Following the money in higher education

Following the Money in Higher Education

By Professor Doom

 

     Congratulation to our two new vice chancellors!

--announcement at a institution that failed to make payroll a few months earlier, not that such would prevent filling  two more $100,000 a year positions, as well as have two other administrators retire with golden parachutes.

     Last time around, I looked at the money going to the educators in higher education, in an attempt to explain where all the money from increased tuition and increased student base might be going. Alas, the money can’t be going there, since faculty pay has barely moved in the last decade, and the rise of minimally paid adjuncts has further lowered the costs of hiring educators.

     The gushing money clearly isn’t going to the faculty, the institutional servants that actually do the teaching work, so it must be time to look at administrative pay. Presidential salaries top out at $1.8 million a year, not counting often amazing perks like limos, free houses, travel budgets, and chefs. The top is not a fair place to look, any more than it is for faculty. A simple look at median salaries of administrators shows that even a dean, among lowest of rungs for an administrator, commonly makes more than twice as much as permanent faculty. It’s more like six times as much when you consider the more representative “faculty” pay that adjuncts receive. The median for many types of dean is over $100,000, and even assistant deans regularly make over $100,000¹—even a “Dean of Home Economics” (wish I were making up that title..and since when did balancing checkbooks and baking cookies become “higher education”?) makes $150,000!; virtually no administrator gets paid as minimally as a faculty member. Assistant dean…it’s curious that adjuncts get so little while even assistant administrators get so much. There’s no such thing as an “adjunct administrator,” although there should be. As you move up the administrative ladder, pay skyrockets, with medians commonly above $200,000 for a wide range of administrative positions—these are medians, so top tier pay of above $1,000,000 a year (and that’s not necessarily chief officers), while not as rare as it should be, doesn’t much affect this number.

     One might justify high administrative pay due to the requirements these positions have for advanced degrees. Unfortunately, this argument fails on three levels. Faculty positions also require advanced degrees, and yet don’t get that kind of pay. Additionally, faculty actually need those degrees to demonstrate they know what they’re doing, whereas administrative degrees have no real application to the job, as I showed in detail earlier. Finally, those faculty degrees are desired by the students as they prefer to be trained by people that know what they’re doing.  On the other hand, the students, the customers of the institution, have no interest whatsoever in whatever kinds of degrees possessed by the person helping them to fill out a few forms and hand them a check.

     Now, perhaps these jobs are critically important to education and research (these being, supposedly, what colleges are for), and if there were only a few such administrators with vast responsibilities, these extraordinary sums for low level management positions might be reasonable. Maybe.

     With administrators in control of salary levels, even if the student population doesn’t rise, administrators still manage to funnel extra money to themselves. For example, administrative spending in Michigan went up 30% in from 2005-2010². This is awesome, considering enrollments and even budgets were flat in Michigan for this period. This is one of the few places where enrollment has been flat for the last few years, but the state population dropped from the peak state population in 2004—a greater percentage of the population is going to school, but there’s less population, evening it out. In any event, the same amount of money going into the system, but more of it going to the managers.

    

 

Number of full time faculty: 43

Number of administration: 44

Number of students: 2400.

--numbers from a nearby institution, recently. This doesn’t count administrators above the institution, who are nevertheless overseeing it. If we switched the pay between faculty and the rest, the total expenses would be the same, and the institution would be run exactly as well as before. The education would be the same, too. The only difference is the educators at the educational institution would be getting the money instead of the administrators. Would that be a bad thing?

 

     Between inflation, differing tuition costs, and varying state economies, the significance and size of administrative pay can be a little deceptive, so perhaps it’s better to look at ratios, which give a better understanding of how much more is proportionally going towards administrators as opposed to the educators at the institution.

     Before looking at administration, we again first consider faculty. Faculty to student ratio has been roughly flat for decades, although I have to concede this ratio is suspect. Since this ratio is considered part of what makes an institution good (a better institution supposedly should have a lower ratio), it is heavily manipulated to make it look much lower than what it is as far as the students would be concerned. This manipulation is done in a variety of ways, from the simple (a librarian might count as faculty, lowering the ratio even if the librarian never steps foot in a classroom) to the not very subtle (all graduate students, whether they’re teaching or not, might be forced to spend time in a “study room” where they could theoretically help undergraduates, and are thus counted as faculty for this ratio), to the blatantly crass (hiring each adjunct to teach exactly one course, even more viable now with Obamacare), with too many other tricks to list here.

     That said, the official statistics say it is basically flat, even though faculty hiring hasn’t jumped up much and student population has greatly increased. Go figure...yet another obvious question about higher education that never gets asked. The ratio varies from school to school, of course, and nationwide it was in the area of 14 students to 1 faculty in 2007³, essentially unchanged for decades. My direct observations from my teaching and when I was in undergraduate school would put that ratio somewhat higher, and I suspect the vast majority of students in college would also say it is higher, as well. Student to faculty ratio is not the same thing as average classroom size, a statistic that is similarly misleading and manipulated.

