Bloated College Bureaucracies, Absurd Salaries, Higher Fees
November 15th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
J. Paul Robinson, chairman of Purdue University’s faculty senate, strode through the halls of a 10- story concrete-and-glass administrative tower.
“I have no idea what these people do,” said Robinson, waving his hand across a row of offices, his voice rising.
The 59-year-old professor of biomedical engineering is leading a faculty revolt against bureaucratic bloat at the public university in Indiana. In the past decade, the number of administrative employees jumped 54 percent, almost eight times the growth of tenured and tenure-track faculty.
Purdue has a $313,000-a-year acting provost and six vice and associate vice provosts, including a $198,000 chief diversity officer. It employs 16 deans and 11 vice presidents, among them a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief.
Administrative costs on college campuses are soaring, crowding out instruction at a time of skyrocketing tuition and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans. At Purdue and other U.S. college campuses, bureaucratic growth is pitting professors against administrators and sparking complaints that tight budgets could be spent more efficiently.
I’ve personally witnessed this in public universities. One of most frustrating things as a student was seeing students be charged with new, obscure fees every year, coupled with a rising cost of inflation and loan rates in tandem with a stagnation of faculty hiring and wages.
It pains me when the media at large blame the dire straits of public finances on public employees and their pensions when by and large teachers, sanitation workers, firemen, police, etc. make less than or near median income level as public employees and receive a comparable pension and health care benefit package while administrators in government and in universities make ten times the median income or more in some cases and end life with pensions multiplied by that. These people are the one responsible for rising costs and bureaucratic bloat.
At public universities in the western United States Presidents and high-level administrators make six figure salaries and benefits while also living in houses paid for by the students and public taxpayers. Now THAT is welfare!