One of the few good things that appears to have happened in the conference committee on the generally awful impending GOP tax bill is that the hits students were going to take have been eliminated. However, even without that additional burden, college students face costs that are far higher than any other nation and have been rising above inflation rates for decades. While` students in Denmark actually get paid, costs are closing on $70,000 per year at the most expensive US institutions, with public schools having costs rising more rapidly than in the privates over the last decade, as states have cut public support in the wake of the revenue shortfalls that came with the Great Recession. This is not likely to be reversed in many states as favorable views of universities among Republicans have fallen from nearly 60% to about 30% (with little change among Dems, still between 55 and 60%).
I would like to focus on a long-running trend that has been known for some time but somehow keeps disappearing from view. This trend was best presented in the ever more relevant 2011 book by Johns Hopkins poli sci prof, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why it Matters. This rise of an all-powerful professional administration is tied to a corporatization of American academia. From 1975 to 2005 while student populations rose 56%, faculty increased by 51%, administrators rose 85%, and their professional staffs rose 240%. Around 2005 the total numbers of admins and staff surpassed that of faculty, with that trend simply continuing. Admin salaries have risen faster than the other categories. On top of that, even as faculty numbers and salaries have not kept pace, there has also been the weakening of status and pay arising from the ongoing steady shift from tenure track faculty to temporary adjuncts who have risen from 22% of faculty in 1970 to about 50% in 2017.
Ginsberg argues that this rise of administrative bloat has become administrative blight. While admins claim that corporatization brings efficiencies and flexibility, the evidence looks just the opposite with the ridiculous rise of tuition and fees showing the lie to this claim. Some argue that the explosion of admins is a response to expanding government mandates, this can explain only a portion of this. Indeed, Ginsberg documents that admins have increased more at private than at public unis, which looks to be the opposite of what we expect if it were public mandates lying behind this trend.
Rather he poses a “Malthusian” theory whereby admins breed more admins. Deans breed “deanlets” and “deanlings” or as they are more usually known, ass. deans (some associates and their underling assistants). At JMU where I am there were precisely zero of these creatures when I arrived 40 years ago. Now my college alone has three associate deans, and we have had an explosion of colleges, each with their plethoras of deanlets. We now have assistants to deputy vice provosts, whereas back then two of those layers did not exist. As it is, many of these people have too little useful to do for their overblown salaries, so they have lots of meetings, which generate initiatives to formulate strategic plans nobody gives a damn about or follows, but developing these is imperative for unis that are becoming efficient by corporatizing. As it is these deanlets insist on dragging faculty into these horrendously nauseating exercises, even as they make it harder for faculty to teach and do research.
There is much more arising from this trend, but here at the end of this fall semester I think it is worth reminding people of this long building phenomenon, even as so many other matters have gotten lots of media and political attention. This trend is more damaging and probably harder to overcome. After all, when the fiscal crises hit, it is the admins who decide which jobs and salaries will be cut or restrained, not the faculty.
Addendum, 12/17: I shall add a point that Ginsberg makes from his own observation and that I agree with, given how long I have been in and around academia (my late father also having been a professor and even an administrator). in the “good old days” top admins tended to be more senior faculty with r1easonably distinguished records who had been on campus for a long time and knew the people and place. Now we have undistinguished professional managers, especially among tose deanlets and others.
Barkley Rosser
all true. but we need to think about the value of high mass education.
it has been tried, and the results were not to the liking of the people who run the country. and probably not even to the liking of many of those who went to school, did their homework, sat through the lectures and graduated with a degree that was pretty much worthless..
except that employers require a degree for jobs that in no way require the “education” it is supposed to represent.
just paying everyone to go to school to get jobs that won’t be there might not be the right answer.
except, of course, to provide a government subsidy for all those education executives.
Just a quickie back of envelope assessment of bloated administrators effect on costs of attendance.
30k enrollment
10 semester units avg = 20 semester units / year / enrollee
= 6e6 annual semester units
$65k avg annual admin salary including benefits
100 more admin employees than here-to-for
= $65e5 increased cost
$65e5 / 6e6 semester units
= ~ $11e-1 / semester unit = $1.10 / semester unit
For full time 31 semester units per enrollee per year
= < $35 per year per full time student effect of “bloated” administrative employees
So double both number of additional admin & annual salaries + benefits & the added cost per full time enrolled student goes to ~ 4x or $140 / year.