     On the other hand, administrative and support staff ratios aren’t manipulated, or at least not as much, because there’s no real benefit to doing so—it’s not considered a measure of what makes a school good, although perhaps it should be. The huge administrative pay would be far more tolerable if administrators were a rare breed. Let’s take a look and see if perhaps administrators are getting such pay because there are less of them, taking on more responsibilities:

     Administrator to student ratio in 1975 was 84 students to 1 administrator…you basically needed one administrator for every four classes of that era filled with students. One might think it would be higher, considering  how little of what the typical administrator does relates to students. The ratio in 2005 was even lower: 68 students per administrator. So now it’s more like there’s an administrator per every two classes of this era. To put those in easier to visualize terms, a college with 5,000 students in 1975 had 60 administrators. In 2005, that same college, assuming it only had 5,000 students, would have 74 administrators⁴. Same students, same material, same institution, larger classes….14 more administrators getting paid $100,000 or more a year, effectively tacking at least an extra $280 a year in tuition per student just to break even (more like $500 per student when you consider administrative benefit programs that the institution also pays for), assuming they’re only getting minimal administrative pay. Note that the increase in tuition is just for the additional administrators that weren’t necessary years ago; tuition can easily not even cover administrative pay at smaller public institutions. Have college students truly become that much more unruly, or is it the faculty? It appears there are more administrators, taking on fewer responsibilities…not exactly reasons for high pay, even with the basically bogus advanced administrative degree.

     Administrators hire faculty. They do so when need be, and aren’t that reluctant—having many faculty under you is a way to advance as an administrator. It’s easier and cheaper to hire adjuncts, and so this option is taken far more often—why hire one faculty when you can hire six adjuncts for the same amount of money, getting more administrative clout and a lower student to faculty ratio too? Administrators also hire other administrators, a good idea when it comes time to lighten the administrative work load, although certainly expensive. Both the hiring of adjuncts and the hiring of extra administrators are represented in the above numbers, but there’s one more category of institutional employee to be considered: support.

    Next time around, we’ll look at support, the numbers there are even more surprising.

 

 

 

 

1)      http://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=1; it’s fun to visit this site every year to see how amazing the pay raises are.

2)      Jesse, David. “Database: Compare salary increases for administrators at 15 state universities.”

3)      Mark Mongomery’s posting at http://greatcollegeadvice.com/student-to-faculty-ratios-what-do-these-statistics-mean-part-i/ discusses, from an administrator’s point of view, how these ratios are manipulated.

4)      Ginsberg, Benjamin. “Administrators Ate My Tuition.” Washington Monthly. September/October 2011.

 

Where does that money go?

 

Where Goes the Money?

 

 

Answer: “Two seconds, two seconds, and depending on the last paycheck, up to two weeks.”

Question: “How long can this campus function without electricity, faculty, or administrators, respectively.”

--Campus joke

 

     Higher education has experienced incredible growth in the customer base, but where does all that extra money from student loans go? The first and natural guess would be the money goes into faculty pay. After all, it’s impossible to have a class without a teacher, and the faculty must work harder to accommodate all the extra students, so it seems reasonable that the extra work would show up in the paycheck. As a faculty member, I assure you I’m paid well considering the ease of my work (this is coming from a person who has worked in sheet metal roofing in Florida for the princely sum of $5 an hour). That said, the pay isn’t much. I have 20 years of experience and that gets me $40,000 a year. Giving my own pay is misleading, since I work in a relatively impoverished part of the county. Nationwide, it has fallen behind the rate of inflation, earning as much as any blue-collar worker with far less of my vaunted education, even if the work isn’t particularly strenuous or dirty in a literal sense.

 

Adjunct No Longer, Jill Biden Earned $82,022 as a Community-College Professor in 2011. Chronicle of Higher Education, April 16, 2012¹.

--The wife of the vice-president has an amazing, stunningly successful career of late, skyrocketing through the ranks at a pace I just can’t match, even though she teaches mostly remedial courses. In any event, it’s clear faculty could be paid more, if administration felt like doing so.

 

     The salary numbers given in reports on faculty pay are rather distorted; full professors at top tier universities do make over $100,000 quite consistently², but these represent a small minority of faculty (the “super earners”, if you will); I don’t believe I’ve actually spoken with a person like this, any more than most people have never spoken to a Bill Gates or Donald Trump, although I’m sure they exist. It should be noted that often these super-high paid “faculty” are really just administrators, enjoying a bonus faculty position.

 

“Celebrate! Our department of 30 is expanding. We’re opening up two more permanent positions.”

--pre-announcement of positions opening up in a mathematics department, in honor of doubling the number of students we were servicing in our classes. Students double, faculty increases less than 10%...my institution was typical in this regard.

 

     Most institutions, rather than pay for full time faculty, simply hire a great number of adjuncts to support the additional students (who nevertheless are charged as though taught by actual faculty). Adjuncts are paid a very small fraction of faculty pay, so it’s no small wonder that nearly half of college faculty are part-time adjuncts, and well over 70% of courses in this country are taught by non-tenure track/non-full-time faculty³.

