The “Administrative Bloat” Trope
Since I graduated from college in 1989, the cost of higher education in public universities has risen over 200% and at privates by over 125%. The reasons for this rise are rooted in a myriad of causes — states are investing less, causing institutions to put the costs on the backs of students; the arms race of amenities from luxury residence halls to rock climbing walls; and the increasing cost of operating programs. Human resources and human capital are also a major cost on campuses. However, before you leap to the “high administrative salaries” trope, I would encourage you to look beyond football coaches and presidents.
For the most part, administrative salaries of entry level and mid-level professionals are quite unimpressive, with entry level professional (who make up the sheer volume of staff) in the $35–47,500 range. Those at the high end of the range benefited from either collective bargaining or working at an institution that, when facing the FLSA threshold discussion of 2016, decided to pay these staffers with an appropriate wage. Other institutions decided that they would ride out the Trump Presidency and hope that FLSA would “die on the vine”.
Shame on these campuses for not doing more to support these professionals with a salary that reflects the importance of their work. Entry-level professionals on campuses are faced with front line student issues that have direct impact on their ability to persist. Whether the challenges be emotional, financial or circumstantial — they are increasingly complex. The first-year student of 1989 is very different from their counterpart today. Students are more diverse by age as well as race and sexual identity, they have more outside stressors impacting their mental health including emotional, financial and familial traumas, and — simply put — life has become more complex in the last 40 years. Entry level salaries should reflect the requirements of the job — especially since most of these positions requires a graduate degree to even be considered for them.
Mid-level professionals — typically those who fall into the Associate, Director and Assistant Dean positions are in the $50–80,000 range. A good salary for a single person, but not enough for a family of 3 or more to live on in most of the country. Administrators in the student affairs areas may find it difficult to work a second job or find a “side hustle” because these positions typically work more than 40 hours a week and have night and weekend responsibilities. These mid-level professionals are responsible for the management of departments, keeping up with government regulations and implementation of institutional or divisional strategic priorities. Required to keep up with the changing trends in best practice, mid-level professionals must navigate the intricate requirements of the ‘next best thing’ with the glacial pace of change that plagues institutions of higher education.
Gaining an understanding that entry and mid-level administrative staff are the majority of campus employees and make largely uninspiring earnings is essential to quelling the “administrative bloat” trope. These individuals typically serve in roles that are necessary to keep the College or University moving, and often manage more responsibilities than their job title depicts. In days of yore, faculty members did some of these administrative tasks (advising, monitoring residence halls, etc.), but over time have wanted to come back to their main role — to teach — and get out of the business of management. However, an area of weakness in higher education is that we have perfected the art of “adding” and rarely jettison outdated responsibilities and processes. As an industry, we are steeped in the need to honor tradition, whether it be a homecoming dance or an administrative process. In short, we stink at letting things go, or scaling back. This leaves administrators under the weight of too much to do, too many meetings to attend and not enough time to actually do the necessary work.
To those who maintain that administrative offices are “over staffed”, and therefore a drain of budgetary dollars, my 30+ years in higher education administration, have given me a very different perspective. During that time, I have rarely seen an office that is “over staffed” rather, most offices are not provided with adequate staffing, which leads to inefficiencies and end-arounds becoming the norm in order to survive. However, there are examples where institutions of higher education have been required to increase staff in specific areas due largely to government mandates or to make up for the lack of social services in their community.
After the September 11th attacks, colleges and universities were required to begin to track international students at a more heightened level through the SEVIS system. This is largely a “back of the house” type of administrative job, but if not performed properly would result in institutions as well as students being penalized. The institution I was working at in the year following the 2001 attacks tripled their international student services offices with SEVIS processors. Administrators who had spent their careers dedicating their work toward providing transitional services for international students to acclimate to the US culture and build affinity and pride for their chosen institution — they were reduced to paper pushers. Now, not only did the operational cost increase by three or four times, but the student services were not at the same level.
Title IX and the advent of the Title IX or Equity Compliance positions on campuses are another example of an unfunded government mandate where the result is administrative staffing increases. These positions are necessary ones in order to stay in compliance with the now retracted “Dear Colleague” Letter of 2011, but to also attain the goals of reducing the number of incidents of sexual misconduct and sexual assault on campus and to have a positive impact on cultural change in these areas. However, the requirements of these positions are so specialized that institutions must hire individual from the private sector with a law degree and a background in victim advocacy. These candidates don’t come cheap. I have taken part in searches that hire a Director of Title IX and Equity Compliance at a salary level that would have allowed for me to hire two mental health staffers — positions that would have had much broader impact on the community.
Not all increases in staffing are the result of these government mandates. There are also those positions that need to be added in order to meet the changing needs of our students and to help meet the end goal of retaining and graduating these students. As previously mentioned, mental health staff are needed on campuses, especially with the dramatic increase of mental health challenges being faced by students. Students coming to campus are unable to secure mental health support in the community and, therefore, need to take full advantage of such services on campus. Some campuses have strict requirement that students must be enrolled full time to meet with college counseling staff, while others — especially at community colleges — do not have such criteria. It is believed that students must be provided with the best services to remain enrolled and mental health support is a part of these services.
Other traditional social services that campuses have had to pick up due to a lack of sufficient services in the community include staff to provide housing and food assistance to those who are facing insecurities, transportation services, legal aid to protect students from sketchy landlords to abusive partners, and case managers who assist students navigate complex services on and off campus. The level to which institutions of higher education have been forced to act as social service agencies only heightens the human resources and operational budgets that are dedicated to these needs.
None of these individuals are making huge salaries, but there is a real need for adequate staffing in order to graduate students. If campuses fail to graduate students, it only has a detrimental impact on that student’s ability to pay off their loans and advance on the opportunities afforded to college graduates.
Senior administrators (Vice President and Vice Chancellors) are largely not tuned into these needs. Long-serving senior administrators believe it is a badge of honor, while recently arrived VPs and VCs are stuck in a negative budgetary environment where they have to fight to save what they have versus thinking of adding or being strategic.
While identifying where institutions can improve student services and also find budgetary savings, Senior administrators should take these times of higher scrutiny over the cost of higher education to consider how work is done, rather than simply identify the requisite 5–15% cuts each year to make budget. As the true cost of doing business is often linked to providing the best student service at the highest return on investment, it would then be advisable to consider what is taking up time and draining the band-width of your team to determine what is necessary and what isn’t … and cut what isn’t. Right-sizing responsibilities while respecting the staff and heightening the quality of work in areas that are necessary is a better strategy than maintaining all the responsibilities and cutting staff, leaving less people responsible for doing more.
Costs related to new programs, maintaining outdated ones, fixing and replacing buildings, and “country club” amenities are where real financial impacts compound and raise the cost of tuition and fees. Humans aren’t the problem — the lack of vision is.
