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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35014 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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From an op-ed at Harvard Crimson (via Marginal Revolution):

Harvard employs 7,024 total full-time administrators, only slightly fewer than the undergraduate population. What do they all do?

[snip]

Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-free money intended for academic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educational experience.

For example, last December, all Faculty of Arts and Sciences affiliates received an email from Dean Claudine Gay announcing the final report of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, a task force itself created by recommendation of the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. This task force was composed of 24 members: six students, nine faculty members, and nine administrators. The task force produced a 26-page report divided into seven sections, based upon a survey, focus groups, and 15 separate meetings with over 500 people total. The report dedicated seven pages to its recommendations, which ranged from “Clarify institutional authority over FAS visual culture and signage” to “Create a dynamic program of public art in the FAS.” In response to these recommendations, Dean Gay announced the creation of a new administrative post, the “FAS campus curator,” and a new committee, the “FAS Standing Committee on Visual Culture and Signage.”

Regardless of your stance on the goal of fostering a more inclusive visual culture, the procedural absurdity is clear. A presidential task force led to the creation of an FAS task force which, after expending significant time, effort, and resources, led to the creation of a single administrative job and a committee with almost the exact name as the second task force. I challenge anyone other than the task force members themselves to identify the value created for a single Harvard student’s educational experience.

I enjoyed reading the article, and as someone not at all affiliated with Harvard I am happy to argue against some of the ideas the author expressed.

Firstly, a quibble about facts:

In 1986, Harvard’s tuition was $10,266 ($27,914 adjusted for inflation). Today, Harvard’s tuition is $52,659, representing an 89 percent increase in real cost.

Yes, the sticker-prize tuition at Harvard has grown, as it has at other private colleges. But the question ought to be: do students actually pay more? According to College Scorecard, students [1] pay on average just under $14,000 per year--for everything, including living expenses. I don't have comparable data for 1986, but that's lower than the median for 4-year US colleges (which is around $19,500).

One may argue that all US colleges have bloated administration and thus increased cost, and I am sympathetic to that argument. But at least let's acknowledge that, regarding actual cost of attendance, Harvard seems to be doing better when compared not just to its peers but the set of all accredited US 4-year institutions.

Now, for the challenge that the author kindly provides:

I challenge anyone other than the task force members themselves to identify the value created for a single Harvard student’s educational experience.

I don't know any actual specifics, but I am willing to bet (a modest amount) that at some point in the past decade there were student protests at Harvard regarding the choice of art on display. Probably the protests involved non-white students, or people speaking on behalf of non-white students, and their main objection was something like: people of color don't feel welcome at this institution because all the prominently-displayed portraits are of white people. Likely some professors were part of the protesters.

Whatever your opinions are as to the validity of the protesters' claim that the choice of art affects non-white students, the protests themselves would be disruptive and/or stimulating to the educational experience. The president's response to create the task-force on the issue has calmed the protests (taking away the disruptive aspect ) while taking seriously the vocal minority's concerns. For those who found the protests stimulating to the educational experience (which includes acquisition and polish of social norms, and not merely subject matter studied in one's classes), the president's response models how one goes about addressing strongly-expressed concerns over some issue of institutional inertia.

It's still reasonable to ask: was the process that the president cost-effective in achieving its objectives? I would love to see someone try to analyze that! In my experience, service on such committees isn't directly compensated, though it does suck up substantial time. Like, did those six students, nine faculty members, and nine administrators have better things to do? They were either on that committee because they were deeply interested in the issue (the students and faculty), or because they were the nine administrators. Did those administrators have languishing tasks which would have actually been more important to address than calming down vocal protesters current and future? Will that new administrative post be filled by an already-existing Harvard employee, or are they actually hiring a brand-new administrator?

Inquiring minds kinda want to know.

[1] At least, students who filled out FAFSA and received any federal financial aid.

was the process cost-effective? (sic)

The problem with questions like this when it comes to social issues is the vague nature of the costs or benefits. I would imagine it’s very hard to quantify the disruptive effect that student protests have, and even more difficult to quantify whether or not they are quelled.

However, it’s much easier to simply point at the new positions and committees, tally their costs, and say it’s a huge waste of money. I tend to agree with you that Harvard is spending money to solve a real problem. But that begs the question: if appeasing woke students create such a cost, why don’t they select against it?

To my mind, the answer is that the faculty is complicit and instrumental in student sentiment and student protests. These committees not only keep students from doing anything too radical, they also give faculty members a way to accumulate social status, and take and/or pass off sinecures to political allies. Especially if the faculty member or student in question really cares about the social status, this can be a very cost effective sort of spoils system.

At the end of the day it’s not like the faculty actually has the bear any of the cost for increasing the pointless burn of money on the institutional level.

Tell the student if they continue to disrupt, they will be expelled. If they continue to disrupt, expel them and then call the police to have them removed.

There are thousands (if not tens of thousands) of qualified students ready to take the rabble rousers place.

And this is completely reasonable, but it’s not what Harvard is about.

Harvard is about granting membership in the elites to people the elites think should be there, but aren’t. And little aristocrats don’t get dragged out for minor civil disobedience, unless they want to be. Yes, if they try this at northwest Iowa tech podunk campus, they should get beaten and dragged out by the police because northwest Iowa tech podunk campus exists to give the degrees we have arbitrarily decided are necessary to have a good job with a minimum of disruption. That they aren’t is a reasonable criticism of the northwest Iowa tech system. But Harvard is a different kind of institution.

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