     Tenure is often blamed for the ills of higher education, but nationwide, less than a third of faculty are on any sort of tenure track, and far less than that have a serious hope of ever getting tenure. Because adjuncts don’t count as full time employees, they don’t show up in studies of faculty pay; getting a median pay of a faculty member across the range of full professor to adjunct (much less graduate students, which often teach courses) is difficult, but would be below $40,000, probably around $20,000. The average teacher of a college course qualifies for food stamps.  If that sounds low, consider that my college could hire an adjunct to do the education part of my job (teach 8 courses) for $12,000 a year--$1,500 a course is typical adjunct pay. With the majority of courses being taught by adjuncts at about 1/10 the pay, the top salary of $130,000 by the tiny minority of full professors in top schools isn’t even remotely representative of the money being spent hiring someone to educate students.

     It’s also worth noting that the heavy reliance on adjunct faculty does little for education, as they don’t have offices or have any other reason to spend time on campus beyond teaching the course. Their interaction with students is minimal at best: show up, present the class, then go home and try to think of a way to use an advanced degree to get a living wage. These “gypsy faculty” represent the most common sort of college teacher.

     Hmm, money pouring into higher education through the double whammy of skyrocketing tuition and rapidly expanding student base, but faculty pay hasn’t even kept up with inflation…and most courses aren’t even taught by faculty. So, where could all that money be going?

 

Think about it.

 

 

1)      June, Audrey Williams. “Adjunct No Longer, Jill Biden Earned $82,022 as a Community-College Professor in 2011.” Chronicle of Higher Education. April 16, 2012.

2)      http://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=3; site visited September 9, 2012.

3)      McArdle, Elaine. “The Adjunct Explosion.” University Business.

And now to look at tuition

Our First Look At Tuition

By Professor Doom

 

“Now I have two bongs. I’ve named them Pell and TOPS.”

--student discussing his prized possessions (Pell and TOPS both provide money to students without much restriction)

 

     While the previous essays have mapped the causes of the collapse of higher education in this country, no discussion of this collapse could be complete without some mention of the most easily observed symptom: the skyrocketing costs of higher education. Foolish students, corrupt administrators, timid faculty and worthless degrees have doubtless always existed, but the cost of a college education has moved from merely expensive to a price that is utterly back-breaking for all but the wealthy.

     Over the last few decades, two things have consistently increased faster than the official government rate of inflation: college tuition, and health care. The increases for medical care are usually attributed to the costs of research for new drugs and procedures, although examination of why new drugs and procedures increase so much more quickly than, say research and development of new computer gadgets is never satisfactorily addressed. In any event, no such rationalization exists for tuition, as there are no significant breakthroughs in education that could be sold to students, no expensive speculative research programs to pay for, and very seldom are even weak explanations given for the ever rising prices, prices that have risen roughly twice as fast (relative to inflation) as for medical care. While there have been some student protests, for the most part people are content to take out a larger student loan and not ask “why?” There are some answers to this question, but to address the big picture answer requires some basic economics.

Some Economics and Why Economics (Apparently) Doesn’t Apply To Tuition.

     Supply, demand, and price are three interrelated concepts for any commodity, and education is a commodity as well. If the supply is large (for example, fresh water), then the price will typically be low. If demand is high relative to supply (say, fresh water, on an island), then the price will be high. As the price increases, demand will typically drop, as people will seek ways to reduce their needs (which is why people on islands avoid having grassy yards and swimming pools). If the price drops, on the other hand, demand can increase (so one might find more swimming pools in areas where fresh water is in abundance).

     Let’s look at demand for higher education. The general trend for college enrollments for the last forty years has been increasing, but recently enrollment shot up (there was a similar burst around the early 20^th century as well). Enrollment in postsecondary institutions increased 9% between 1989 and 1999, little different than the general increase in population in the United States. In the decade after that, enrollment increased nearly 40%, a massive increase that cannot be so easily explained by the general increase in the population¹.

     Clearly, demand has increased. Supply of education in a format people want (anyone could just go to the library and read, after all) has not been so easy to provide despite the efforts of already existing institutions. It takes time to establish and accredit a “real” educational institution able to handle the influx of new students in a given year, so from this alone one would expect the price to increase until there are enough institutions to handle the demand, and prices surely have increased. Of course, price increases clearly haven’t caused the demand to drop (as enrollments are still increasing). The growth in recent years is attributed to the weak economy, but the spike in student population began well before that—and a weak economy means people shouldn’t have the money for tuition. It’s natural to ask what’s causing such an increase in demand even in the face of rising prices.

     So with the price of tuition increasing, why hasn’t the demand dropped? The answer is money, particularly government loan and grant money. Vast sums of government loans are easily available to any degree-seeking student that even sort-of graduates out of high school. Student loans at the federal level headed sharply higher, starting around 1996².