Figure public university $25k per full time enrollee / year fees, books, living, tuition then the “bloated” admin cost effect = < 0.6% / year adder.
Conclusion:
There is no significant effect of “bloated” admin on student cost of education at public university levels.
So I am not sure what your point is, Barkley, other than faculty never thinks admin is fair with faculty. This was true when my father & aunt were faculty and much later in their careers, high level administrators…top of the heep in both cases. Nothing’s changed except faculty at public primary & secondary schools formed strong unions (at least in CA).
Why haven’t Profs, and pre-tenured faculty formed national unions at the public & private universities in the U.S.? Seems like the obvious thing to do if there’s a significant enough beef with the “bloated” admin.
I expect it takes a few more administrators to deal with the fact that rape is no longer permitted, as well as the fact that black, Jewish, and in California, Latino students are now admitted.
But the real problem is that college, as understood by faculty and administrators, is inconsistent with democracy.
Shouting at non-college whites that the benefits trickle down is unseemly and ineffective. Explaining that affirmative action doesn’t happen in numbers enough to make a difference for the children of non-college blacks, while true, is cold comfort. And the non-college whites have a point: the business model of the humanities is totally unsustainable as the number of PhDs needed has peaked. The T.A.s that do the teaching in the sciences should be treated better, and adjuncts making starvation wages won’t go on for ever.
What to do?
What if State U became a flexible destination for all high school grads? What if funding for State U meant good things for more than just the children of rich parents? Is there any reason State U couldn’t offer 2 year programs? Or even shorter? If a future plumber insisted on taking English courses, he could fail out exactly the way future communications majors fail out of engineering.
The only thing that stands in the way? The status of faculty members would fall.
Thornton’s comment forgets that many states have a separate set of institutions the Community college precisely for 2 year programs and certificates. In many states they get relatively more aid than the 4 year schools (definitely true in Ca as the Community colleges are funded more from the same pot as K-12) One way that states have been working to help reduce costs is to get consistent credit transfer metrics and syllabuses for courses, so that credits transfer more easily. Typically in a 4 year program 1 year is devoted to general education requirements. In addition there are introductory courses in disciplines all of which can be taught consistently so that credits transfer. Community college of course means a student can in many cases live at home, at least for the first 2 years.
Just like many of todays universities started out as vocational schools the community colleges tend to be more vocationally oriented. (Many of todays universities where either teachers colleges/Normal Schools or Land Grant schools where Engineering Agriculture and Military Science where the prime fields.
LT,
How many decades ago did your parents retire?
Current facts, deans make 2-3 times the $65,000 you posed. In the last 3 years in the financially troubled Michigan system, admin costs rose by $258 million or about $1,000 per student. In 3 years LT! In Michigan.
Your numbers are a joke, a bad one.
More.
In Cal, between 2001-2010, public unis faculty salaries rose 19%, top admin salaries rose 39%, and president salaries rose 75%. In private ones, faculty also up 19%, top admins up 97%, and prez ones up 171%. It has just been reported that there are now 32 uni presidents in US making over $1 million. But, hey, what do you expect to pay corporate CEOs?
AAUP (nationwide faculty group that fights for academic freedom; [I belong]) estimates from 1978 to 2014, the number of tenure track faculty nationwide rose 23%, non-tt fac rose 257%, and admins rose 369%.
Ohio University (Athens) is imposing budget cuts based on complaints about admin costs. Over the last 30 years, the ratio of admins and staff to faculty is up from 0.4 to 1.2. In face of budget cuts, the administration is proposing to cut 17 faculty positions, 3 staff positions, and zero admin positions, of course.
Maybe we faculty types should have formed something more powerful than AAUP; but, in many states there are severe restrictions on faculty unions in public unis, and it is my observation that places where there are faculty unions do not see obviously better pay or tenure rates than non-unionized, perhaps ultimately because they are unable to halt expanding admin bloat.
But then you have assured us that this not a problem based on some half-baked back-of-the envelope calculations, along with some bragging about your parents. Very impressive indeed.
JBR
Barkley:
Either you were pretty pissed off when you wrote this or you are trying to do this on an IPhone. I did some editing. Bill in the mail.
Barkley:
Neat chart at BLS: College tuition and fees increase 63 percent since January 2006 replete with inflation data.
