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| ▲ | AdrianB1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe try to reduce admin staff to save money? What I read in multiple places is that administrative staff increased a lot over the past 30 years, about double the pace of teaching staff and 4 times more than the number of students. That sounds like terrible efficiency that can be reversed. | | |
| ▲ | MonkeyClub 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Maybe try to reduce admin staff to save money? With reducing student cohorts, staff numbers will also necessarily see reductions; it’s the immediate next step, with faculty following afterwards. | |
| ▲ | jltsiren 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's the difference between discretionary spending and mandatory spending. Discretionary spending largely aligns with what the organization is supposed to do. A university can choose how much effort it puts on educating the students, because education is discretionary. Mandatory spending, on the other hand, is what the organization must do, due to external reasons or earlier commitments. Because mandatory spending is beyond the direct control of the organization, it tends to bloat. The biggest sources of administrative bloat seem to be regulations, student expectations, and running a residential campus. None of which are particularly easy to change. | |
| ▲ | downrightmike 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | school admin seems like the perfect place for automation | | |
| ▲ | AdrianB1 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Being very generous, not even for full automation, but with all the tools and help of technology in the past 30 years they can be more productive, not less. We moved from hand-writing everything to computers, how is that reflected? | | |
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| ▲ | fghorow an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I said "staff" not "faculty". If you think staff (other than the grad students, which are being not allowed in at Dartmouth) teach, well, just try hanging around at a university for a week or so. See how many of the bureaucrats teach. (Hint: it rounds to zero.) There is a special case of the poor adjunct faculty people, who are not paid well at all. They, in fact, need more support than the other staff. (Source: I'm a retired, soft money, academic.) |
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