     Everyone knows what a high school graduate is, but what’s a degree seeking student? Anyone who clicks off a box saying “I am a degree seeking student.” That’s it. There’s no penalty for lying or if the student changes his mind later, as long as for that one second the box is being checked the student claims to believe it to be true, it’s all good. It doesn’t matter if the student is just there to take a single course in theatre or poetry, as long as that box is checked, he—or more accurately, the institution--becomes qualified to receive a huge amount of student loans and grants for his education. Federal loans, the big-big money, are only available if the college is accredited, but the difference is amazing once these loans become available: the number of students at my own college doubled and doubled again in a few short years once the free money spigot was opened.

 

“I’ll think I’ll buy another computer with it.”

--student contemplating how to spend surplus loan money. In this case he is effectively going into debt to buy an unnecessary, extra, depreciating asset. It’s curious administrators will propose “life skills” courses, but never consider giving students useful financial advice.

 

     With this money gushing in, increases in tuition are not noticeable to students. In other words, the “price” isn’t effectively rising, foiling the usual economic relationships. Since the loans cover the tuition and then some, the price is a non-issue for the financially unsophisticated—free money is free money, and so rising prices don’t decrease demand like it would according to ordinary economic theory. All the loan receiver notices from higher tuition is that his piece of the check is smaller (as the college is taking more). It’s still a check, it’s still motivating the person to go to college…or at least go to college to collect the checks. Because the cost of education is “hidden” in this way from the student, the price can rise even further, motivating even larger loans. There can be complaints, but as politicians respond to the public outcry against the expense of education, still more loan money becomes available, a politically easier solution than trying to scale back institutional spending. The extra money means the demand doesn’t fall, and the self-feeding cycle continues.

     Keep this in mind: the sheer existence of all the student loans are, in fact, contributing to the ever rising prices of education. With no incentive to keep costs low, institutions can spend and increase overhead and pass on the costs to the student, or at least the taxpayer who ultimately pays the bill for government spending. Despite the 40% growth in the customer base over a decade and the rising revenue per customer (both of which would bode well for most any business), most all public universities are struggling to keep their budgets under control. The extra money from tuition seems to get soaked up faster than it is splashed into the budget. More accurately for public institutions, they face budget cuts even as their revenue from the student loans rises.

     There is no question that there are bright, hardworking, but economically disadvantaged people that benefit from these loan programs. Because tuition is so expensive, these loan programs are the only way they can afford college now. Decades ago, before these programs and the higher tuition they caused, such people could “work their way through college,” but this expression has little meaning today, where such work at best merely offsets a small part of college expenses. These people are being forced into a debt system they might never escape.

    There are also very sinister elements about this process that attracts so many “students,” and note how I put that word in quotes. A number of these new “students” don’t come to college for the education, otherwise they would already have been in college before the free money. These “students” come to college because going to college can be as lucrative as a low wage job, with far less effort. These folk that play the system for short term game might not be true victims, but there’s another cadre of students very much victimized by the loan system: the ones that truly don’t understand how the system works.

 

“It took me six years to get this degree in psychology. I have $45,000 in student loans. I can’t get a job with this degree. What am I supposed to do?”

--OWS protester sign

 

     Recall the discussion earlier about offering remedial courses that cover material as basic as the number line. These remedial courses are paid for just like any other college course, it’s all the same when it comes to the loan money. But a student who cannot perform the task of “locate 2 on a number line” without professional assistance (and I’m not exaggerating here about having such attendees at my college) likewise isn’t mathematically sophisticated enough to distinguish between “student loan” and “free money.” Should not college administrators show a little restraint in taking advantage of these people? If showing restraint was an administrator’s job, I suppose there would be restraint. As demonstrated earlier, administrative goals, or even training, have nothing to do with restraint.

     Various loan deferral programs, and the simple fact that a student can now easily take six years or more to get a four year degree, explains why the problem of student loans of the last ten years going into default hasn’t materialized as yet, but it truly is just a matter of time. Student loan default rates rose sharply in 2011, so perhaps the consequences will be more apparent fairly soon³. The current default rate of nearly 9% is far below the high of 20% in 1990, but now there are far more students taking on loans for a greater amount (over a trillion dollars of such debt now), and the current defaults are disguised due to the many more ways repayment can be deferred, as opposed to what existed twenty years ago.

     My proposed myth about “Any college will take your money, no matter what” is starting to sound more like a fundamental truth. A person merely clicks off “I am a degree seeking student,” and signs up for whatever classes he wants (and, very often, these are not classes that lead to any particular degree, but “for some reason” the institution still offers them to the detriment of students). The college takes its cut of the loan money, and the student gets what’s left over or pays the difference if he’s at an expensive school, and the process is repeated semester after semester, or until the loan money runs out. It’s a win-win situation for the student and the college, as long as the prospect of repaying the loan is taken out of the picture for the student, and the concept of providing an education is irrelevant for the institution.

     With the endless loan money coming in, there’s nothing to stop the price from rising constantly.

