To the extent administrative bloat at universities is a problem, what would be a productive way of addressing it? (since obviously nobody is going to trust the DOGE way of doing it)
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Require administrators to teach a class or two per semester. It would help with student ratios and weed out people who aren’t there for the core mission.
If you want to get rid of admin bloat, get rid of programs for students, athletics, and dorms, and have states actually pay for universities but have them self-govern by faculty who teach.
I used to work at a university, and my impression while there was that it became sort of a jobs program. They employ the community in exchange for taking more land/getting more money.
There's absolutely bloat, but who is going to deal with the unemployment that comes from trimming the fat?
I've worked in research administration at multiple universities and never saw any such thing. Mostly offices that are slightly understaffed and working hard.
I wasn't in research. I was on the general administration side at a business school. And without naming names, there was a pretty public battle between the neighborhood they were in and the university.
They had absurd money, and they were very overstaffed.
Well schools that have absurd money are welcome to overstaff. those aren't expenses being paid for by the government. I'm guessing this was not a state school.
Ah okay. I took the original post to be a response to the Whitehouse recent edict to cut all IDC rates on federal research grants to 15% with the states purpose of ending administrative waste. But that funding is all specific to research related expenses
With the reduction in administrators there SHOULD (in my imaginary fantasy world) be more money to hire faculty. So the unemployment number should be a wash or a net gain since Admin tends to make more than faculty.
Control of education is the objective & using "spending" is the excuse. Do *not* ignore their need to "control who is educated" as a means of restricting competition with the "chosen/white" people & maintaining segregation (by another route). Facts matter! https://bsky.app/profile/cdpositive.bsky.social/post/3lhtzfwcurk27
In non-profits, "administrative overhead" is capped at 25-30% of operating revenue based on historically how effective organizations have achieved their missions. There is more to this than what I wrote, but it is one metric and a starting point for evaluation.
The median f&a rate at universities is roughly 55%. That translates into roughly 35% of costs recovered as Facilities AND Administrative costs combined. There truly is not broad bloat in research administration.
For public universities, each state has in theory the financial incentive to address bloat. Of course we get the same agency problems we have at the federal level, where one person’s bloat is another person’s key constituency. Basically you need DOGE-minded governors and legislatures.
it's all very piecemeal because of the way the money is doled out by the feds. and there's good reason for DOD, DOE, NSF, NIH to each have their own pots of money and priorities.
maybe this could be kept while still maintaining a one-size-fits-all reporting and admin structure (doubtful)
There is a long running effort to harmonize this process across agencies. It's somewhat successful and somewhat a joke (because it keeps requiring things change to conform but learning new stuff takes time and effort). But the govt can't manage billions of $$ spread across thousands of institutions
The government ALREADY is managing most of that, but on a local, less efficient level than it would federally, as it organizes a much more complicated organization like the military or State department.
the gov't audits once in a while but how would the keep the books of all the projects within universities on a day-to-day basis? embed themselves in the schools? and even if they did, all you've accomplished is saving a F&A cost with shitload of line items on the federal budget, so why bother?
They aren't managing any of these things and aren't equipped to do so with respect to all the state and local laws, individual entities are responsive to. It's just baseless fantasy to think the federal government could do all these functions for tens of thousands of labs and it would be chewper
The government isn't gonna generate a financial statement for the labs multiple grants. It's not gonna be able to enforce at the point of sale if this grant doesn't allow equipment, ect. it's a huge enterprise and requires admin staff to execute
Is the government gonna manage the mouse labs? Will they make sure trials with human subjects are being administered ethically and legally? There are lots of rules for good reasons that require knowledgable people at each institution to handle
I also wonder how much the indirect costs come from the university in hcol regions subsidizing the students stipends. I’m a student in NYC & and I’m paid over the NIH fellowship rates by the university as an employee (I have a W2)
As someone that tried to teach at colleges, many are hiring adjuncts at minimal cost and are cutting back on full time faculty. Many wear multiple hats to keep the train on the tracks.
IDC rates for federal research grants does not have anything to do with undergrad tuition expenses except maybe by way of successful institutions having higher prestige and being able to get away with higher prices as a result.
The "A" in F&A is already capped at 26%, anything above that is solely for facility costs. The 26% cost covers all aspects of administration - human and animal compliance, HR and police departments, departmental admin, including basic supplies, computers and IT. It is not covering solely "bloat"
This post really doesn't say anything. It says cut regulation without going into which ones and justifying why they deserve to be cut. Vaguely saying regulations are bad is easy and not helpful.
First you’d have to define “administrative bloat.” I gather a lot of “indirect costs” goes to regular overhead (buildings, equipment, maintenance), rather than salaries for four vice-deans of student experience, or whatever.
Zero dollars of f&a IDC go to deans office student experience or whatever. Costs only go to cover, proportionally, expenses that are allocable to the research program. So some portion of some deans salary may be included but not undergrad focused ones
A lot of it salaries not for the person at the top, but the army of lower-level admin staff you need to actually run stuff operationally. To use the stereotypical rock climbing wall example - it's not just the capital & ongoing maintenance of the wall itself, it's the people who rent the shoes, etc
That's where I sit. I am a grant manager with over 35 grants. I am there to ensure we are in compliance, make sure we meet deadlines, and allow the PI to focus on the science.
Been a while since I looked at a dataset, but ~10 years ago most of the cost of attendance increase at public 4-yr schools could be attributed to state cuts vs. capital or admin overhead.
Private 4-yr schools did have a an overhead problem, but served only a fraction of the student population.
Administrative costs are already capped, so you’re talking about facilities costs. And this one I know! Capital investments in new and recommissioned buildings, so we don’t have multimillion dollar research equipment in buildings with leaky envelopes and leaky roofs!