Nate Silver believes while Admin and campus costs play a role, the largest cost factor still is the sate cuts to education: Fancy Dorms and Admin
The “OH” story got cut off. That is an 8-day old story out ofOhio University in ‘Athens, OH.
The same thing has gone on in the healthcare industry. I wrote about it here at AB some years ago. I had found a study that looked at the increase in admin personnel in the US system vs Canada.
It’s all part of the financialized economy in that we just manage money and earn it as middlemen in a transaction I figure.
Run,
I had surgery on a broken finger yesterday and was and am on major pain meds plus unable to use left hand. I was annoyed, but med issue more responsible for typing/posting problems.
Anyway, thanks, Run.
Oh, and the story about state aid cuts only holds for publis, with privates having more increases in admin costs than publics, as I put in my post.
I could have added much more, but as you now know, my typing is limited.
JBR
Barkley:
I knew it was something; otherwise, I thought you may have been tapping some good bourbon from that high salary of yours. Nate Silver at 538 says ~ 25% of that increase is due to administrative and the balance is due from hidden cuts such as the 60% decrease in funding for state schools in Michigan. The hidden subsidies that went away under Repub control of state legislatures.
If you look at the BLS chart and data I linked to, it appears one thing in particular has impacted College costs . . . books. In the earlier eighties at Loyola Univ. Chicago; my Masters was $350 a course. For my oldest son, Lake Forest was $28,000/year in 1998. Ohio Wesleyan in 2000 for my younger some was $32,000/year. I am not counting fees or books. Kenyon was even more. Otterbein less as was Alma. Dennison and Tiffin were close also.
State priorities have changed for colleges the same as K to 12. Yes administrative has increased; but, so has the priorities when compared taxes. Answer me later.
And to Thornton, see Lyle’s post. We now get those juniors coming in from nearby comm college. Some are actually quite good, taking advantage of the lower costs (although JMU is still a relatively good deal for in-state students), while quite a few of those transfers do not do so well.
Nate just one source. Where he and you are right is that publics have had more rapidly rising tuitions than privates in past decade, with state funding cuts for publics dominating slower rise in admin costs in the publics.
Barkley.
Not that concerned with who had higher admin. I think there is a combination of things going on here.
Publics suffered from decreased state funding (~75%), more so than administrative (25%), in increased costs such as student services, security, counseling and career advisement, maintenance, room and board, and healthcare. Some of this you can not escape and some seems to be too many desk admins. The new requirements of counseling for student loans and why students drop out may add to this.
Private schools suffer from many of the same issues except they do not have the same state funding issues as publics. Word has it the compettition is heavy for knowledgeable profs “too” plus better students. The aid is better which brings it into competition with publics. Little Alma had funding of ~ $110 million in 2000. Wesleyan was higher. Badgers had a nest egg of >$1 billion. There is a lot going on here I can not get my arms around completely.
Jason Delisle, the former Repub staffer for Petri- WI, would like us to believe that cuts is state funding do not matter and that financial aid needs to be cut because it gives colleges an easy way out to increase tuition+other costs. There is money to be made in indenturing students to high interest rates which Delisle, Akers, and Chinago support. I would get student loans out of the public sector completely as most banks are thieves. Direct Loans is a better alternative without private servicers. That is a hidden cost to going to college.
I am not disagreeing with you Barkley. I think there is more to this than just admin.
At Wayne State, our local faculty-academic staff union did a review and found that there were 102 new administrative/staff positions added in the last two years, at a cumulative cost just short of $17 million. At the same time, tenured/tenure-track faculty positions in most schools remained stable or declined.
I think in Michigan (and especially at Wayne State) it is a combination of the Michigan GOP-controlled legislature cutting our budget (we have not yet been funded by the state back at the level we were funded before the crisis, even though most of the four-year colleges have been, mostly in much less diverse population areas) and both more administrative and staff positions created and considerably higher salaries paid for administrators and staff. The upper-tier of administrators is extraordinarily generous in giving raises to high-level administrators, but extraordinarily stingy when it comes to faculty raises (or clerical staff raises).
Barkley,
“Current facts, deans make 2-3 times the $65,000 you posed. In the last 3 years in the financially troubled Michigan system, admin costs rose by $258 million or about $1,000 per student. In 3 years LT! In Michigan.”
You intesinally mislead again… bad habit of yours.
