Yale Now Has More Administrators Than Faculty
“In 2018, The Chronicle of Higher Education found that Yale had the highest manager-to-student ratio of any Ivy League university”
The term ‘organizational bloat’ comes to mind here. What exactly do all these administrators do?
The Yale Daily News reports:
A “proliferation of administrators”: faculty reflect on two decades of rapid expansion
Over the last two decades, the number of managerial and professional staff that Yale employs has risen three times faster than the undergraduate student body, according to University financial reports. The group’s 44.7 percent expansion since 2003 has had detrimental effects on faculty, students and tuition, according to eight faculty members.
In 2003, when 5,307 undergraduate students studied on campus, the University employed 3,500 administrators and managers. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on student enrollment, only 600 more students were living and studying at Yale, yet the number of administrators had risen by more than 1,500 — a nearly 45 percent hike. In 2018, The Chronicle of Higher Education found that Yale had the highest manager-to-student ratio of any Ivy League university, and the fifth highest in the nation among four-year private colleges.
According to eight members of the Yale faculty, this administration size imposes unnecessary costs, interferes with students’ lives and faculty’s teaching, spreads the burden of leadership and adds excessive regulation. By contrast, administrators noted much of this increase can be attributed to growing numbers of medical staff, and that the University has proportionally increased its faculty size.
“I had remarked to President Salovey on his inauguration that I thought the best thing he could do for Yale would be to abolish one deanship or vice presidency every year of what I hoped would be a long tenure in that position,” professor of English Leslie Brisman wrote in an email to the News. “Instead, it has seemed to me that he has created one upper level administrative position a month.”…
Lauren Noble, the founder and executive director of the William F. Buckley Jr. program at Yale, pointed to the fact that the number of Yale’s administrators today exceeds the number of faculty — 5,066 compared to 4,937 — which “raises important questions about the university’s allocation of resources,” she said. “It’s unclear how such a significant increase advances Yale’s mission.”
At Yale there is now a 1:1 ratio of undergraduate students to administrators. Mind-boggling. https://t.co/TL5KFFLobh
— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) November 10, 2021
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Comments
Throughout my 50 years in academia, one principle has always been true: Administrators multiply like rabbits. Administrators are the ones who make the decisions on how many people they need and whom to hire. Those same administrators enhance their base and their salaries by having more administrators under them.
Then add in all the new excuses: We need a Vice President for Diversity, and at least four Asst VP’s. And another Associate Dean for Title IX. And when you add all these grievance administrators, they have to do things to make it seem like they’re necessary and productive. That’s when they really gum up the works.
The VP for Diversity needs to schedule mandatory Diversity Training emphasizing CRT for students, faculty, staff, and other administrators. Then s/he needs to appoint assistants to sit in on every faculty hiring committee and make sure that race and sex are the most important criteria for each faculty hire.
The Title IX administrator has to schedule mandatory “sexual misconduct” training for students, faculty, staff, and other administrators. Then she needs to set up the kangaroo courts to make sure that every accusation results in a “guilty” verdict: Both the actual sexual assaults, plus the ex-girlfriends who are mad at their ex-boyfriends, plus the ones who imagine the “assaults”.
There also has to be an administrator to investigate all the Bias Incident Reports and write the apologies for the offenders to prostrate themselves and read. This administrator will probably also have the responsibility for prosecuting and persecuting any horrible miscreants who “misgender” the gender-confused people.
The list goes on and on. Anyone still wondering why tuitions have increased at an astonishing rate?
It looks like it’s time to apply some serious Progressive ideas and re-imagine a comprehensive solution and mandate a meaningful change in the way our universities are run.
Salovey has been a disaster. But not in his opinion; he’s accomplished the sort of change he believes in.