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0 pointsreaperducer1y ago0 comments

Does anyone know what all these administrators do?

Yes. You don't. But other people do.

I don’t think higher education has been increasingly regulated for decades

Every industry has. Education more than most.

0 comments

The thing though, is that they actually are unnecessary.

We don't have these guys here in Sweden, and our university education costs less per head than highschool education. The Russians don't have these guys, and they even have the Indepedent University of Moscow, which is basically a bunch of mathematicians that let anybody who passes three of their courses take the rest and get a degree.

This whole thing where both they and we and some other people let anybody who does well enough on the exams in is also very important, because it means that you aren't forced to jump through hoops to get accepted, and this signals something to people-- that university education isn't about hoop jumping or about satisfying political criteria, and this signals something about the attitude of the state to its citizens which is really important at least to me.

kelnos1y ago

Sure, but this is the US we're talking about, and the regulatory environment is of course different in the US than in Sweden or Russia.

You can argue that the US's regulations are dumb and shouldn't exist, but that doesn't change the fact that they do exist, and that universities need to retain staff that can ensure compliance.

I don't know if the huge amount of admin jobs at US universities today is actually necessary, but it's plausible that universities in one country might need more admin staff than universities in another.

akoboldfrying1y ago

>Yes. You don't. But other people do.

This assertion is so much more compelling than a couple of examples would have been

stevenbedrick1y ago

Ok, I’ll bite. My university has a team of experts to help students with academic writing. Another that helps us figure out how best to organize our classes in the online LMS that we use for distance education, and to ensure that we all are following a similar structure so as to not drive our students insane. Another team that helps support grad students on visas with logistics around immigration law and what-not. We have an office that helps with patents and technology transfer. Another team that helps with data repositories and management plans. We have a whole research computing office that runs our hpc team and deals with random IT things that scientists are always thinking up. Another that runs our IRB and helps us with that whole process. Another that helps us handle data use agreements so we can share data between institutions while staying compliant with relevant laws and what-not. We have an office that deals with contracts and legal agreements so I don’t have to figure out whether a certain clause in a funding agreement makes sense or not. And we have a whole team that helps me with budgets and financial analysis of my grants and research projects to make sure that my staff don’t suddenly find themselves unemployed in the middle of a grant year because I overspent or didn’t understand that certain kinds of expenses weren’t allowed. This is just off the top of my head and includes who I’ve worked with in the last month or two; I didn’t even get into the animal techs, the facilities folks, etc etc.

These are all people who are at extreme risk of losing their jobs in the next weeks and months because of the chaos happening with NIH funding, and I can say with certainty that I as a scientist and an educator am far more effective because I have these professionals working with me. This is what our indirects cover and it is absolutely crucial.

dh20221y ago

Admin Support for distance education and foreign students would scale with growth of the number of students. And somehow admin growth rate is double the growth rate of student body.

The rest of your examples explain why: regulation and maybe some unnecessary activities? I do not know who you are but seriously: do you need “a whole team” for your budget needs? How big is your budget? In my previous financial analyst role I (i.e one person) supported the accounting and financial needs for about 30 people (5 different teams, total spend including salaries, outside contracts and travel about $15 million/year). All that done in Excel and with plenty of time to spare. My wife is a part time accountant and she supports about 10 consultants with all their accounting needs: payroll, sending and tracking invoices, taxes (federal + state+city), cash reconciliation, etc…

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skywhopper1y ago

There are thousands of different jobs they could have. You can’t think of any work that might happen at a university?

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