The focus on the disparity between the administrative and instructional staffing and compensation is becoming more local. These are the opening paragraphs of the third article in a four-article series in the Norman Transcript comparing the credentials and the compensation of administrators and faculty at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma: “In today’s competitive workforce, the…
Although the number of administrators and of administrative staff, as well as the levels of administrative compensation, have continued to increase inexorably, those are hardly the only elements of administrative bloat. Paradoxically, although one would think that, at some point, there would be enough administrators to cover almost any administrative need, the “need” to contract…
Bonuses, both for performance and longevity, have become commonplace for higher-ed administrators at both public and private institutions. Indeed, these bonuses have become so commonplace that they now generally go unnoticed and unquestioned. But when such bonuses continue to be given during periods of great budget constraints, while faculty and staff compensation and/or positions are…
What follows is about 10% of a long but very engaging article, “Colleges Are Full of It: Behind the Three-Decade Scheme to Raise Tuition, Bankrupt Generations, and Hypnotize the Media,” published today in Salon. Its author is Thomas Frank, who edits The Baffler magazine (which, if you haven’t read it, is well worth a visit:…
This “book” seems very analogous to the sections of the WalMart and McDonald’s websites that are devoted to “career opportunities” with those companies–as if any significant number of those in the corporate management have worked their way up from stocking shelves, working the cash registers, or putting together sandwiches. Of course, adjunct faculty have invested so…
This weekend two studies on the compensation of university presidents appeared. The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual report on “Executive Compensation at Public Colleges and Universities” and the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington D.C. think tank, released a report finding that student debt and low-wage contingent faculty labor are increasing faster at…
The title of this post is another one of those entrenched but hackneyed questions that obscures the real issues in higher education. The often-heard claim that federal mandates have necessitated the proliferation of administrators makes little sense on several levels. First, and most basically, why should keeping data, etc., on what are essentially secondary, if…
At the end of December, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Steve Herbert titled “Colleges Trim Staffing Bloat.” So, if you did not read any further than the title, you might think that all of the attention to administrative bloat as a cost-driver in American higher education was finally producing some results. Think…
Yesterday’s Columbus Dispatch included a report that Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University, has agreed to become Interim President at West Virginia University. There is a news conference scheduled at West Virginia University this morning of this afternoon, but I am assuming that the Dispatch would not have printed the story without feeling…
In previous posts, I have detailed Gordon Gee’s extraordinary compensation as President Emeritus of Ohio State, as well as the fact that the only two public university administrators whose compensation exceeded his in 2012 were Graham B. Spanier of Penn State and Jay Gogue of Auburn, both of whom have also retired—Spanier under considerably more…