My numbers were based on doubling the $65k, & doubling the number of additional admin employees from 100 to 200, as you well know by reading my post. So all 200 additonal admin employees you don’t like each have annual incomes of $130k… including clerks, filers, secretaries, etc. of far lower paying positions, thus more than accounting for the few higher income professional admin.
Now show me your composit numbers & how much that increases public university costs per student per yea as a percentage of costs without thos “additonal” admins.
Quit with the isolated $1million incomes of uni. presidents at private universities selective b.s. Quit playing games with ratios of admin to faculty & non tenured faculty. They are irrelevant to total costs per full time student as percentage of costs, & you either know this already, or you’re just blowing smoke to intentionally mislead.
Costs didn’t go up by any significant percentage because of bloated admin at public universities … they just got transferred from the general taxpayer to enrolled students, net of inflation.
In CA one of the increased cost factors were requirements to upgrade older buildings to mandated Earthquake standards, which necessitated tearing down older facilities and replacing them with new ones in many (most??) cases.
When taxpayers don’t foot the bulk of costs, then universities have to find ways to be more efficient in balancing costs against proficiencies of teaching. This i’m pretty sure requires more administration to oversee & evaluate the trade-offs, which I’m equally sure is the only means of finding & enforcing that balance. It certainly isn’t going to be done by faculty, that’s for damned sure.
So my guess is that higher education provides more bang for the buck than it ever did, but the buck is now spread over a greater proportion of enrollees rather than a greater proportion of taxpayer incomes, making it appear to be a higher cost (just dividing those costs by a smalller denominator .e.g. n students rather than m taxpayers x p percentage of income).
And of course with higher per enrollee cost, then it reduces lower income segments from participation, or requires them to finance it with student loans.
Furthermore in case it has escaped your careful attention to such matters, you will have noticed that greater & greater proportions of GPD have gone to fewer & fewer people, which simply means that the ability for lower income enrollees to pay for what taxpayers used to pay (on a highly progressive scale, btw) has decreased with increasing wealth of the nation’s economy. This has thus resulted in a greater proportion of enrollees from higher income brackets & greater amounts of student loans by the rest.
Frankly I think your real issue is deciding what a public university education is supposed to serve. Ostensibly it’s to improve the population’s standards of living, which requires competing with other nations, which then depends on how well educated the public is. The greater the proportion of the public with higher levels of educational attainment the more competitive domestically& internationally.
Continuing…
Obviously then the greater the proportion of the population obtaining higher levels of education the more the population has to spend to obtain it. But when the public at large refuses to pay that higher cost then it falls on the ability of individuals to pay them.
This in turn perpetuates a more elitist society, OR it requires hihger education to cut costs, whereby the bulk of those costs are spent on the teaching staffs, & as eith every other institution in the U.S., that’s wher much of the cost cutting must come.
It’s really pretty simple, Barkley. Either retain & perpetuate an elitist notion of higher education, or cut costs to incresse the proportion of the public affording to obtain it by controlling costs with more administrative oversight, reductions in unnecessary faculty, & more faculty time spent actually teaching.
Either you prefer to retain more elitism, or you prefer to give a greater proportion of the population higher levels of education. Take your pick. The latter encroaches on your own occupation (former occupation), degrading it from its high perch, so from your post it appears to me that you prefer the former.
I prefer the latter as well as full public funding by taxpayers, even most probably with admin to oversee and control costs
Oh dear, LT. if you think that solving cost problems in US highef ed is a matter of having “more administrative oversight” of excess faculty you really do not get it.
Run is right that cuts in state aid push tuitions up a lot in publics, but this is not a source of higher costs per se. One unmentioned item is rising spending on athletics. Not sure if coaches are admin or staff, but they get paid more tha anybody. Only on 20 campuses in US do athletcs pay for themselves, contrary to widespread public opinion.
Barkley:
I can not disagree. State funding is cut for schools and used elsewhere. The cost is shifted to people without a similar decrease in state taxes. Ultimately there is an increase. Sports programs are typically not self funding as you have said.
Lyle-
Why do it that way? So students can live at home?
If so, this demonstrates one of the more forgivable (from a psychology point of view) blind spots among academics: the belief that the *content* of education is its principle value.
Why are graduates of 4 year engineering programs less racist than graduates of plumbing apprentice programs? Because of the content? Something about trusses analogizes to society? No. The four years of college reduce prejudice because children from different backgrounds and races are thrown together in a Freshman dorm.
Saving money by living at home would be beside the point if we funded all Post-Hs ed sufficiently. How do we get people to vote for that?