 

EDUCATION SHOULD BE FREE AND A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT!

AN EDUCATED SOCIETY IS A BETTER SOCIETY!

FREE EDUCATION!

--Message board post, no negative responses. Do people not know about public libraries or how to read things on the internet?

 

Think about it.

 

1)      National Center for Education Statistics. Digest of Education Statistics.

2)      United States Department of Education, “Student Loan Volume Tables--FY 2009 President’s Budget.”

3)      Lewin, Temar. “Student Loan Default Rates Rise Sharply in Past Year.” New York Times. September 12, 2011.

 

     

  

 

 

 

 

Administrative Corruption, part 6...

Administrative Corruption, Part 6: Another President

By Professor Doom

 

      “Generally speaking, a million dollar president could be kidnapped by aliens and it would be weeks or even months before his absence from campus would even be noticed.”

 

      --Benjamin Ginsberg

 

     Many faculty can’t help but notice that the upper echelon of administration seem to be completely irrelevant to student education. Although the president’s salary can represent, on a per-student basis, hundreds of dollars of tuition for a student (at one institution I was at, it represented the majority of tuition money, since the institution survived only via government support), the only purpose, at best, of a president is to shake the student’s hand at graduation.

     Despite the tremendous amount of money pointlessly shoveled at these guys, it’s never enough, they never seem to get enough money to just allow institutions of higher education to concentrate on their real mission of education and research.

     Today’s example is Roy Johnson, Chancellor of Alabama’s Community college system (this puts him above the chancellors at each institution; the bureaucracy is titanic in higher education, by the way, as I learned when my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss actually showed up on campus one day, to much excitement). Johnson exploited the huge potential for corruption in higher education, by insisting on kickbacks in exchange for contracts with the institutions under his reign.

     As is always the case in these situations, it’s not just one infraction leading to problems, like it is for faculty. Instead, it’s a ridiculous number of infractions. Some 43 legislators, their relatives, and contacts received contracts and “high pay for doing nothing” administrative jobs in the community college system. Now, I grant that maybe I wouldn’t notice when a fleet of incompetent administrators took over another building, but others might have, so I imagine there were only hundreds of complaints at the institutions that had to support this, all easily explained away.

     Johnson’s ex-wife, his children, and their spouses also received bogus high paying administrative jobs. A faculty member that tries to help his spouse in higher education is punished immediately, and we’re forced to attend training meetings explaining what a “relative” is and how we can’t do business with them in any way…how did it happen that so many of his close relatives got these positions without a complaint?

     The long awaited investigation revealed close to $20 million in kickbacks to him (not counting similar payments to his relatives); he plea bargained down to 6 years in prison, and had to pay another $2 million in fines.

     As a bonus, as though he needed more than the $18 million he netted, he’ll get to keep his $132,000 a year pension while in prison, for his years of “service.” For what it’s worth, my over 20 years of service merits nearly $3,000 a year for my pension. I let the reader decide which of us helped more students.

     I mentioned Dean Chang before, but I think it fair to also discuss her boss, the Reverend Donald Harrington at St. John’s. Like so many other administrators there, he accepted “gifts” from Dean Chang, and it’s fair to guess a few envelopes of $100 bills came his way. In addition, he sponsored no-interest loans from the institution to his friends, and admitted to “living large” on trips with Dean Chang. I again point out: he “lived large” for years with none able to say something was odd about a Reverend doing so.

     Lest one think that such corruption would prevent getting another, similar job, I give the example of Eli Capilouto, who became president of University of Kentucky in 2011. His previous position was Chief Academic Officer at University of Alabama at Birmingham.

 

     More than 100 similar cases within UAB were ignored by Bush officials.

 

--from the linked article. The amount of fraud suggested here is staggering.

 

     While he was  there, UAB was subject to two whistleblower lawsuits involving research fraud, for $600 million. While those were settled for a few million, UAB also faced charges of major financial mismanagement and fraud involving Medicare, Medicaid, and the NIH, among others. Considering how much of this occurred directly under Capilouto’s nose, it’s fair to consider the possibility he was complicit in at least some of it. As is always the case, the fraud took place over many years (more than a decade) of Capilouto’s watch. Granted, Capilouto never faced charges for any of this…but if he is completely innocent, one must wonder at the trustees who would hire someone who can’t notice so many hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent activity. Is this the guy you would want watching your finances?

     The fraud is really amazing, and while I’ve mentioned only the most outrageous acts--I haven’t really discussed the Sandusky Affair in the last six essays, much less the intense corruption of college football--that are known, there are far more insidious forms of fraud going on every day, above and beyond the “tricking people into taking on debt for bogus degrees” scam that is core to even non-profit state institutions today.

     It’s time to take a look at tuition, where we can see some of the effects of the fraud. Until then, the reader should consider: how much of student tuition should go to administration instead of for education? Hint: in times past, it was but a few percent, but it’s “a little” more now.

 

Think about it.

 

     

  

 

 

 

 

More administrative corruption...

