I agree that lack of engagement is going to be a serious blow to the system, but I fear that between the huge subsidies for higher ed. and the government requirements for degrees to hold many jobs, the system is going to keep grinding on. I think that until we vote to stop giving them free money and requiring people to buy their product to participate in a career they pretty much have the lock they need to go on.
There is a good possibility that many fields or just hiring managers will decide a college degree from the legacy schools just isn't worth anything, but at the same time the university system is going to be pushing for more credential requirements to be legislated. The growth in license requirements to work has been pretty shocking the last decade or so, so who knows which will happen faster.
Until recently I'd have advocated to limit admin spending to say 5% of total payroll. Now that we have language models I suspect we can simply replace admin almost entirely, at least insofar as the small number of useful things they do (making travel arrangements and so forth), with a small number of trouble-shooters riding herd on the AIs.
As far as woke faculty go, here's a thought: cash prizes for recording the most outrageous lecture theatre misbehaviour. Make naming and shaming the bastards fun and profitable. There could also be prizes for the sickest burn during a classroom discussion. Getting $10k for making Mx. Wokerbutt turn red with apoplexy would take the sting out of the F she gives you out of spite.
More seriously, there is probably good justification for a fair few administrators at a university. Someone needs to ride herd on students, do the accounts, keep track of who works there, librarians, lots of random crap. The size of the organization will drive a higher percentage of administrators as well (which is a good reason to not have larger organizations!) so some big state schools are going to have more than small liberal arts colleges. You aren't wrong though that many functions are just pointless; hell, I always had to arrange for my own travel, for instance. Many admin. roles are also good jobs for students, giving them some experience and resume lines at low cost the university.
I don't really know what value many of the very high pay positions, presidents and the like, are to a school, but it might be pretty high. I know a few presidents that really screw up schools, so it seems like a bad one at least is a big penalty. You also have the problem with athletic departments being really expensive and often a money sink, and being entirely beside the point of universities.
I might be talking myself into agreeing with a 5% number, but I could see 20% too. Definitely not 50%+ though, which seems to be where most schools are going.
I read somewhere that Stanford now has as many admin as students, so, yeah.
Honestly though I think AI is going to make a lot of these form-filling meeting enjoyers entirely superfluous. Now whether that ends up being better in the long run....
Another factor is institute size, as you say. I see very little benefit to being part of a large institution, at least intellectually. Academics barely interact with their colleagues down the hall, let alone in different faculties. I don't see why they couldn't organize the way eg fitness centers or law partnerships do, in principle - small independent faculties of at most a dozen researchers. Their only admin would the the secretary. Who would work for them.
The best solution is to stop having state funded public universities, full stop. If you have private universities you can do whatever you want...
I agree. I'd like to see schools in general abolished. They're just a silly anachronism at this point. We could do things much more efficiently with self-education supplemented by private tutors. Competition would naturally root out the people who can't teach. Because of tenure, this type of culling is impossible right now.
Amen. To (slightly) paraphrase Adam Smith, the difference between public schools and private education in say dance or fencing is that students of the latter rarely fail to learn to dance or fence. The same can't be claimed by public schools.
In theory, the best thing to do is to align the incentives in such a way that the problem fixes itself incrementally without the need for a top-down regulatory structure that is both expensive and can be gamed, like how supply and demand shift in response to price or how the general unspoken civic norm "don't be a total jerk or else you'll get ostracized/smacked" work 98% of the time without needing a Price-Setting Bureau or Jerk Mitigation Department to mediate/dictate/police every transaction.
Yea, sadly once the bulk of the money comes from government, the bulk of the incentives are political. Going to a totally private system would align incentives much more closely to what you say, allowing lots of variation. So long as the money comes from one spot, that spot dictates what gets done :(
Nothing can overcome the moral hazards of mass forced schooling. If abolition isn't politically expedient, unrestricted school choice/money follows the child type of policies are second best, but I worry there are grifters waiting in the wings to soak up the lucre by molding the requirements to receive such funds to meet their own needs. Thanks for doing this work, highly informative and value to have some objective data demonstrating the costs of these caustic policies.
What portion of these jobs (and costs) are required to deal with legal and regulation issues which the government creates, versus the portion which are voluntary? This paper may have some helpful points from a methodological perspective:
If you didn't see this from last year, Arnold Kling has interesting ideas on setting up alternative educational structures which chime with some of the thoughts in the comments here:
That's a tricky question. I tended to leave out positions that were focused on e.g. Title IX requirements, except where it was pretty obvious that they also were engaged in the DEI aspect. As others have pointed out, however, DEI is in many ways a defense against the various discrimination laws, although I would say it has since metastasized and become its own end for those driving it.
Hah! You wish!
I agree that lack of engagement is going to be a serious blow to the system, but I fear that between the huge subsidies for higher ed. and the government requirements for degrees to hold many jobs, the system is going to keep grinding on. I think that until we vote to stop giving them free money and requiring people to buy their product to participate in a career they pretty much have the lock they need to go on.
