America's elite universities are bloated, complacent and illiberal(economist.com)
economist.com
America's elite universities are bloated, complacent and illiberal
https://www.economist.com/international/2024/03/04/americas-elite-universities-are-bloated-complacent-and-illiberal
44 comments
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I have a super liberal (politically, not in the classical sense) sister as a professor at a small school (non Ivy League). She talks all the time about the hyper bloated administration that literally does nothing except make things less efficient and collect a paycheck. It would seem that whether you're on the political left OR right (or somewhere in the middle), that we can all agree that there is a ton of bloat in these institutions and that teaching and research has taken a backseat to sports, never ending growth of campus facilities, and milking students of every last dollar.
I was under the impression that sports were always a huge deal, are you saying that's increased even more? The growth of administrative roles has been crazy, and behind the majority of the increased costs from what I've seen.
Sports are MUCH bigger now. Apparently some small private schools make nearly all their money from kids that are obsessed with sports, but too terrible to get a scholarship at a real school. So they have basketball teams with 100 players and kids pay through the nose to continue being part of a team even though they never even play. You can't make this stuff up.
I can also confirm this is true. Costs are sky high, there's accreditation corruption, and research is minimal if not fabricated.
The solution is to pull out gov funding and ban education loans across the board as predatory practices. New things can only begin when the old dies, and we are continually trying to life support a system that is so obviously dead.
The solution is to pull out gov funding and ban education loans across the board as predatory practices. New things can only begin when the old dies, and we are continually trying to life support a system that is so obviously dead.
Has any university manage to buck this trend?
Where would the market fit be for a university to buck the trend? Those who want to fund research will hire the researchers themselves in order to retain ownership and control. Those who want to learn for the sake of learning turn to the internet. There is no money to be made here.
The money is in selling sports and status. The students want to be milked as a care-free willingness to be milked is what establishes the status. An efficiently run university doesn't reflect well. It's the glitz and glamour that gets people's attention (especially employer attention).
The money is in selling sports and status. The students want to be milked as a care-free willingness to be milked is what establishes the status. An efficiently run university doesn't reflect well. It's the glitz and glamour that gets people's attention (especially employer attention).
> The students want to be milked as a care-free willingness to be milked is what establishes the status.
You're misrepresenting why people attend university. Academia is first and foremost a network and a means to gatekeeping. Not all of us are gifted. And not all upper class jobs can be filled by gifted people. Some of us just want a way to enter a class that they would otherwise have no way of entering.
At least it's like this in my part of the world, then again most of my countries universities aren't for profit.
You're misrepresenting why people attend university. Academia is first and foremost a network and a means to gatekeeping. Not all of us are gifted. And not all upper class jobs can be filled by gifted people. Some of us just want a way to enter a class that they would otherwise have no way of entering.
At least it's like this in my part of the world, then again most of my countries universities aren't for profit.
> Academia is first and foremost a network and a means to gatekeeping
Yes, exactly. The gatekeeping and networking are facilitated by it being absurdly expensive hobby. Nobody wants to network with some random nobody from the slums. They want to connect with people who come from wealth. The bloat works to keep the risk high, pushing away those who aren't in the right class.
Yes, exactly. The gatekeeping and networking are facilitated by it being absurdly expensive hobby. Nobody wants to network with some random nobody from the slums. They want to connect with people who come from wealth. The bloat works to keep the risk high, pushing away those who aren't in the right class.
Cal Tech comes to mind. Probably the only org left in the US doing this.
They sometimes fire a lot of administrators towards the end when on life support, but that's only after cutting back all the programs to where the university is pretty much dead anyway.
The increase in the number of administrators has also infected US healthcare and government agencies.
People talk a lot about the bloat at universities, but I think that they don’t often think about that bloat as being the rational response to a system that is increasingly pushing them to (a) provide collegiate credentialling to basically the entire US workforce and (b) operate the infrastructure of a small village. Yes administrative bloat is real, yes universities are opaque morasses of money and bureaucracy. They are also charged with the care of tens of thousands of young people; keeping them fed, providing medical services, transit, housing, therapy, IT support, and obviously education in advanced topics across the entire breadth of human knowledge. Does this require endless “Vice Provost of X” type bullshit jobs? No, but consider the amount of cruft at a private corporation of similar size and scope. In some ways this is simply what happens when organizations grow this big, IMO
edit: I didn't even mention that they also must maintain enormous research operations, some of them performing research that is literally the bleeding edge of human knowledge. Like imagine trying to helm a corporation that is simultaneously invested in multi-billion dollar government grants for deep-tech R&D, alongside a portfolio of ~15 hotels, a minor-league football team, an urgent care, a landscaping company, and something like 10-20 high schools of students. Not to mention libraries, museums, gyms, food, etc. And god help you if your campus is more than 50 years old, because the cost of maintaining all those buildings are going to be insane. If you were able to do this all without bloat or graft honestly I think you'd a generational genius in management.