Administrative Corruption, Part 5: The President

By Professor Doom

 

     The guy at the top of the institution, the president/chancellor/master of all, is in a unique position to be highly corrupt. Since “potential for corruption” means “corruption” in a discipline, Administration, that knows nothing else, it’s almost too easy to target these guys, but I’m going to have a lazy afternoon and hit a highlight.

 

The Lavish Lifestyle of Benjamin Ladner

 

     Although it’s only famous in certain circles, American University is a reasonably old institution in a great location for an industry that benefits so much from politics: the District of Columbia. It stays small, enrolling only about 1500 students each year. Despite that, President Ladner lived large, very large; if his lifestyle was a gangsta, it’d use the Hope Diamond as a bit of bling on its nose.

     As is so often the case, it takes years of blatantly inappropriate behavior before it finally sinks into the Educationism-addled brains of administrators that something must be wrong…an “anonymous letter” somehow made it to the trustees, indicating that they should probably look into their president’s expenditures.

     Granted, Ladner had a lower hurdle to cross to be better than the previous president, who had a habit of making obscene phone calls (again, it’s problematic when looking at the inappropriate behavior of presidents, as it’s hard to figure out where to start). First, the university needed to buy him a new $1.45 million off campus mansion home--the “old” one on-campus was nearly 30 years old, after all—and spend another half million renovating it to Ladner’s high standards. The new palace was off campus, however, so the new president was less inclined to offer university-related functions (at least, those pertaining to students and faculty) there. Naturally, the trustees gave him money for a limo and driver to offset the hardship of commuting from the palace to, well, the institution that apparently existed for the purpose of maintaining the palace.

     His house also got a staff, including a personal chef, paid for by the institution, a nice travel budget and, unlike “normal” faculty, he received an immediate tenure and rank of professor (this problem, where tenure is now something just for administrators to award to administrators, has come up before). His salary, of course, was phenomenal, with regular, huge pay raises (well over 20% in many years), closing in on a million a year for a campus with 11,000 or so students—basically every student chipped in $100 a year to support his lifestyle. I wonder if students had a choice about spending tuition money in this way, if they would do it. Meanwhile, faculty keep getting told there’s no money for raises…

     The palace, the personal servants, the travel budget, even the huge salary, just wasn’t enough. Ladner’s wife also got a car and a university expense account. The couple took first class trips to Europe, sending the bills to the university (to give some idea of how they lived, the food bill for a 2 day trip to Rome was over $1200). There were also trips to Africa, first class all the way, and staying at elite hotels. Even trips to the hairdresser required the limo.

    Again, it took years before the board noticed. They received an anonymous letter about the expenses, and punished Ladner severely: his 2003 pay raise was only a lousy 3% (again, far more than faculty get, I recently struggled and failed for 2 straight years to get a 1.8% pay raise despite exceptional evaluations, the only raise I would have gotten in 6 years, but I digress…). Ladner complained bitterly, responding that the board should at least give him a few extra hundred thousand in cash bonuses; to their immense credit (for a board), they refused.

     The very minor disciplinary action of a small pay raise (which would count as gushing praise for a faculty member, perhaps as a reward for curing cancer, or winning a Nobel prize…I would be so grateful for such disciplinary action) didn’t deter Ladner, who afterwards had the university pay for a 13 course engagement dinner for his son. The trustees examined Ladner’s expenses further, and the full extent of Ladner’s extravagance became known.

     Somehow, the board was split as to whether to fire Ladner. Seriously, some folks saw the expenses as legitimate, others as excessive…there wasn’t enough to fire him. A whistleblower gave the expense report to a local paper, and Ladner became just too much of a liability. Finally, they let him go, giving him a lousy, crappy, $3,750,000 severance package. It still wasn’t enough, and they had to pay an extra $18,000 to help him move out of the palace.

      I wish I didn’t have to keep saying “I can’t make this stuff up.”

      I again remind the reader of the theme here: it really takes years of blatantly inappropriate behavior before the corruption has any real chance of being caught. It doesn’t matter whether if that behavior is extravagant spending, or sodomizing children, it will take a very long time before anything is done, and ultimately one cannot count on administrators to do the right thing unless they have no other choice in the matter. Absolutely, positively, no other choice.

     I remember taking multivariate calculus as an undergraduate. Long after I’d grasped the material, the professor would call out “Let’s do another one” and then work another example of the concept at hand. I learned to dread hearing that phrase, but, nonetheless, perhaps it’s not clear what’s going on in higher education. So, guess I should dig up another example…might take a few minutes.

     Let’s do another one! Next time, I promise.

 

    

    

Administrative corruption, part 4

Administrative Corruption, Part 4: Grants

By Professor Doom

 

     Grants mean money for an institution, so I certainly understood when I saw administrators happy when some faculty member (or even I) managed to land a grant. But their joy always struck me as a little too happy, really happy, far more than made sense to my ignorant self.

