academia) I mean, accomplishing good things doesn’t mean a job is accomplishing necessary and/or relevant things.
In the corporate world where I have been involved in more than my fair share of restructurings, if there’s opportunity to eliminate or combine jobs it’s often knowable, although not always of course…as always politics, poor understanding of processes or finances, etc. can get in the way of good decision making.
I mean, yeah, exactly that. They’re accomplishing good things, but are they necessary? That’s where I question administrative bloat—but administrators see that good things are being done, and therefore widely characterize faculty complaints about administrative bloat as just ordinary grousing about management.
(And compounding the issue when a college hits crisis mode and hires outside help: It’s the administrators who hire consultants, and the consultants know that the ones that hired them are their audience, and so recommendations to cut programs and their faculty are more easily made than recommendations to cut administration.)
Having some history with the back office side of universities, many universities built their IT infrastructure via “custom” programming. To modernize these systems, retain all the old databases etc…and put in “Security” features, is a mindboggling cost that has been added on over the past twenty to thirty years.
If you look at some of the smaller colleges and the salaries of administrative staff and size of of some of the overhead structures, you would be shocked.
There have been big staffing increases necessitated by regulations and by changes in what is necessary to run a school (such as IT and student support services). Those, IMO, are absolutely necessary. But I also suspect that as colleges increase necessary staffing, many of them also increase staffing to supervise the professionals they hired to do necessary jobs. THIS kind of hiring is very expensive (these supervisors earn a lot more money than those doing the actual work). It’s almost as if the college presidents and boards feel that they must have layers of management between them & those who do the actual work. I saw it when I worked a corporate job, and I see these positions increasing in higher education. These jobs could be cut, but now that they are entrenched, they will most likely be the last to go. Management is loathe to cut their own ranks.
Yes, when we visited a campus recently I was asking a guy in the DEI dept what it is he does and he said “I make sure that underrepresented students have access to all the services they need to succeed in college” or something of that sort.
But my next thought was - But they already DO have access to everything they need in college, I don’t understand why there is an EXTRA dept just for ‘underrepresented’ students. It seems like it’s very redundant. It’s like adding an extra middle man. It’s not like the other student services departments are somehow keeping minorities out or something.
The “I don’t understand” is the most pertinent point here. Followed by “it seems …”. A more complete knowledge base on the subject would be helpful in helping you more fully understand.
Volumes, literally hundreds, have been written about why and how it is necessary to provide support for URMs in colleges and throughout society. If you’d like recommendations for where to start, I’d be happy to point out some books.
Please do take econpop on their offer to help you increase your understanding of the issues that disadvantaged students face when they attend college. Accessing services is just the tip of the iceberg. Personal growth is a common goal of many CC posters.
Can I take you up on your offer? I’m more familiar with materials in the K-12 space than the higher ed space, and I’d trust your recommendations far more than those of some random folks on Amazon.
My point is not that I don’t think every student needs access to student services but that there seems (yes SEEMS) to be a lot of redundancy in all of these departments and services. Oh here is the department of student services, the department of student success, and over HERE is the department for student services for underrepresented students and they can help you utilize the programs within the department of student success which you just saw over THERE…
Hence, an overkill of administrative personnel.
The other increasing factors include insurance protection for hackers, increasing energy costs, pressure for more housing, climate change issues: flooding, air conditioning, mental health support(listed above)…
What is crazy to me is the costs that come with sports teams traveling by plane, hotels…
and less squished housing…so more/better rooms per kid.
Used to read about mountain state university which closed now seems there was a mountain state college and that’s closing in West Virginia
We could all save universities a ton of money. Right now.
I say eliminate the dieticians and nutritionists who make sure that the kids with devastating food allergies are safe. Heck, my kids aren’t allergic to peanuts, why am I paying for people who work with the food prep and service folks to eliminate cross contamination?
I say eliminate the coaches, trainers, and the entire staff of the athletic departments. My kids didn’t join any teams or use the athletic facilities- why should I pay for it? And don’t tell me that sports pay for themselves- no archery or gymnastics program ever paid for itself on a college campus.
I say get rid of the entire legal team. My kids never got drunk and fell off a roof and we therefore never had to threaten a lawsuit… so why should I pay for high priced lawyers to keep the college out of court and negotiate a quiet settlement ?
And while we’re at it, dump the entire disabilities team- kids who use wheelchairs? They can sit at home and take online courses. Kids who are vision impaired? Why do they need college anyway. And fire the health services staff while we’re at it. Keep one RN for triage who decides who goes to urgent care and who needs a full ER. Anyone else can take a Tylenol and drink a glass of OJ. An entire team of mental health professionals? Get rid of them. Your kid has an eating disorder? Keep her home. Kid suffering from depression? He’s probably self-medicating so send him to a residential treatment program so the rest of us can save some bucks.
Those staffers who make sure that the monkeys and rats in the psych lab are being cared for by trained professionals? Who cares about PETA? Or federal regulations? Get rid of them.
See? Millions of dollars saved. Does Blossom know cost-cutting? You betcha.