edit: I didn't even mention that they also must maintain enormous research operations, some of them performing research that is literally the bleeding edge of human knowledge. Like imagine trying to helm a corporation that is simultaneously invested in multi-billion dollar government grants for deep-tech R&D, alongside a portfolio of ~15 hotels, a minor-league football team, an urgent care, a landscaping company, and something like 10-20 high schools of students. Not to mention libraries, museums, gyms, food, etc. And god help you if your campus is more than 50 years old, because the cost of maintaining all those buildings are going to be insane. If you were able to do this all without bloat or graft honestly I think you'd a generational genius in management.
> ...also charged with the care of tens of thousands of young people; keeping them fed, providing medical services, transit, housing, therapy...
This is an all-too-valid point, especially for "young people" who really are not ready to be independent adults.
If Chris graduates from high school, gets a 3/4-time job working at Pete's Pizza Parlor, rents a little apartment to live in, and starts taking old-fashioned correspondence courses from Snail Mail University - then there is near-zero social or legal expectation that Chris' landlord, or his boss Pete, or SMU will provide Chris with much anything in the way of baby-sitting, peer advisors, medical coverage, mental health services, recreational facilities, parallel justice systems, etc., etc.
Vs. if Chris' twin sibling Pat graduates from high school and goes to Big State University...and then has a major mental health crisis? There might be an ultra-luxury resort, somewhere on this planet, which actually provides the level of mental health service which seems to be expected of any university. Might.
This is an all-too-valid point, especially for "young people" who really are not ready to be independent adults.
If Chris graduates from high school, gets a 3/4-time job working at Pete's Pizza Parlor, rents a little apartment to live in, and starts taking old-fashioned correspondence courses from Snail Mail University - then there is near-zero social or legal expectation that Chris' landlord, or his boss Pete, or SMU will provide Chris with much anything in the way of baby-sitting, peer advisors, medical coverage, mental health services, recreational facilities, parallel justice systems, etc., etc.
Vs. if Chris' twin sibling Pat graduates from high school and goes to Big State University...and then has a major mental health crisis? There might be an ultra-luxury resort, somewhere on this planet, which actually provides the level of mental health service which seems to be expected of any university. Might.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Is this a US specific problem? Most universities where I live provide free mental health service's through the government, though it's a more limited than real therapy.
hmmm.... u.s. government and 'mental health' you say?
> They are also charged with the care of tens of thousands of young people; keeping them fed, providing medical services, transit, housing, therapy, IT support, and obviously education in advanced topics across the entire breadth of human knowledge.
No, they are not. They just have access to unlimited taxpayer money in the form of unlimited student loans. Admin gets a cut of this, so obviously the more student loan money flowing through the school, the bigger the cut.
Even 20 years ago, my college required people living in the dorms to buy a certain minimum number of meals at $20 per shitty defrosted Aramark/Sodexo meal or more. And this was in NYC, I could have walked 2min in any direction out and gotten a much more nutritious and better tasting meal for $5 to $10 back in those days.
The root cause of the problem always has and will be the tap of unlimited taxpayer money. But with the benefit of tying it to a young person’s credit, so they keep their heads down and be good little worker bees.
No, they are not. They just have access to unlimited taxpayer money in the form of unlimited student loans. Admin gets a cut of this, so obviously the more student loan money flowing through the school, the bigger the cut.
Even 20 years ago, my college required people living in the dorms to buy a certain minimum number of meals at $20 per shitty defrosted Aramark/Sodexo meal or more. And this was in NYC, I could have walked 2min in any direction out and gotten a much more nutritious and better tasting meal for $5 to $10 back in those days.
The root cause of the problem always has and will be the tap of unlimited taxpayer money. But with the benefit of tying it to a young person’s credit, so they keep their heads down and be good little worker bees.