     See, when I got a grant, it was for a certain amount of money. Every dollar has to be accounted for, spent for education and research, as per the grant. Yes, I spent the money on things of interest to administrators, like hiring student workers and buying equipment and paying a small part of my salary…but none of it was a direct benefit to administration, or so I thought. As always when it came to my trusting in legitimacy, I thought wrong, and no administrator was ever going to let me in on how the scam works; I once again thank Benjamin Ginsberg and The Fall of the Faculty for filling in the details that I never saw by direct observation.

     The trick involves overhead costs, which are tacked onto the actual grant. The actual amount varies, but for Federal grants, it can be 60% or more. So, if I get a grant for $100,000, the institution gets a bonus $60,000 for the administrators to spend as they wish. Imagine how much more money would be available for the purpose of institutions (i.e., education and research) without this incredible drag. What’s really interesting about this is the administrators might refuse to accept a grant if their bribe overhead bonus is too low—even if the grant was for “giving food to the poor,” administration can refuse it if they don’t get a large enough taste of the food for themselves.

     It gets even more interesting than that. Every institution has an office, eg, “The Office of Institutional Research” (a somewhat deceptive name) to make sure the grant recipient doesn’t misuse his funds, tracking every nickel to make sure the faculty isn’t wasting the money. I certainly didn’t have a problem with that; it wasn’t my money, although I hated that so much of it went to administrative costs, watching me spend it, but let them be sure I’m honest all the same. Administration, of course, sees no need to have an office that watches the overhead costs of administrators, spending their bonus grant money on whatever they want. I know, such a huge potential for corruption makes things just a little too easy, but my real work’s been busy lately.

     Larger institutions get a bigger cut; Harvard, for example gets 69% bonus loot whenever a faculty manages to get a grant. Overall, about $10 billion a year gets skimmed this way to pay for massive administrative salaries, though the average (weighted towards the poorer schools) bonus loot is more like 49% It’s interesting that rich, old schools get a higher bonus slab of pork than poor schools—the rich get richer even in institutions of higher learning. Back when this scam started around WW2, the initial overhead reimbursement rate was a mere 8% (it wasn’t until 1965 that institutions could negotiate their rate). Don’t get me wrong, the institutions do have a point, when I get a grant, it costs extra overhead to hire administrators to watch me and make sure I spend the money properly...a low number like 8% seems like more than enough to pay for that.

    Stanford was noted in the 90s for abuse of these overhead costs, which again,  only attracted attention after years of egregious expenditures. Federal auditors finally got around to checking to see what all that slush money was going to, and discovered quite a few surprises. The president’s house was a major recipient, as the overhead funds paid for an antique toilet, cedar lined closets, and daily flower deliveries; the university yacht (wow!) was also a major overhead expense. Goodness, no wonder administrators are happy when a faculty member gets a research grant, it can lead to admin getting a yacht! I digress, but an auditor estimated that Stanford probably billed the government for some $185 million in excess “overhead” expenses.

     As a result of the audit, Stanford gave back $3.4 million (chrissake, if anyone wants to give me $185 million, I’ll HAPPILY return $3.4 million of it. Any takers?); other institutions have given back some $100 million dollars based on Federal audits, with more coming back every year. The institutions, of course, deny any wrongdoing, but give the money back anyway…it’s so weird to be told there’s no money, but institutions can write checks like this “just because.” As the checks are begrudgingly written, administrators complain that they’ll just have to cut back on the education and research funded by grants. Granted, if faculty were writing the checks, they’d probably complain that they’d just have to cut back on administrators. I know, I’m a bit biased here, but administrators are the ones spending the money…

     Once again, there’s a hidden message here, because it really exposes the administrative point of view. When I get a grant, I’m happy, because I can use that money for the purposes of an institution of higher learning: education and research. An administrator is also happy when I get the grant, but not for me, or for education. He’s happy because now I’ve just indirectly paid for him to get flowers delivered daily. Administration honestly feels that the institution exists to support administration.

     Back when the slush money was 8%, plenty of research got done. By the time of the Stanford debacle, the slush rate was around 90%. Now that auditors are cutting into the abuses, the rate is going down, with little influence on research being done.

     Should administrators get free money every time a faculty member gets money for education and research? If 8% was enough to cover overhead at some point, why is 50% considered a hardship now? Could it be that administration thinks education and research are merely footnotes to the purpose of an institution of higher learning?

 

Think about it.

Admnistrative corruption, part 3

Administrative Corruption, Part 3

By Professor Doom

 

“…a major east coast university maintained an office in a centrally located European capital. The nominal purpose of this office, directed by a senior vice provost, was to build connections….The vice provost spent his time traveling around Europe and holding dinner meetings with…scholars, administrators, and minor government officials….after several years, the vice provost retired and his European office was closed…the vice provost drew a hefty salary. He employed an assistant and other staffers…he required an adequate travel, dining and entertainment budget…

 

---and he accomplished nothing at all, and never intended to do so, eventually retiring from the position and from higher education. From Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty, p70. Considering the pay of all the staff, we’re talking $500,000 a year or more being spent like this.

