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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35013 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.

I'd say it's even worse if the tax payer is mostly paying for a bunch of administrators who provide little public return on the student education (the ostensible point of the subsidies). If people want to spend their own money on something I think wasteful that's their business, when most of the money is coming from the public purse, that's getting much closer to theft.

I of course agree that using tax dollars poorly is to be avoided. But I think the OP was making a bigger point: how can you possibly quantify value in this instance? What are the requirements for a school admin to be "fiscally efficient"? Who decides that? More importantly, if we could somehow determine this, would Harvard be the worst offender?

I think this is much more complicated than it appears.

It's an institution of higher learning, does it improve test scores, student knowledge retention, and from the perspective of federal aid, does it improve the economic prospects of those who didn't go to university, are graduates starting more businesses that employ more people; is the research producing more patents, incubated businesses or public goods in proportion to the administration growth?

Harvard as the premier university in the nation is important because it's setting standards that many other universities will try to imitate, so even if they aren't the worst offender in nation, they should be the focus due to their position as a vanguard. With great power comes great responsibility.

Agreed. Going by your assessment, Harvard passes that test with flying colors.

It's not does Harvard excel at this, it's is Harvard with more administrators doing proportionally more of all of that stuff than they were with fewer administrations, the competition is previous Harvard not third tier land grant university.

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