What academics forget is that this is a democracy. Our separate but equal higher ed causes *political problems* for four year State U.
One of the reasons to end our separate but equal treatof high school graduates is to change public funding from a zero sum game pitting non-college whites against college grads into one where a vote for State U is a vote for all state citizens and their children.
The “quality” of junior college transfers? That’s just priceless.
The intellectual ossification that positively requires two separate systems plus a non-system disaster is rather remarkable.
Barkley,
I must point out your arithmetic error when you stated:
,”In the last 3 years in the financially troubled Michigan system, admin costs rose by $258 million or about $1,000 per student. In 3 years LT! In Michigan.”
The total annual enrollment in 2016 at Michigan’s colleges is publically available. I just downloaded and added them up for all of Michigan’s PUBLIC colleges and universities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Michigan
There were 492.8k students enrolled.
Dividing by your unsourced value for the total 3 year increase in admin costs for “the Michigan system” yields not $1000 / student but only half that… . your arithmetic is off by a 100%!!!. The NOMINAL increase in total 3 year admin added costs per student = $524 in the most recent year…. e.g. after using the accumulated unsourced value you provided (which I couldn’t find by googling)..
Net of inflation for the last 3 years (Ju7 2014 through Jun 2017 to use the academic period = 3.28%) that’s $507 in real term.
Now, if I assume annual total cost of attendance per full time student is $25k so the $507 admin adder to cost/student turns out to be just 2% (2.03%) of annual total cost per full time student. Since this is net of inflation then the admin adder is obviously more than the rate of inflation.
Since your number of $1000 per Student is inflated from the actual by 100%, I think its fair to ask you for your link to the source of your unsourced $258 million admin cost adder over the last 3 years, which may be equally inflated or include costs of admin consolidation expenses but which REDUCES admin costs and thus reduces costs of attendance rather than increases them. There is always an upfront expense with consolidation .. in private enterprise as well as public institutions.
So I’d bet that at least 50% of your “admin adder” is expense associated with consolidation of administration related costs, and thus reduces costs relative to not consolidating. If that is the case as I suspect, then the actual admin adder over 3 years has been less than 1% of full time student costs of attendance.
According to everything I’ve read in the past few google searches on admin costs at public college / university systems in various States an nationally, they actually reduce costs of attendance even though most of the increases in admin costs come from expenses associated with consolidating admin across multiple colleges and universities into a single location and thus eliminates huge redundancies.
Moreover, your post was about bloated number of administrators, but you haven’t provided any numbers associated with the increase in number of administrators, so it’s not at all clear that your “admin” adder of $258 million has much or even anything to do with increases in the number of administrators or their net of inflation salaries and benefits..
For example if the average annual admin salary & benefit, including clerks and others who aren’t in the executive office is on the order of less than $100k then $258 million you cite equates to 2,580 new administrators in Michigan’s system over the last 3 years.
The number of accredited (NCA at least) colleges and universities in Michigan’s “system) is 46, so the number of imputed new administrators in that system comes out to be an average of 56 new admin’s per collage & university in the system. over three years…. which I would surmise is distributed by the size of the universities and colleges… larger ones having more smaller ones having less.
It seems strange that a system “under financial duress” would finance more administrators than necessary to reduce costs by more than the added costs of administrators though…
…and from my reading that hasn’t been the case in fact, which only says that your $258 million over 3years added to admin costs doesn’t reflect costs of administrators being added, but other costs which come under “administration” instead…. increasing number of buildings by consolidations? Upgrading admin facilities? Purchases of IT systems to reduce costs of computing, tracking, & administering general costs for payroll, benefits, resource consumption (lighting, A/C, heating)? Installing solar systems?
So rather than my back of the envelope calcs being out to lunch, it’s yours that appear to be without any merit at all, and deserve far more scrutiny, considering you don’t provide any data sources for your “Michigan system” numbers, or any explanations to provide any insight into them either.
That being said, don’t misconstrue my statements to mean that admin costs aren’t part of the costs students have to bear when taxpayers won’t foot the bill, anymore than faculty costs are, or that they aren’t also less efficient than they could be (true in almost all institutions, especially private enterprises, which is why they regularly have expensed costs of “reorganizations”).
And if your complaint is that admin execs get paid too much for what they do then you are complaining about the competitive costs of management .. a complaint that applies to the corporate environment across the board and has been a complaint for several decades already.. though shareholders haven’t been able to do anything about it either… for the same reasons.