 

     I can’t emphasize strongly enough how the complete lack of checks and balances on administration has led to extreme waste in higher education. It’s hard to estimate how much money was thrown away by the vice provost’s sweetheart job, as a precursor to his retirement…most people retire then travel, he just did it the other way around. Ten million dollars were spent on this fiefdom, maybe? And nobody in administration thought anything of it, being far too busy securing their own fiefdoms.

     Administration is unstoppable and fast in its growth. One young institution I was at began with just a handful of administrators. Every year, another classroom or two was taken over for administration purposes; soon, there was no office space left for faculty, which were then housed in classrooms. After a decade, less than half the floorspace of the campus was available for classes, supposedly the primary mission of the institution (as opposed to providing administrative office space).

     About the only check on administrative greed is the trustees, but far too often, the trustees are “in on it,” to the point that it’s not in their interest to do something about it.

      Naturally, accreditation is supposed to cover this sort of thing, but it’s a joke. Auburn was placed on probation by SACS (their accreditor) due to serious violations of trustees doing big business with the institution—I’m hardly the only faculty member to notice how often the logos of companies owned by trustees can be found on vehicles doing work at the institution. As always, such probations are really just gentle pokes…even with millions of dollars of insider/corrupted money changing hands, Auburn gets years to change their activities so they can be performed in a way even a blind incompetent regulator like SACS can’t see  legitimately.

 

     Faculty who wonder why their school’s board continues, year after year, to support an utterly incompetent president, or why the board has opted to summarily fire a competent one, might do well to follow the money.

 

--Benjamin Ginsberg

 

     While for now I’m avoiding discussion of activities at the top since that is just too easy, I feel Daniel Goldin at Boston University merits a special mention, because he didn’t actually make it to the top. The main purpose of the board of trustees is to pick that top guy, and they chose Goldin. Goldin made the mistake of announcing his intention to examine the institution’s business relationship with the trustees, and to remove those that were engaging in improper activities. The mistake, of course, being that he announced that before he’d entrenched his position. The trustees rescinded the offer, but paid him $1.8 million to keep his mouth shut as a consolation prize. Much as administrative control of faculty hiring has led to spinelessness and subservience to administration as common faculty traits, trustee control of the presidency leads to corruption in administration.

     Institutions in higher education complain often of budget issues, but when you read story after story like this of millions sloshing around, it’s tough to believe there’s a real shortage of money. Meanwhile, faculty struggle to get light bulbs for their classrooms, or pay for their own toner for the printer, or scramble to find paper so they can give tests…because there’s no money, you see.

     It isn’t just about the money, administrators also have the power to award degrees, above and beyond the “honorary” Ph.d.s that can be sold like party favors. In addition to “misappropriating” over $2,000,000 to fund a lavish lifestyle that people complained about for years, an Education dean at the University of Louisville awarded a Ph.D. (in Education, and I’ll gratuitously add “of course”) to a student that had attended few classes, in exchange for $375,000. I’d also discuss the Master’s degree handed out by a university president to the daughter of a governor, but that’s for later. I suppose in comparison the administrator who gave himself and his son some minor degrees hardly merits mention, even with the dozens of other infractions he committed.

 

Me: “Do you have any idea who that graduate is?”

Other faculty member: “None at all.”

--at a small school I taught at, every graduation would have students I KNOW I failed, nevertheless getting their diplomas. There would also be a handful of students with specializations in mathematics, and some of them I had never seen before…it was such a small school that there was only one other person who could possibly have had the students. He never knew who they were, either. We would stand at gradation with looks of complete mystification on our faces, as though we were at another school’s graduation ceremony. I emphasize: the school only had a few hundred students, on a campus with a score of rooms…there wasn’t a way to miss a person over the course of years.

 

    I emphasize again: the above stories are just the corruption that is known about. Considering that it’s primarily egregious behavior over the course of years that leads to anyone getting caught, it’s fair to consider the possibility these stories are but the tip of the iceberg.

     It’s easy enough to come up with stories of “friends” of administrators getting an unjustified admission to an institution. I’ve seen a few myself, but honestly, if the department head wants to enroll his nephew into a mathematics Ph.D. program, as long as he can do the work, I’m fine with it (he couldn’t, but I don’t begrudge him the opportunity).

     On the other hand, knowing that degrees can simply be handed out by administrators is pretty scary, from a faculty point of view. Already, the content of my courses is heavily influenced by administrative pressure, as is my grading. Even the courses offered are determined by administration…now that administration can award degrees too, how long is it until faculty are no longer needed at institutions of higher learning? As I’ll address later, faculty are now a minority on campus, and the proportion of administrators rises every year…my question isn’t that rhetorical at all.

     Should administration, which such a track record of corruption, even remotely have the power to hand out degrees? Should there be any limit to the power of administration in higher education? I’m struggling to find a question relating to this level of corruption that would require to the reader to think even a little about an answer.