Today’s newsflash from Inside Higher Ed is an article titled “Dollars and Sense” (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/25/budgeting). This article makes a virtue out of a mantra of “no margin, no mission.”
This piece of news comes less than a week after the Goldwater Institute published its study that laid the burden of rising university budgets at the feet of expanding administration (http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/08/17/20100817collegeadministration0817.html).
How do we reconcile the two?
PASSHE has worked with the Delta Project cited in IHE piece. It will be interesting to see how much effect that association has on managerial growth — from 2000 to 2008 (the last numbers I have in hand), PASSHE management grew almost 17%. Faculty FTE growth was close to 5. While setting enrollment records each year (student growth in these years was almost 15%).
Yet this article puts the onus on programs. As did this year’s (and still continuing) PASSHE program review (aka “low enrolled programs”).
Often, as we’ve seen at Kutztown over retrenchment, and other places (I know it recently was tried at IUP) over summer school, administration has shoved the burden of paying for administration onto classes and programs. One could call it a form of taxation without representation: faculty don’t get to decide on whether to hire another associate vice president, but we have to add a few to our programs, or classes, to pay for that position.
Are we in the business of employing administrators?
— Steve