BTW, I note that the University of Michigan’s 3 main campus’s (Ann Arbor, Flint, and Dearborn) total nearly 62k students in 2016 which is nearly 13% of total Michigan system enrollment.. If you add Michigan State then those two universities alone account for nearly 23% of total student bodies in “Michigan’s system”. Those 4 campus’s of 46 total equate to <9% of the public college/university campus's, so there's an immense concentration in just two of Michigan's colleges & universities, which I would hazard a wag that those two universities also have the highest paid administrators by far.
By comparison the two largest campus's in CA,, UC Berkeley + UCLA, comprise 87k enrollment which is 77% of Michigan's two largest universities.
Pay hikes in 2015 for the top execs in the UC system were:
"Those officials include five campus chancellors and four hospital and healthcare leaders. New salaries for the 15 range from $231,750 for Anne Shaw, chief of staff for the UC regents, to $991,942 for Mark Laret, chief executive of UC San Francisco's medical center. Many of the them had salaries above $400,000 before the new increase.
The new pay scale for the five chancellors are: $772,500 for UC San Francisco's Samuel Hawgood; $516,446 for UC Berkeley's Nicholas Dirks; $441,334 for UCLA's Gene Block; $436,120 for UC San Diego's Pradeep Khosla; and $424,360 for UC Davis' Linda Katehi.
Others on the list include the UC system's chief investment officer, Jagdeep Bachher, whose salary now will be $633,450; UC's general counsel, Charles Robinson, $441,334; and UC Davis' medical center chief executive, Ann Madden Rice, $848,720.
Officials said that much of the raises will be paid from such budgets as medical center revenues and investment gains and not from state funds or tuition. But student leaders criticized the hikes and said such distinctions about funding sources don't matter."
http://beta.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-pay-20150723-story.html
If I were a student today I'd say the same thing as the students said:
"… such distinctions about funding sources don't matter."
But I'm now a long experienced adult (as you are) and realize that the sources of funding for University costs matter, and matter a lot… in fact they matter more than anything else. You can't get by with mediocre administration or systems go to shit in short order. So you have to pay the going rate to maintain the system and improve it… and the going rate isn't dictated, but set by supply / demand markets prices. The larger the institution the more is at stake, thus risks are greater and hence managing them requires the most competent management you can find in the available market.
In 2015, the President of the entire UC university system, Janet Napolitano's salary was $570k plus housing & transportation for a total of $698.3k per year.. in round figures $700k..
The highest paid are 4 football & basketball coaches at Berkeley and UCLA but whose salaries (from $3.6 to $2.7 million) are paid by ticket sales. The rest of the top 35 (except two) are doctors at the UC teaching hospitals who's salaries are paid by clinical fees and grants. Their compensation ranges from $2.7 to $1.1 million.
The two exceptions who aren't doctors or the 4 coaches, are administrators — a chief investment officer at $1.3 million, and the CEO of UC San Francisco Medical Center at $1.2 million.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article169868602.html
As far as the admin chief financial officer's salary, I'm pretty sure that his salary provides for far more income to the University than his salary, so his admin cost should be judged as the difference between his salary (a negative) and how much he brings in (a positive), which means his "cost" is a net reduction in costs and thus lower costs per student enrolled rather than higher. .
So I think you have to be vary careful about the sources you use to ascribe to "admin" costs.. it depends on
– who's paying the salaries,
– whether they bring in more to the University's coffers than their income,
and
– how much are admin employee costs
and
– how much are other admin expenses..
Unless you can obtain those breakdowns simply citing an "administrative" cost adder is worthless information..
Thornton,
I have no idea what you are talking about. Students living at home have not been remotely discussed here at all.
LT,
So, the increase in admin costs per student in MI over 3 years was about $500. That is an increase, LT, not the total amount. In a period of fiscal stress that is unacceptably high.
As for numbers of admins up, go back and read my original post and subsequent posts. Lots of data there. Staff up more than admins or faculty, but admins up more than faculty and their pay also. Heck, see situation given in post by Linda Beale just prior to your latest bizarre outpouring. You do not have a leg to stand on here, LT, and asking this question about numbers makes you look like a complete fool, as well as totally obnoxious and offensive. You could get hired by the Trump WH with this kind of performance.
