[HN Gopher] Administrators Have Seized the Ivory Tower
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Administrators Have Seized the Ivory Tower
Author : jseliger
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-12-04 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jamesgmartin.center)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jamesgmartin.center)
| cycomanic wrote:
| The disconnect between uni administrators and the academics on
| the ground is growing at a staggering pace. One example is that I
| know of several universities were salary increases for academics
| have been capped to 1-2% due to the "hard economic times", while
| the vice chancellors/presidents ... received salary increases
| above 8% (and above 20% in at least one case).
|
| At the same time most academics will attest that the requirements
| that they have to fulfill are consistently going up, for example
| when computer systems are being modernized e.g. purchasing
| systems, it's very obvious that the requirements are made to
| minimize the work of the administration, which typically
| increases the workload of academics.
| another_story wrote:
| Any bureaucracy seems to tend towards making the system of
| bureaucracy more efficient for those managing it, not those
| working under it.
|
| Schools, K through university, all suffer from this.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| One of the worst parts of this is that the bureaucrats in
| school systems are so smug about it. They go yelling
| "academic freedom" when you threaten to cut their job, while
| clamping down on the "acceptable" fields of study for
| faculty. These administrators are the real threats to
| academic freedom.
|
| That said, I think the entire US university system needs a
| rethink, so I'm not upset that these bureaucrats are
| accelerating the process of burning it to the ground.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| People, especially well educated people in affluent areas, are
| living longer and the cost of their healthcare is skyrocketing.
| Unless you are next in line to the throne of a specifically
| designated tenured spot, you're fucked. You could cure cancer
| and it doesn't matter, actually that would literally make the
| problem worse.
|
| Also, read the Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I think a distinction should be made between administrations on
| the ground (we had an incredible secretary of graduate studies
| who made everyone's life much easier) and those who work for
| the executive office and act to lower the "cost" of running a
| University while not actually making any processes more
| efficient.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Context: The James G Martin Center is a small conservative think
| tank funded by the Pope Foundation. They routinely call for
| budget cuts to the UNC system.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Martin_Center_for_A...
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Pope_Foundation
|
| University administration is a juicy target and I'm certainly not
| defending them wholesale. But the article's written by rich
| people who want to lower state taxes.
| [deleted]
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > But the article's written by rich people who want to lower
| state taxes.
|
| Yes? Are you saying that's bad? Because it would have made
| sense if you'd argued that they just want to cut costs in a way
| that won't work or that will have outsized problems associated
| with it, but it kind of sounds like you're complaining about a
| good thing.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
|
| Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad
| hominem (Latin for 'argument to the person'), refers to several
| types of arguments, most of which are fallacious.
|
| Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the
| speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute
| of the person making an argument rather than addressing the
| substance of the argument itself.
| jonstewart wrote:
| HNers need get a grip on what's ad hominem and what isn't. I
| didn't say their mothers were hamsters. There are oodles of
| think tanks and institutes, many have a particular policy
| agenda, and it's useful to consider that before deciding
| whether to spend precious attention on an article from one.
| [deleted]
| Siddarth1977 wrote:
| This isn't "context" this is literally the definition of an ad
| hominem attack. "Attacking a person's character or motivations
| rather than a position or argument"
|
| If universities have a massive, bloated and overly expensive
| legion of administrators, does it matter if the person pointing
| that out is doing so because they want to reduce the burden on
| students who are forced to take out massive loans or to reduce
| the burden on the taxpayers who ultimately pay those loans when
| the government "forgives" them?
| rektide wrote:
| Ad hominem is a problem when you are arguing with people who
| argue in good faith & who can demonstrate unbiased
| willingness to engage in open discussion, who can hold &
| respect a broad set of interests when they argue.
|
| But when the person you are arguing with has a permanent bent
| that will distort & warp every argument, it's just a defense
| of open society to call the person out on that bias, on their
| forever grinding that axe.
|
| This mention was an excellent & valuable warning to me. That
| it happens to resemble an attack to some people, is, in my
| view, far secondary to the broad public good this post
| served.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Ad hominem is a problem when you are arguing with people
| who argue in good faith & who can demonstrate unbiased
| willingness to engage in open discussion, who can hold &
| respect a broad set of interests when they argue.
|
| No, this is changing your standards of logic to support
| intolerance. You don't get to decide people's motivations
| against their will, or accuse them of bad faith without an
| example of the display of that bad faith.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Yes. Because they aren't attacking bloated bureaucracies that
| have been sufficiently captured and privatised, and the
| offered solutions might be subtly biased. It's only an ad
| hominem if after using the heuristic and critically checking
| any hidden bullshit the personal bias of the interlocuteur
| you stick to your hostility even if you don't find anything.
| Otherwise it's just context that helps you think
| incone123 wrote:
| Administrations are entirely responsible for making themselves
| a juicy target. If nobody from the centre ground is going to do
| anything about that then it falls to the political extremes
| (and I've seen much the same criticism coming from the left
| too)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| sweeping social evaluations like this one have left me cold these
| days -- too many particulars in this messy world today. Instead
| of finding a perpetrator social class with some catchy acronym,
| why not try factual data?
|
| The top administrator payroll at a decent-sized school has been
| described recently as more like a mafia system -- outsiders are
| plentiful and there are things for them to do with some vague
| promise that they might prosper for it. Insiders are worked hard
| and at the lowest levels, get worse treatment than most
| outsiders. Once the promotional levels get into the picture,
| ruthless and relentless infighting not visible to other insiders
| or outsiders, culls the herd that wants to rise to the top; most
| fail or tire of the fight.
