Say Amen! University Overhead

I can see it at MIT, not only Deans galore but now Vice this and Vice that. The MIT non teaching overhead has exploded. This is hardly unique. There is an interesting piece in The Stanford Review.

They note:

So why has the school hired so many superfluous workers? What stops Stanford from cutting non-teaching employee payroll to 1994 levels and charging 1994 tuition? Berber Jin argued last year in The Review that maligned incentives within Stanford’s bureaucracy create a breeding ground for administrative bloat. “Unlike faculty, who gain prestige through quality teaching and innovative research, administrators move up the career ladder by expanding bureaucracy,” Jin wrote. Perhaps much like government, when a University program fails, instead of closing that operation as a private business would, the school simply throws more bodies at the endeavor. Government policy could also contribute to collegiate cost disease. Tuition tax credits, a near tax-free endowment, the ability to issue debt exempt from taxes, the student loan interest deduction, and a laundry list of state-level deductions and credits are all culprits. These tax advantages are identical from an accounting perspective to raising taxes and sending checks to students and colleges. But they add inequity and inefficiency because they they send bigger checks to wealthier households and to more opulent universities, which regressively redistributes income and incentivizes frivolous spending like hiring excess non-teaching employees. If these subsidies were instead provided through transparent and annually reviewed appropriations to worthy causes, like Pell Grants, they would be more equitable and administrators would be incentivized to economize and improve productivity through technological and managerial innovation.

I would argue in addition it is the politicizing and social engineering that has taken over.  I spent the 60s in Academia, amidst bombs and tear gas. I had bombs in my office complex and bomb threats at final exams, tear gas roamed the streets of Cambridge. Now the fear comes from words, yes words. Say the wrong thing and off you go.

But indeed the Government control with the oftentimes Marxist  governance has created massive thought and word control infrastructures. Alumni should remember that for every dollar they may donate more than 70 cents goes to feed the mouths of these guardians of the cause.

Given their now embedded interests this will never change unless and until the alumni change it. At least those making money.

Reading the school PR sheet one gets the impression that "everyone gets a prize" mentality has taken over. That approach may dramatically reduce the alumni with productive assets. It appears that we have begun selling our great institutions to people who want their names memorialized rather that to the key ideas by which they were established.