Barkley:
It is a good post and something which needs to be discussed more.
I was responding to Lyle who was extolling the virtues of community colleges, including the cost-saving virtues of living at home.
But we are indeed talking about two different things. You are talking about preserving the jobs that have fed your family for generations. I am talking about how our society—in an era when all citizens need post high school education—chooses to serve its richest members separately from all the rest.
Our interests intersect in the fact that a democracy won’t fund your way of doing it.
Fair enough, Thornton. I do not support high cost higher ed, and my solution is to get rid of all the overpaid and overly numerous administrators, staff, and athletic coaches, although maybe you agree wit Longtooth’s massively erroneous view that these are all due to wastrel faculty who should subjected to heightened scrutiny by even greater numbers of wonderful administrators.
Barkley,
Sorry Barkely but it was you who posted the it was the increase in NUMBERS of admin causing the increased costs, not me. I only found
a) you erred dramatically by inflating your cost/per student by 100% with zero foundation to do so… so probably a gross “off-the-cuff” fantasy figure you dreamed up
b) Admin costs constitute many more things besides NUMBERs of or Salaries of executives in admin which you alleged (wrongly as it turns out) were the cause.
c) That your stated increase in Admin costs constitute an average of a 2% cumulative net of inflation increase from 2014 to 2017 in per full time student costs in Michigan’s system, or an average of ~ 0.67% per year which turns out “miraculously” to be nearly precisely what I originally stated by my back of envelope calculation on annual increase in full time student costs attributed to large numbers of Admins at higher than average annual salaries and benefits.
d) ratio’s of admin to faculty have nothing to do with your alleged reason for cost/student increases by admin numbers increasing.
Yet you complain that ” You do not have a leg to stand on here, LT, and asking this question about numbers makes you look like a complete fool, as well as totally obnoxious and offensive.”
You are a real case, Barkley. I hope you can laugh at yourself.
Barkely,
Just an aside — for an university level educator you sure don’t appear to have any of an educator’s fundamental positive attributes: Objectivity; Accuracy of information; Selective information — single sided; Not publically denigrating ones intelligence..
You actually sound more like Trump I fact.
Barkely,
You made the following statement about community collage transfers to 4 year colleges as Juniors:
“We now get those juniors coming in from nearby comm college. Some are actually quite good, taking advantage of the lower costs (although JMU is still a relatively good deal for in-state students), while quite a few of those transfers do not do so well.”
It sounds like you’re casting doubts about the ability of community college xfers to 4 year institutions being qualified .. e.g actually graduating with a degree.
If you compare the graduation rate of community college xfers and incoming freshman, which group has the greater graduation rate?
Let me provide you the answers so you won’t have to look it up yourself.
From data:
“In fact, one-fourth of all college students who begin at a community college go on to a four-year institution, and of those, 60 percent graduate with their bachelor’s degree”
https://www.communitycollegereview.com/blog/the-catch-22-of-community-college-graduation-rates
60% of xfers from community colleges obtain 4 year bachelors degrees..
But what is the rate of graduation for incoming freshman?
It’s 59% .. so the same as community college students who xfer to 4 year institutions
“.The 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at a 4-year degree-granting institution in fall 2009 was 59 percent. That is, 59 percent had completed a bachelor’s degree by 2015 at the same institution where they started in 2009. The 6-year graduation rate was 59 percent at public institutions, 66 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 23 percent at private for-profit institutions. The 6-year graduation rate was 62 percent for females and 56 percent for males; it was higher for females than for males at both public (61 vs. 55 percent) and private nonprofit institutions (68 vs. 62 percent). However, at private for-profit institutions, males had a higher 6-year graduation rate than females (24 vs. 22 percent).
Six-year graduation rates for first-time, full-time students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree in fall 2009 varied according to institutional selectivity. In particular, 6-year graduation rates were highest at institutions that were the most selective (i.e., had the lowest admissions acceptance rates) and were lowest at institutions that were the least selective (i.e., had open admissions policies). For example, at 4-year institutions with open admissions policies, 32 percent of students completed a bachelor’s degree within 6 years. At 4-year institutions where the acceptance rate was less than 25 percent of applicants, the 6-year graduation rate was 88 percent.”
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). The Condition of Education 2017 (NCES 2017-144), Undergraduate Retention and Graduation Rates.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
Stands to reason as we’ve all known .. the more selective the criteria for entrance the greater the rate of graduates.