|
| Then, apex roles like top administrator, or Head Coach for a
| profitable sports team, make old-world style agreements with many
| multiples of income of their nearest rival, signalling dominance,
| and serving as a goalpost for achievement supposedly available to
| "anyone."
|
| There are thousands of situations like this across wealthy
| nations, hidden behind the middle class success they breed on. It
| is even extolled as a virtue among the predatory capitalists as
| "competition".
|
| This state of affairs is a social default - not some political
| development of our times. This is ancient as societies go.. it is
| sometimes startling to see it starkly. I suspect that more than
| half of higher education by numbers are failing financially right
| now, while some small number of institutions echo the money-
| printing economy numbers of the last fifteen years.
| tylermenezes wrote:
| I'm not sure why they attributed this in part to pressure for
| job-related skills.
|
| Everyone I've talked to who's concerned about that has been a
| professor at a community college (or other affordable school).
| shrubble wrote:
| The second image of the blog post (not mine) sums up a lot of my
| views about the bureaucratic lifecycle we are seeing:
|
| https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12...
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Seems like another expression of Pournelle's Iron Law of
| Bureaucracy [1]. It's funny how everyone keeps seeing the same
| phenomena.
|
| https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Academia is an _incredible_ industry to be in if you are a rent
| seeker.
|
| Universities' top lines (revenue) consist of a few major areas:
| beyond tuition and any state aid (for state schools), research
| grants are a huge source of funding. Most of that comes from the
| federal government.
|
| Most research grants have an itemized budget and, alongside the
| itemized budget, "indirect costs" that are often between 30-60%
| of the direct budget. Schools do, of course, have indirect costs
| associated with conducting research, such as facilities and
| actual administration (secretarial work, accountants, etc.). But
| these costs are not itemized and included in research grant
| budgets! It's just a percentage of the research budget.
|
| Naturally, this both incentivizes institutions to maximize the
| size of the research budget and creates a large pool of
| nebulously-allocated money for rent seekers to try to socially
| capture.
|
| At this point, I can't help but think that the federal agencies
| that write grants are somewhat complicit in this process.
| cxf12 wrote:
| A trite example, but your HOA dues are likely going up not
| because the cost of maintaining common areas has increased that
| much, but your HOA management and legal salaries have been
| adjusted for "cost of living."
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| As a 501(c)(3) Harvard (and most universities) have to file a
| Form 990 with the IRS, which anyone can read. Here's theirs from
| 2021: [1]
|
| it's 373 pages and not (easily) searchable. Go crazy.
|
| [1]
| https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/042103580_202106_990_...
| enasterosophes wrote:
| Similar to Halffman & Radder's 2015 Academic Manifesto:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468800/
|
| "The university has been occupied - not by students demanding a
| say (as in the 1960s), but this time by the many-headed Wolf of
| management. The Wolf has colonised academia with a mercenary army
| of professional administrators, armed with spreadsheets, output
| indicators and audit procedures, loudly accompanied by the
| Efficiency and Excellence March."
| softwaredoug wrote:
| In my university town, there's significant construction
| happening. to ensure every faculty member has office space.
|
| Meanwhile, many research faculty work remotely. Lower level staff
| has been hired from all over the state and the country.
|
| And the cost of housing astronomical. The city needs whole
| neighborhoods to keep up with demand.
|
| Eventually reality will catch up. But I don't see a lot of
| forward thinking right now.
| greesil wrote:
| This article is probably full of nuanced observations but lost me
| at "deep state". Ugggh.
| pokstad wrote:
| The term "deep state" has become sullied in recent years. What
| are your thoughts on Eisenhower's speech about the Military
| Industrial Complex? Whether by conspiracy or out in the open,
| there are a number of actors inside large institutions that
| actively try to derail the original mission of said institution
| in the pursuit of their own survival.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| You might prefer some of the discussions on HN from similar
| articles[^1]. I will say, this is nice in the sense that it's
| focusing on public universities, rather than elite privates.
|
| [^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496246 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33831936
| magigift wrote:
| Even though it has become a political term the "deep state"
| does exist and is a useful concept to think about when
| evaluating bureaucracies.
|
| These are people long tenured in their jobs who know how to
| fast track or slow walk policy. Depending largely on their
| politics and mission they can steer departments the way they
| want almost regardless of the new boss or outside influence.
|
| Makes a lot of sense to me that they would also exist in
| universities.
| Ztynovovk wrote:
| Not a single linked citation in the entire article aside from
| a book reference.
|
| If you are going to talk about the "deep state" and not cite
| anything at all you deserve a good eye roll.
|
| Any institution that has "renewal" in their name is
| ideologically driven.
| defrost wrote:
| Yep.
|
| There is a valid point to made about administrative bloat
| eventually bogging down any organisation | domain unless
| actively worked against ... but the point missed here is that
| hair clogs the drains of any regime regardless of whether it is
| obscured by "Progressive" or "Capitalist" dogma.
|
| They article raises many good points, and then pivots into an
| unneccesary coupling of "bad" with "liberal" and "progressive"
| ideals and posits that such management excess wouldn't happen
| in a market driven degree mill.
|
| This, of course, is just silly.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > and posits that such management excess wouldn't happen in a
| market driven degree mill
|
| Where are you seeing this? Can you quote it?
| kortilla wrote:
| Do you not know what it means?
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