[HN Gopher] The rise of universities' diversity bureaucrats (2018)
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The rise of universities' diversity bureaucrats (2018)
Author : dgs_sgd
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-02-05 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| lr4444lr wrote:
| _Bureaucrats outnumber faculty 2:1 at public universities and
| 2.5:1 at private colleges, double the ratio in the 1970s._
|
| It has to be asked though, did student:teacher ratio stay
| constant during this time? Because if it's risen (i.e. professors
| about the same, but more students,) then a case could be made
| that the bureaucrat increase corresponds to more students. Why
| should bureaucrat count correlate to professor count?
| ecshafer wrote:
| I don't really see why schools should need most of their
| bureaucrats personally. I know a few people who work in admin
| at schools and it seems their jobs mostly revolve around
| writing a few emails a day. A school need some groundskeepers
| sure, a small IT department, a secretary for a department
| probably, and a small general admissions / bursars / financial
| aid department. I would warrant all other departments could be
| cut as they are not within the primary scope of teaching.
| kkylin wrote:
| This depends a lot on the school. A research university is
| going to have a lot of people that students never meet:
| accountants and lawyers to ensure compliance with federal
| regulation on grants, for example. The phrase "administrator"
| also gets thrown around a lot in these discussions without
| much attention to more nuanced differences, i.e., a VP or
| vice provost is a very different thing than staff who are not
| paid all that much. And some people classified as staff do
| teach -- boundaries aren't always that sharp.
|
| This is not to say university bureaucracies are not bloated,
| but the bloat is multi-faceted and often grows in different
| directions for very different reasons.
| mapierce2 wrote:
| I think the point is that it's _not_ simply the case that
| universities have lost sight of their purpose of teaching
| people, but have broadened the scope of their mission beyond
| teaching ... or broadened the definition of teaching?
| Broadened their mission? Certainly made their mission less
| focused /clear. And this leads to bureaucracy. See Harvard's
| Mission Statement.
|
| https://college.harvard.edu/about/mission-vision-history
| mindslight wrote:
| * * *
| edgyquant wrote:
| Because the job of schools as a business is to teach.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| (With exceptions...) universities aren't businesses though.
| Academic idealism does still exist.
| mountainb wrote:
| This is the kind of rigid formalism that obscures accurate
| analysis of universities as economic entities responding
| rationally to the infinite money spigot that the government
| has inserted into them. Just because their formal tax
| status says one thing does not mean that it's not better to
| analyze them as businesses just like any other.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Right, right - I just don't want people to forget that
| there are fundamental differences - despite their
| similarities.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| [dead]
| rmason wrote:
| If you wonder why the cost of college has exploded you just
| have to look at the meteoric rise in administrators in the past
| thirty years. The number of faculty has only risen slightly
| while administrators hired because of new government
| regulations has exploded.
|
| https://washingtonmonthly.com/2011/08/28/administrators-ate-...
| whitemary wrote:
| It's at least as much related to government subsidies and
| financial programs that exist as band-aids over the
| accreditation crises in the American labor market, a result
| of elite overproduction.
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you wonder why the cost of college has exploded you just
| have to look at the meteoric rise in administrators in the
| past thirty years.
|
| A rise in administrators can't explain the rise in tuition.
| If you spike your manufacturing costs for a product, it's
| true that you won't be able to turn a profit without charging
| a lot more for it.
|
| But it doesn't follow at all that you'll be able to turn a
| profit by charging a lot more for your product.
|
| We see college tuition going up at the same time that college
| enrollment goes _up_. That is not a result of increases in
| the cost of providing college. Increases in the cost of
| provision would increase tuition and _decrease_ enrollment.
| twoifbyseat wrote:
| > Diversity officials promote the hiring of ethnic minorities and
| women
|
| I'm genuinely curious if ethnic minorities and women are
| underrepresented among university faculty/staff. I would have
| guessed "no", but this statement implies otherwise.
| mapierce2 wrote:
| It's unfortunately tough to have a discussion about this too. Any
| criticism of justice/equity/diversity/inclusion (JEDI)
| bureaucracy gets strawmanned very quickly, and the critic
| labelled as simply a bad person. Example: the VP of the American
| Mathematical Society wrote a short piece (op ed?) in 2019
| describing the requirement that new university faculty hires
| write _diversity statements_ , and the scoring of that statement
| according to a rubric, as a "political litmus test," and she got
| roasted for it. Folks called for her resignation, and said the
| AMS shouldn't have published it. I was attending a JEDI workshop
| as a grad student to get a _diversity certificate_ at the time,
| and the facilitator only reacted with disgust, and we never
| honestly discussed it.
|
| https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf
| dudul wrote:
| There is nothing to discuss. For me the discussion stopped when
| we replaced "equality" with "equity". It was the admission that
| these people are not interested in solving a problem. They move
| goal posts to make sure the problem persists because it gives
| them jobs, power and influence.
|
| DE/I is just "legitimized bullying". It is alo telling that
| these departments are gutting gutted during tech layoffs. They
| are for show.
| mapierce2 wrote:
| It's more complicated than you describe. Like, these
| bureaucrat's hearts are in the right place, they just lack
| focus, and are ineffective and solving the problems that they
| see. They see large-scale social problems of inequity, but
| are trying to solve it with equity-focused policy at
| universities, which most folks would already consider "the
| top."
|
| They aren't _just_ for show, but the optics of a well-funded
| diversity departments is irresistably good.
| everdrive wrote:
| DEI is all the rage right now. My company's last big survey had
| some question which stated "I feel like I can be myself at work."
| The score wasn't as nice as folks would have liked, and
| apparently what HR took from that is "we're not doing DEI hard
| enough." Which is a pretty unfortunate set of blinders to have
| on. DEI is probably one of the more narrow reasons these days
| that someone might not feel that they can be themselves at work.
| version_five wrote:
| I would say that the existence of those DEI programs is
| probably one of the biggest reasons people can't be themselves
| at work
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Agree. As a white male, I have a very hard time being honest on
| these questionnaires because I know full well that giving good
| responses means they will lean in further to DEI, and giving
| bad responses they will lean in further on DEI...
|
| In 2021 they had a slide on the town hall for 'Whiteness down
| 13%' and the black host said 'we can do better'...
|
| Might as well pack up, clearly unwanted here.
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