There is a good possibility that many fields or just hiring managers will decide a college degree from the legacy schools just isn't worth anything, but at the same time the university system is going to be pushing for more credential requirements to be legislated. The growth in license requirements to work has been pretty shocking the last decade or so, so who knows which will happen faster.
I want to attend Marduk U now.
Until recently I'd have advocated to limit admin spending to say 5% of total payroll. Now that we have language models I suspect we can simply replace admin almost entirely, at least insofar as the small number of useful things they do (making travel arrangements and so forth), with a small number of trouble-shooters riding herd on the AIs.
As far as woke faculty go, here's a thought: cash prizes for recording the most outrageous lecture theatre misbehaviour. Make naming and shaming the bastards fun and profitable. There could also be prizes for the sickest burn during a classroom discussion. Getting $10k for making Mx. Wokerbutt turn red with apoplexy would take the sting out of the F she gives you out of spite.
Oh man... I LOVE that idea! That would make an awards show worth watching :D
More seriously, there is probably good justification for a fair few administrators at a university. Someone needs to ride herd on students, do the accounts, keep track of who works there, librarians, lots of random crap. The size of the organization will drive a higher percentage of administrators as well (which is a good reason to not have larger organizations!) so some big state schools are going to have more than small liberal arts colleges. You aren't wrong though that many functions are just pointless; hell, I always had to arrange for my own travel, for instance. Many admin. roles are also good jobs for students, giving them some experience and resume lines at low cost the university.
I don't really know what value many of the very high pay positions, presidents and the like, are to a school, but it might be pretty high. I know a few presidents that really screw up schools, so it seems like a bad one at least is a big penalty. You also have the problem with athletic departments being really expensive and often a money sink, and being entirely beside the point of universities.
I might be talking myself into agreeing with a 5% number, but I could see 20% too. Definitely not 50%+ though, which seems to be where most schools are going.
I read somewhere that Stanford now has as many admin as students, so, yeah.
Honestly though I think AI is going to make a lot of these form-filling meeting enjoyers entirely superfluous. Now whether that ends up being better in the long run....
Another factor is institute size, as you say. I see very little benefit to being part of a large institution, at least intellectually. Academics barely interact with their colleagues down the hall, let alone in different faculties. I don't see why they couldn't organize the way eg fitness centers or law partnerships do, in principle - small independent faculties of at most a dozen researchers. Their only admin would the the secretary. Who would work for them.
You might both like this:
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/01/30/is-chatgpt-better-at-churning-out-woke-gobbledegook-than-university-edi-officers/
The best solution is to stop having state funded public universities, full stop. If you have private universities you can do whatever you want...
I agree. I'd like to see schools in general abolished. They're just a silly anachronism at this point. We could do things much more efficiently with self-education supplemented by private tutors. Competition would naturally root out the people who can't teach. Because of tenure, this type of culling is impossible right now.
Amen. To (slightly) paraphrase Adam Smith, the difference between public schools and private education in say dance or fencing is that students of the latter rarely fail to learn to dance or fence. The same can't be claimed by public schools.
In theory, the best thing to do is to align the incentives in such a way that the problem fixes itself incrementally without the need for a top-down regulatory structure that is both expensive and can be gamed, like how supply and demand shift in response to price or how the general unspoken civic norm "don't be a total jerk or else you'll get ostracized/smacked" work 98% of the time without needing a Price-Setting Bureau or Jerk Mitigation Department to mediate/dictate/police every transaction.
In practice.....ummm.....hmmm.....?
Yea, sadly once the bulk of the money comes from government, the bulk of the incentives are political. Going to a totally private system would align incentives much more closely to what you say, allowing lots of variation. So long as the money comes from one spot, that spot dictates what gets done :(
Alas, this is how you get 'the only research done here is corporate funded research'.
Nothing can overcome the moral hazards of mass forced schooling. If abolition isn't politically expedient, unrestricted school choice/money follows the child type of policies are second best, but I worry there are grifters waiting in the wings to soak up the lucre by molding the requirements to receive such funds to meet their own needs. Thanks for doing this work, highly informative and value to have some objective data demonstrating the costs of these caustic policies.
What portion of these jobs (and costs) are required to deal with legal and regulation issues which the government creates, versus the portion which are voluntary? This paper may have some helpful points from a methodological perspective:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w30691
If you didn't see this from last year, Arnold Kling has interesting ideas on setting up alternative educational structures which chime with some of the thoughts in the comments here:
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/white-paper-for-network-based-higher
That's a tricky question. I tended to leave out positions that were focused on e.g. Title IX requirements, except where it was pretty obvious that they also were engaged in the DEI aspect. As others have pointed out, however, DEI is in many ways a defense against the various discrimination laws, although I would say it has since metastasized and become its own end for those driving it.