I mean I don’t disagree that the way we finance higher ed has led to this outcome, but also there absolutely is the demand from both state governments as well as state citizens to provide this level of service. I agree that we should not be coercing 18 year olds into 30-year loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we also have decided that everyone should go to college and that college should “look like” what everyone remembers private college being like in the 70s. The result of those decisions is the system we have now. Taking hatchets to public university budgets is downstream of the problem so long as there's a crush of people who demanding that their children can have "a college experience"; we need to refresh both the purpose and form factor of higher ed from the beginning
> They are also charged with the care of tens of thousands of young people; keeping them fed, providing medical services, transit, housing, therapy, IT support
Yes. The point is they shouldn't be.
Yes. The point is they shouldn't be.
Ok sure I'm on board with it. Now convince the millions of students who vote with their wallets to stop attending these all-inclusive campuses.
If someone offered tuition at half the cost without those services, I bet plenty would vote for that with their wallets. Unfortunately, bureaucrats don't typically have that kind of courage.
Are you just not familiar with the concept of a community college or what? I’m only lightly familiar with higher ed and even at this distance the problem is clearly not that nobody’s been “daring” enough to try and float a slimmed down higher education offering.
These exist. They're community colleges or correspondence courses. The problem is that a university education is a luxury good: costing less makes it worth less, because more people have access to it. So all the students who are either gifted or well-connected go to the top tier universities, the slightly less so the second tier, allll the way down, until you reach your budget options. Since the value of the institution is largely dictated by the quality of the students it can attract, they end up offering a much worse value prospect than those more expensive institutions.
A university is often run by an administrative bureaucracy and the first rule of any bureaucracy is survival, followed by expansion, and accumulation of wealth. Combined with workplace protections against reducing employees through redundancy and you have a self perpetuating, bloated system.
Um, yes? Universities are, essentially, very feudal institutions.
And the ever-more-expensive-and-prestigious-and-diamond-encrusted competition between the "top" universities looks very much like the history of the House of Bourbon.
Which proved unsustainable - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
And the ever-more-expensive-and-prestigious-and-diamond-encrusted competition between the "top" universities looks very much like the history of the House of Bourbon.
Which proved unsustainable - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
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less 1.txtRestricting student loans for non stem degrees, student visas, and eliminating the non-profit status of higher ed institutions would go a long to reigning in the fat and excessiveness of tuition.
Look at the salaries of college admins and board of trustees. Harvard pays their president over $1million one year. It's gone beyond ridiculous.
Look at the salaries of college admins and board of trustees. Harvard pays their president over $1million one year. It's gone beyond ridiculous.
> Harvard pays their president over $1million one year.
This is simply the free market though. Consider that, for its top executive roles, Harvard is recruiting people who are coming from or comparing the offer to C-suite positions. Harvard's endowment is $36 billion USD, and it takes in like $6 billion annually. It is the scale of a Fortune 500, where executive salaries are in the tens of millions. Like it or not, if you want to pull these top-tier executives to manage your Fortune 500-scale operation, this is what you need to compete against. You may think that's an oversized valuation given what they actually do (and I don't disagree), but from the perspective of the institution this is simply doing business. The only other option is admitting that all executives everywhere are massively overpaid, but good luck getting the US leadership class to acknowledge that one.
This is simply the free market though. Consider that, for its top executive roles, Harvard is recruiting people who are coming from or comparing the offer to C-suite positions. Harvard's endowment is $36 billion USD, and it takes in like $6 billion annually. It is the scale of a Fortune 500, where executive salaries are in the tens of millions. Like it or not, if you want to pull these top-tier executives to manage your Fortune 500-scale operation, this is what you need to compete against. You may think that's an oversized valuation given what they actually do (and I don't disagree), but from the perspective of the institution this is simply doing business. The only other option is admitting that all executives everywhere are massively overpaid, but good luck getting the US leadership class to acknowledge that one.
Those administrators and presidents are not top tier business executives but are part of an insestuous community of higher education professionals whose only credentis are that they managed other departments within a college.
Maybe if they came from industry their skills can be argued but the majority of those administrators don't have any experience outside of academia.
Maybe if they came from industry their skills can be argued but the majority of those administrators don't have any experience outside of academia.
> Maybe if they came from industry their skills can be argued but the majority of those administrators don't have any experience outside of academia.
