[lbo-talk] Disappoint With #125

[Fichtenbaum Rudy]

If you want to see what is driving expenses in higher education look at the growth of administration. In particular look at spending for institutional support (central administration -- vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents  ). To be a vice president you have to be in charge of someone so they all get to hire more people. Also look at Academic Support which includes all sorts of centers -- centers for teaching and learning, centers for writing, centers for sustainability, centers for service learning and research and sponsored programs. Academic Support also includes Deans offices.  At my school we have about 50 tenured and tenure track faculty, 10 instructors and lectures, 6 department chairs and 21 people who work in the Dean' office.  Also look at student services -- every campus now has a fitness center with rock climbing walls etc. Intercollegiate athletics is another sink hole. We budget a transfer of $8.5 million last year from educational and general to support intercollegiate athletics. This number seems to go up every year. That is just what we budget. It seems that the Athletic Director doesn't feel constrained by his budget and ran $1million above the budgeted amount two years ago and $1.5 million above the budgeted amount last year.

Rudy

On Mar 16, 2010, at 7:45 AM, Wojtek S wrote[WS:]  Correct.  Overhead at at JHU is about 27% if memory serves and is
> causes foreign funders to drop their jaws (they tell us that In Europe it is
> no more than 10%).
> 
> Wojtek
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> 
>> Wojtek writes:
>> 
>> In my institution research is 100% supported by
>>> outside grants - we do not get a penny from tuition.
>>> 
>> 
>> Not only that, but research grants usually have to pay "overhead" into the
>> general fund at rates that exceed my imagination.  This even includes
>> hardware purchased for the research: a project I was on once had $2700 of
>> "overhead" tacked onto the price of a $2500 server purchased from Dell that
>> didn't even live on campus.
>> 
>> /jordan
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