The growing diversity bureaucracy

Momzie
Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:20:51 +0000

At our university there’s a sort of swearing in for new faculty and staff every September. This year I counted and the ratio of new staff to faculty was ten to one.

The numbers get even stranger when you start looking at the jobs of the new administrators. Does a university with 200 foreign students really need 15 people to ‘administer’ them? Does a college with 150 gay people really need an office with 8 people to ‘administer’ them? 30 disabled students and 15 people to ‘administer’ them? The ratios truly are astounding.

I also wonder how this would play out in the future if we did end up with some system of universal, free public higher education. My sense is that likely there would be ONE university per state designated as being “good for people who are disabled” and only one university would thus have that particular bureaucratic office. The same for international students, homosexuals, etc.? Perhaps.

The problem is that a small LAC is now required to have the same sets of administrators as a massive flagship state university. While the University of Wisconsin can probably absorb the extra costs associated with all these new positions, the ratios do end up looking downright bizarre at a college like Williams, where one estimate suggests that there is now one administrator for every ten students – but what’s the alternative? Tell anyone who might need some extra support “Oh, you can’t go here? We can’t afford to provide the resources you might need.”

Also, a lot of it comes down to legal liability. We need a massive bureaucracy to ‘administer’ frats because they’re kind of known for doing stupid things. OTOH, maybe the solution is to move them all off campus, get everyone to sign a waiver, or alternately to shut them down. Personally, I don’t think tuition should be used to ‘administer’ them.