I wish universities would 'start to ask questions' about how many academic 'leadership' roles they can afford! The proliferation of vice/deputy/pro/associate 'leadership roles' over the last 10-20 years has been quite extraordinary. - ThreadSky

pwgtennant.bsky.social • 170 days ago

I wish universities would 'start to ask questions' about how many academic 'leadership' roles they can afford!

The proliferation of vice/deputy/pro/associate 'leadership roles' over the last 10-20 years has been quite extraordinary.

Reposted from Margot Finn

'Universities are starting to ask questions about how much research they can afford to do, and whether to cap their losses, bringing “difficult decisions about the activities they can continue to pursue”, according to senior figures in the sector.' Sadly, 'starting' started earlier than this.

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lilbitthinky.bsky.social•170 days ago

nah…..the immense salaries of vice chancellors can’t be the source of a problem…..

knapsack77.bsky.social•170 days ago

So: my spouse is retiring after 20 years at a college where she came into a position as 1st PhD to hold role, formerly a triple-A job. She will be replaced by 3 people; accreditation, promotion/tenure oversight, events mgmt. Expansion almost entirely due to increased oversight & mandates from w/out.

rosemarygolding.bsky.social•170 days ago

Agreed - these positions respond to pressures from increased regulation, competition and oversight as well as internal processes

knapsack77.bsky.social•169 days ago

And Title IX compliance (one can debate the how & why at length) added lots of staff: there's no way to do what's required without more people to conduct the reviews & hearings & file compliance documentation.

knapsack77.bsky.social•169 days ago

In the U.S., states have found they can add procedures & processes on top of accreditation criteria, charging fee$ when colleges add programs/majors. They bring 0 oversight or value, but it's a 3rd set of hoops for which someone has to bird-dog forms & compliance paperwork + half-dozen phone calls.

emoontxwriter.bsky.social•170 days ago

Agreed. Less "admin" and more "teaching and doing." I strongly feel that too much admin leads to too many "meetings" and "discussions" and "work" that takes away from the work universities were founded for.

withoutreports.bsky.social•169 days ago

my state dramatically reduced them, but now, instead of wanting efficient use of funds, the GOP wants censorship and duplicative schools for people who wouldn’t otherwise get teaching positions so that trend is reversing.

profajscott.bsky.social•169 days ago

totally agree

rsek.bsky.social•170 days ago

Note to Presidents and trustees: A university with about 5,000 undergraduates does not need (and cannot support) the same sprawling, multi-level administrative organization as a university that has 30 or 40,000 undergraduates.

scullingmonkey.bsky.social•170 days ago

i guess the question universities need to start to ask is what their purpose is

- delivering short courses for big fees and using AI for most of it on a tight schedule
- delivering research and discovering new things

if its the first, who is going do deliver research then? is google the future?

scullingmonkey.bsky.social•170 days ago

(and i dont mean the search engine but the company with a lot of money)

philsharris.bsky.social•170 days ago

And Saudi Arabia?

scullingmonkey.bsky.social•170 days ago

Well Google / deep mind are already doing / publishing a lot of research so it’s not a completely mad idea. However, they are a company and far from free from bias no matter how much they try to convince you from
Otherwise

Personally, I find it worrying if the figure of research and discovery is

scullingmonkey.bsky.social•170 days ago

Is only in private hands of big companies

henchman1.bsky.social•170 days ago

Sure, except the people who would be asking those questions have a vested interest in them not being answered.

"Gee, here I sit, overseeing a study to see if my cushy job should continue to exist..."

sclaires.bsky.social•170 days ago

And then people in those roles are in charge of department budgets… 👀

neil-1936.bsky.social•165 days ago

Is it possible that there are too many universities in the UK?

ahosbaldestin.bsky.social•170 days ago

I think a good 'question to ask' is about the cost of teaching. For instance if there are 100 students in a year paying £9250 each, taking 6 modules, that's about £154k income per module.

ahosbaldestin.bsky.social•170 days ago

Half goes to central admin? Still leaves enough for the entire salary of one lecturer. Nice job just to teach one module per year!

ahosbaldestin.bsky.social•170 days ago

Many courses have far more than 100 students per 20 credit module. Many courses have international students paying more than £9250. This will be offset by smaller module sizes in later years, but you have to marvel at what a lecturer with sole responsibility for a module of 200-300 brings in.

stephensenn.bsky.social•169 days ago

The tipping point was years ago. Universities morphed from being institutions where the academics employed the administrators to vice versa.

theericmcnulty.bsky.social•170 days ago

I double foot stomp this.

lazerblue.bsky.social•170 days ago

It’s like the proliferation of administration in medicine and hospitals. There is no incentive for a hospital administrator to question their own reason for being. Quite the opposite infact

adamcook.bsky.social•170 days ago

If they can't do research, then surely there becomes a point at which they're not really universities anymore?

maximummary.bsky.social•170 days ago

And so many of them are part of the alumni full employment program!

evebrowning.bsky.social•169 days ago

Perhaps universities could establish an Office of Administrative Efficiency, with a staff of 3 FTE Co-Directors and 6 administrative assistants, with a charge to "oversee and enforce efficiency while recommending the establishment of other such offices as needed."

edgardoblock.bsky.social•170 days ago

I wonder if there is a compilation of this anywhere.

stamfordlola.bsky.social•168 days ago

In K-12 education as well. We had 2 high end administrators when I started my job 25 years ago. We now have 7. We have not had growth to match.

richardshaw.bsky.social•170 days ago

When thinking about research costs it should always be pointed out that the grants that cost universities most are from charities which tend to fund 100% of the direct research costs.

It's the overheads and admin that cost Universities money, and this needs to be the focus.

f2harrell.bsky.social•170 days ago

The number of VP-level positions created in academic medical centers is quite striking and seems out of proportion for the work to be done.

christosargyrop.bsky.social•170 days ago

Actually, it is quite in proportion to the amount of paper pushing/regulatory work to be done, which is out of proportion to the useful work being done.
Many of these regs come from the feds, so it is quite interesting to see if Musk delivers on the DOGE promise (which he will not).

kenissuaq.bsky.social•170 days ago

Thank you for bringing this up! Do you recommend a source to quantify this statement? I’m well familiar with the argument made in “The Fall of the Faculty”, but wondering if there’s something more quantitative.

proflegel.bsky.social•170 days ago

I’ve served on the faculty union bargaining team for more than 20 years. Since we use Interest Based Bargaining (IBB), as part of the process we request total labor costs broken down by fac (FT ~ 15% / PT ~ 12%) staff / admin (50%).

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