Modern universities are not only, and in many cases not primarily, academic institutions. They are health care providers, laboratories, entertainment providers, corporate partners, and providers of public services – requiring a lot of professionals who do not teach.
Maybe Caps on percentage of revenue that can be expended on capital/building projects? The building inflation at universities seems pretty obvious to me as low hanging fruit
I really don’t think this is the time for this conversation. It’s one worth having for sure, but not when an unelected billionaire is trying to dismantle the whole concept of research universities. No reform is going to satisfy them, so let’s not hand them ammo. Appeasement won’t save us.
Development (fundraising) could be cut a little. Save the human interaction for the billionaire donors. Everyone else can be on a mailing list. Cut sports if the school sucks at it (looking at you, NYU). Get into the senior assisted living business to boost revenue from alumni.
I can assure you the most efficient way is not by capping off all rates at 15%. You'll now have institutions direct charging whatever they can on each individual award. They don't tell you to that Gates and other foundations allow that when they grant rates of 10-15%.
It would be corrupt and I don't trust this administration to do it fairly, but one big problem is the grant application structure. every university has big teams of grant writers, and every academic wastes time with applications. Way easier to give out the money via lottery and let us all work.
There are too many types of admin bloat. Some is research (many AVPs); a lot is on the academic side (Assistant Dean for nice area). Compliance management is often overwrought. The pyramid scheme of soft money research positions and downstream effects is a huge issue. Too many bad incentives.
May I ask first: Is there an assumption in play here that administrative bloat is being funded by indirect costs in NIH grants?
I ask as a faculty member who helped build a public college from ground up and became an administrator. I have thoughts, but want to be sure of the baseline assumptions.
I think they mean at larger schools like mine (a U15). Smaller schools don’t tend to have drastic discrepancies like the upper level administrators here (their salaries are now listed on the sunshine list). The president of our Uni made >$1M. But sessional contractors to teach >50% at low wages.
My proposal: All U administrators (but not their support staff) are offered a sabbatical on 1/2 salary for 1 year. During that year, their support staff do the work they are already doing. End of year: we invite back the administrators we genuinely missed. Probably less than 10%.
One thing I can say having briefly served as president of a small college, is that expectations of services provided by institutions have dramatically increased since I attended college 50 years ago. And faculty compensation has often/usually not kept pace with administrative comp increases.
F&A rates are extensively negotiated with a federal cognizant agency. More reporting and regulations require more support in order to comply with the terms of the grant or contract and properly administer tax dollars. There are also annual audits so im confused by the question.
You could create a caret and stick approach regarding the distribution of future grants using the average metrics for grant recipients or past metrics from that institution as a baseline. Eg improved efficiencies get more money in the future and vis versa
Cut administrative staff instead of front line staff who actually work with students. This includes faculty who are now almost all adjuncts. Address the imbalance between athletics and academics.
Start by firing the entire athletics department. That would save millions. Work down from there. Why do so many Universities maintain obscenely expensive residences for some faculty? Sell those. They can pay for their own housing like everyone else does.
In general, you need to require the administration do less. For example, simplify accreditation for long-standing universities.
Also, students choose high-service universities. And counseling services help keep a student enrolled, which helps with both tuition now and donations down the road. etc.
What kind of bloat are you thinking about? There's RA bloat (turning dorms into high-cost supervised housing and forcing students to live in it), there's admissions committee bloat, there's associate dean bloat, there's sports bloat...
A competent Republican administration committed to killing affirmative action could pass a merit admissions bill, forcing universities to admit purely by a GPA + SAT combo, or, if there are ceiling issues at elite unis, a harder-than-SAT admissions test (this is what Todai and ENS do). No essays.
At policy level, it's also easy to require universities to divest of dorms and forbid mandatory meal plans. Sport divestment is also easy but as I understand it the bloat there is capex more than opex, and also it's a harder fight - students hate cafeteria food and the dorms, not the sports teams.
I kept hearing complaints when I interacted with undergrads (at Columbia socially, then at WPI and such at LARPs). I computed that I was paying about as much per m^2 of apartment floor area in Central Stockholm as WPI students were in the dorms.
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But nobody wants that...
There's absolutely bloat, but who is going to deal with the unemployment that comes from trimming the fat?
They had absurd money, and they were very overstaffed.
The reason I brought it up is because in my experience, the bloat is an unemployment problem if we're talking about reducing bloat.
Everyone wants to save money until friends/family are unemployed.
https://bsky.app/profile/cdpositive.bsky.social/post/3lhtzfwcurk27
a) have the federal government subsidize college so that tuition is cheaper for students
b) but only for schools that cap administrative costs as a percentage of total spending
That should just be a centralized program the government runs instead.
maybe this could be kept while still maintaining a one-size-fits-all reporting and admin structure (doubtful)
It doesn't make sense for them to require every individual school to do all the legwork of that money.
None of that even mentions how state, county and local governments ALSO have their own programs on top of all that.
But the real spike in colleges recently (last 4 years) has been the cost of room and board. So addressing inflation would be most helpful near term.
@stuartbuck.bsky.social has been on the case with productive proposals for a long time.
https://goodscienceproject.org/articles/how-to-actually-reduce-the-administrative-burden-on-research/
Private 4-yr schools did have a an overhead problem, but served only a fraction of the student population.
I ask as a faculty member who helped build a public college from ground up and became an administrator. I have thoughts, but want to be sure of the baseline assumptions.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1991/6/6/govt-files-offer-inside-look-at/
Also, students choose high-service universities. And counseling services help keep a student enrolled, which helps with both tuition now and donations down the road. etc.