I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events.
It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists.
There’s an admin costs problem in this country. There’s no sufficient governance or oversight in controlling university spending. This is even a public university and it’s just bizarre that they can make up positions that shouldn’t even exist.
The incentive to have a alumni department to increase donations clearly isn’t in the best interests of society.
[1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
The money goes to the college administrators. They're major bureaucracies that plague and control universities money supply and more or less dictate universities' policies.
The money goes to the athletics and the infrastructure. (Not in the sense of "the best infrastructure money can buy", sadly; no, it's more like "raise $300 million to build this new dorm and let the richest donor put their name on it, then spend about 30% of what it needs for maintenance for the next 30 years...and then spend 5x the amount we would've had to if we'd just maintained it in remediation and renovations".)
Athletics for most schools are a net profit center, even for the #100 football program. The smaller schools aren't spending nearly so much on athletics as the schools with football programs.
Most of these requirements independently make sense, but the sum impact weighs down universities and drives up cost.
The regulations provide the justification for the jobs program needed to soak up the excess supply of non-trade graduates generated by overenthusiastic student loan policy.
They are mostly not optional if you want to receive federal funding. There are some small colleges that are totally private, do not take government funds, and so don't have to implement and administer many government regulations.
My anecdote wasn’t intended as evidence.
But there’s definitely a problem. You can look at official sources [0] for evidence showing that admin expenses are 21% at public, four year schools.
I found this article while looking for the official stats [1] that claims the average university in the US has 45 people in DEI. DEI is very important, I think, but 45 employees boggles the mind and seems to be more of a symptom of runaway costs and lack of controls that would allow for so many admin staff on a single topic.
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75 [1] https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/administrative...
Further when the engineering firm you started after graduation with some of your classmates wines a National science award. Getting that profiled in the alumni newsletter could be unlocking a range of oppprtunities for your firm from grant funder interest to new commercialisation opportunity, all coming out of the alumni network.
Just cause the work is quiet doesn’t mean it’s pointless.
I’m a big fan of quiet work, but this is pointless. It’s not pointless because it’s quiet. It’s pointless because it has minimal to no positive impact.
Or it might not.
Thats the root of the problem. The administrators are the people coming up with the metrics and arguments to justify their own existence.
I’m sure many of them believe they’re making a positive contribution, and the situation is more complex and tragic than just “these are the baddies” type arguments suggest, but there’s still an accountability problem that needs to be reckoned with.
This kind of thing would be like saying your typical account manager's job is surreal and perhaps in some cases that might be true :-)
