Bacon's Rebellion

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Correction

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by

James A. Bacon
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by James A. Bacon

In two recent stories about administrative bloat and faculty bloat at the University of Virginia, I published inaccurate information. I stated that annualized full-time-equivalent student enrollment between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2022 increased 1.1%. The correct figure was 8.8%. The result of the error was to exaggerate the degree to which the increase in salaried staff and teaching faculty outpaced the increase in student enrollment.

However, the larger point of the articles stands: the increase in staff and faculty exceeded that of enrollment by a wide margin. The headcount of salaried staff increased 25.4% over the same period and the headcount of tenure-track faculty, instructors, and lecturers increased 25.7%.

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13 responses to “Correction”

  1. David Wojick Avatar
    David Wojick

    25% is a huge increase. Could they be gearing up new Departments which they will then populate with students? Or are they going into research big time?

  2. walter smith Avatar
    walter smith

    C’mon Jim!
    All the “better papers” put something like this on p6, below the fold in the 17th paragraph.
    No wonder they don’t respect you!

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      They? They who?
      Maybe it’s the company he keeps?

      1. walter smith Avatar
        walter smith

        The papers you and Larry and Troll all think are the (Secular) Bible – the NY Slimes, the ComPost and the like…
        If it was anywhere near decent, I’d add the Times-Disgrace, but it became irrelevant a long time ago…

  3. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    FYI, one of the major statistics in ranking universities seems to be “percentage of classes with under 20 students”. For 2023, UVa is boasting 52% of classes. Wonder what it was in 2012 and if they intended to increase that percentage in hiring?

    FWIW, Bridgewater College has roughly 1,500 students with 95 instructional faculty. They boast class ratios of 13:1. They certainly don’t have the number of programs as does UVa, nor do they offer the depth and breadth of courses at the 300 and 400 levels.

    If you, uh, add 2,500 students to a university enrollment then adding 150 faculty appointments just to cover the programs offered by a small liberal college would be within reason. Additional faculty would be required for additional departments not found at the smaller college. That certainly explains the increase seen in tenure-track.

    Now, as to the other ~300 general faculty, Marc Short was one of those, wasn’t he? How many coaches were hired for that football team? As for other staff, maybe they hired someone to scrape paint off the dorm room doors?

    For purposes of comparison, Hampden-Sydney has the same enrollment as Bridgewater with 194 instructional faculty. Wow! Some money in that place…

    Had we used H-S then an increase of 2500 enrollment would add 325 faculty members.

    https://datausa.io/profile/university/hampden-sydney-college#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20most%20common,Administrative%20Support%20with%2068%20employees.

    1. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      Good points. Jim reports on UVa because he has that job with the Jefferson Council I guess. However, there are plenty of other colleges and universities in Virginia. Most (all?) at a higher risk of financial problems than UVa.

      https://www.highereddive.com/news/college-closings-next-year-how-many/690293/

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Well, James is aghast by the 2023 over staffing. I’m mortified by the 2012 understaffing. The university jumped from $330M in research grants in 2014 to $450M in 2020. That’s a beaucoup de PhDs and they would more likely be non-tenure track.

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I give Jim credit for issuing the correction.

    But I’ve also had my doubts from the beginning about how the data is being done.

    Does it really make sense to track increases by percentages relative to faculty/admin vs students especially if one of the value/quality metrics is class size?

    IOW, is the “correct” metric that if there is a 10% increase in students, that 10% increase in faculty/admin is desired/normal/etc?

    Is there a standard metric in general for these? IF we took an average across a dozen or several dozen higher ed… what would those percents and numbers look like?

    As always, it would be better to do whatever data across more than one school on a trend basis rather than just one school, IMO.

    I note also that to contrast – when WVU did cuts – what were their ratios before and after the cuts? Would that be useful to know for comparison? They’re cutting programs and faculty and I presume it’s those that teach the course that are being cut. And in the end, they cut courses and instructor, not tuition. They did not make the cost of attending lower, did they?

    1. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      Unsurprisingly, the faculty and their representative organization are unhappy with West Virginia’s approach to the cuts.

      My understanding is that the cuts were required to close a deficit, not to lower tuition.

      https://www.highereddive.com/news/wvu–faculty-involvement-academic-cuts-aaup/691307/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202023-08-21%20Higher%20Ed%20Dive%20%5Bissue:53741%5D&utm_term=Higher%20Ed%20Dive

  5. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Rather the quibble over the percentage increases, I think the most important points of Jim’s analysis were the disproportinate increase in general faculty (instructors and lecturers) vs tenure-track faculty and the increase in administrative positions.

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      I forgot. Did he include a +30% jump in research grants right smack in the middle of 10-year period? (some $130M or so). 40% of the $450M is NIH, and a lot DoD. Still there’s a lot of dough supporting other basic research at UVa.

      So here’s the deal. A tenured professor lands a grant that requires him full time. Who’s going to pick up his classes for the next couple of years? Well, you hire a lecturer.

      Not enough information in his analysis to determine why, or whether they weren’t understaffed in 2012 to begin with.

    2. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      I forgot. Did he include a +30% jump in research grants right smack in the middle of 10-year period? (some $130M or so). 40% of the $450M is NIH, and a lot DoD. Still there’s a lot of dough supporting other basic research at UVa.

      So here’s the deal. A tenured professor lands a grant that requires him full time. Who’s going to pick up his classes for the next couple of years? Well, you hire a lecturer.

      Not enough information in his analysis to determine why, or whether they weren’t understaffed in 2012 to begin with.

      1. WayneS Avatar
        WayneS

        Did he include a +30% jump in research grants right smack in the middle of 10-year period?

        It’s a whole lot less than a 30% increase after adjusting for inflation. Also, an increase in dollars for research will not necessarily correlate with an increase in staffing. Some types of research involves greater expense materials and equipment than others, even if the staff overall work loads are similar.

        Without more information on the specifics of the increase in grants funding, it is not a valid metric by which necessary/justified increases in staffing should be measured.

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