So you're annoyed that the highly paid professionals have lots of experience in doing the thing they are paid to do? I suppose if one starts from the premise that all higher ed admin are incompetent by nature, or that managing a unit within a university requires no skill, then I can understand your conclusion, but to be honest I think you're kind of begging the question. The simple fact is that these are massive institutions, and running them is complicated and expensive. Again, if you compare the salary of the president of Harvard to a private organization of similar scale and wealth it's like a 10x difference. It's not clear to me why a university being a non-profit suddenly downgrades the skill required to keep it running.
So you're annoyed that the highly paid professionals have lots of experience in doing the thing they are paid to do? I suppose if one starts from the premise that all higher ed admin are incompetent by nature, or that managing a unit within a university requires no skill, then I can understand your conclusion, but to be honest I think you're kind of begging the question. The simple fact is that these are massive institutions, and running them is complicated and expensive. Again, if you compare the salary of the president of Harvard to a private organization of similar scale and wealth it's like a 10x difference. It's not clear to me why a university being a non-profit suddenly downgrades the skill required to keep it running.
That's the point, these institutions have been bloated from years of excessively raised tuition costs and those over paid professionals don't know what to do.
Would those same over paid administrators manage to right their ships if the fat disappeared?
This happened at my alma mater which is a private college in New York during the pandemic. They had a massive hole in revenue and their over paid president was essentially kicked out. The diversity hire they brought in struggled just as much and the school is still hemorrhaging money. The presidents salary was $350k for BFE new York.
We're a few years from the pandemic and now they're dealing with reduced enrollment thanks to excessive tuition costs and declining alumni donations.
Harvard and other big institutions have intertia and status to float by. A lot of these other schools? Not so much.
Trim the fat and higher Ed corrects itself by flushing the grifters out .
Would those same over paid administrators manage to right their ships if the fat disappeared?
This happened at my alma mater which is a private college in New York during the pandemic. They had a massive hole in revenue and their over paid president was essentially kicked out. The diversity hire they brought in struggled just as much and the school is still hemorrhaging money. The presidents salary was $350k for BFE new York.
We're a few years from the pandemic and now they're dealing with reduced enrollment thanks to excessive tuition costs and declining alumni donations.
Harvard and other big institutions have intertia and status to float by. A lot of these other schools? Not so much.
Trim the fat and higher Ed corrects itself by flushing the grifters out .
International students often end up subsidizing US students. Restricting student visas might end up actually increasing tuition.
Also, I disagree that $1m/year for the president of Harvard is ridiculous. That's less than the CEOs of many regional hospital systems are paid, and I think the impact of Harvard is much greater.
With you on restricting student loans for non-STEM programs, though.
Also, I disagree that $1m/year for the president of Harvard is ridiculous. That's less than the CEOs of many regional hospital systems are paid, and I think the impact of Harvard is much greater.
With you on restricting student loans for non-STEM programs, though.
What does not make sense is we let foreigners invest $500k to buy a green card and ability to live in the US.
But a young, potentially productive and educated student who would ostensibly be looking to start a family and make more productive and more patriotic Americans, who has sunk a couple hundred thousand dollars into our higher education institutions still has to go through the gauntlet to earn the right to live in the US.
But a young, potentially productive and educated student who would ostensibly be looking to start a family and make more productive and more patriotic Americans, who has sunk a couple hundred thousand dollars into our higher education institutions still has to go through the gauntlet to earn the right to live in the US.
> Harvard pays their president over $1million one year. It's gone beyond ridiculous.
Not really. There are software developers in Cambridge, MA making $300-$400K a year.
The problem is not the salary of individual administrators, but the bloated number of them.
Not really. There are software developers in Cambridge, MA making $300-$400K a year.
The problem is not the salary of individual administrators, but the bloated number of them.
Those software developers actually provide value.
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This new, "it's because of liberals, groupthink, wokes" tone is really desacralizing the Economist image.
I disagree, I think this was a well researched and thorough accounting of a concerning trend.
Sometimes the opinions and facts provided challenge our worldview, but provide additional information and viewpoints to give us a more complete picture.
Sometimes the opinions and facts provided challenge our worldview, but provide additional information and viewpoints to give us a more complete picture.
Same - this is the kind of article that would have been easy to write in a lazy finger pointing way, but it's clear they took pains to justify their arguments and IMO didn't fall into the anti-work reactionary trap.
They seem to have shifted to cater to a more American audience at some point.