It is mindblowing to me that there is a 1 to 1 ratio of staff to students. Since no university I know of provided 1 on 1 classes, It just signals that there is a massive amount of waste.
Mr. Magoon, I think you are mistaken in your analysis, simply the problem with US universities is that they are doing stuff beyond what university should do and that’s why they keep increasing tuitions and requiring more bureaucracy. In Europe, university is about obtaining the degree through studying for exams and finding work afterwards. It functions as career up-skilling and enlighten the polity. In US, the function is different, it tries to be a sports team, a hub of ecs, a hub of startups. I am not denying these things exist in other European universities, however, their emphasis on US over other things is corrupting the scheme. It is not critical theory or activists, it is actually the nature of US and its universities.
I have attended European universities and American universities, and I agree with much of what you say. You are very correct in that American universities try to do far more than universities in other nations. And much of this has nothing to do with education.
I believe that I address that in the first article in this series:
The dramatic increase in non-academic administrators, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. This has only happened within the last few decades. Because of that, I see no reason to believe that it is inherent in the mission of American universities.
I would be very happy if American universities went back to the administrator-to-student ratio of 1970. Given computerization and the internet, this should be relatively easy to achieve. This would save a huge amount of money, which could be used to make tuition more affordable.
Thank you for your clarification, my bad not following you. The question I have since you seem more educated than me, is the problem with enrolling more students and expanding university services that you would require more administrators (much like government and healthcare). The only way to reduce administrators is stop services or make it in the hands of the student management. Given the sheer amount of value invested in these services, leaving it for students (especially as students as professor Haidt pointed are more bombarded than before) might end up misusing it. Another problem I see (coming from Egypt educated in American University in Cairo) is the belief that competition makes intra-university extracurricular activities good, however, the problem with expanding extracurricular activities (in absolute number without a substantial difference in purpose) is the lack of pooling resources.
Also an emeritus professor here... I agree only in part with your argument. Universities today are subjected, by the federal government, with large numbers of unfunded mandates that were not present in 1970. While perhaps they could be more efficient at doing such things, no directive from an individual state could make them go away. Those are only part of the total growth in administrative personnel, but they are a part.
I have not seen any thorough studies on the percentage of university administrator positions that are required by federal government unfunded mandates. I am skeptical that they make up a substantial percentage, though I may be incorrect. My guess is that most of them would be related to the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, which preceded 1970.
Either way, I believe the federal government mandates should be repealed.
I agree with you about what should be true, but… there are mandates about student privacy, health privacy, human subjects research, lab safety, what can be charged as overhead, and I think a lot of other things. If a University just leaves it to the professors to comply they will for sure face one bad publicity incident after another.
One could get rid of a lot by getting rid of research, but for the big Universities research is the engine that drives the reputation that brings in the top students.
Of course none of this justifies DEI staff or a lot of others.
Having been interested in Chinese history, I have always found their early 20th century a fascinating time. The introduction of Simplified Chinese characters was enacted due to the belief that the writing system was an impediment to modernization:
By contrast, from 1956-2009, the number of characters recommended were between 6100-8000.
According to the BBC, "An educated Chinese person will know about 8,000 characters, but you will only need about 2-3,000 to be able to read a newspaper."
"For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding."
Granted, I was not a very good reader at 18. But by 25, I had greatly improved my reading comprehension.
The problem is that some students will never develop the minimum amount of analytical capability without some instruction to be able to teach themselves after a certain point.
I don't think it's right to blame parents, because there are multiple causes. The millenial generation is probably the first to have children that grow up entirely with cell phones. The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow prescription drug advertising. While The U.S. is trying to ban TikTok, it would not be unreasonable to view all social media and technology companies as school supplies, and attempt to regulate the advertising out of it, with some minimum standard of off-time. In practice I don't think it's very effective, but a lot of the social media companies have a lot of influence over the algorithms and what kind of positivity can appear at the top of the search results.
One could also attribute the issue to the the need for parents to work multiple jobs to pay bills leaving little time left to ensure their children are keeping up with schoolwork. So the inflated cost of living needs to come down.
Some of the curricula in colleges, have perhaps until recently, been a significant attempt to lower the standard of critical thinking. It's as if the alphabet were simplified from 26 characters to 16. I think the problem is that society doesn't value literacy/education, because visual media is given much higher preference and reward. But at the same time, visual media can also teach symbolic alphabets.
Before the internet, there was often talk about bad role models-in film and tv, etc. It is certainly true that internet influencers can be bad role models. There probably are a great number of Youtube channels that teach literacy and English as a Second Language. But how many more are completely ill informed?
If anything, influencers should be trying to increase their vocabulary, rather than partition it off. It seems like that has a limited utility- to employment, etc.
I read your entire article. I am not sure if you read my entire comment, but I began with an analogy to a writing system that has relevance to a college education. If college students aren't literate, they are less likely to stay in college. So I think that focusing on the core curriculum is only effective if they arrive at college capable of reading at a 13th grade reading level.
A very vital (though unpoular with admins) post.
It is mindblowing to me that there is a 1 to 1 ratio of staff to students. Since no university I know of provided 1 on 1 classes, It just signals that there is a massive amount of waste.
Man, do they ever. I plan to resign this summer just because of the number of forms I need to fill in these days before I can get any real work done…
Mr. Magoon, I think you are mistaken in your analysis, simply the problem with US universities is that they are doing stuff beyond what university should do and that’s why they keep increasing tuitions and requiring more bureaucracy. In Europe, university is about obtaining the degree through studying for exams and finding work afterwards. It functions as career up-skilling and enlighten the polity. In US, the function is different, it tries to be a sports team, a hub of ecs, a hub of startups. I am not denying these things exist in other European universities, however, their emphasis on US over other things is corrupting the scheme. It is not critical theory or activists, it is actually the nature of US and its universities.
Thanks for your comment.
I have attended European universities and American universities, and I agree with much of what you say. You are very correct in that American universities try to do far more than universities in other nations. And much of this has nothing to do with education.
I believe that I address that in the first article in this series:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-to-make-college-affordable
The dramatic increase in non-academic administrators, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. This has only happened within the last few decades. Because of that, I see no reason to believe that it is inherent in the mission of American universities.
I would be very happy if American universities went back to the administrator-to-student ratio of 1970. Given computerization and the internet, this should be relatively easy to achieve. This would save a huge amount of money, which could be used to make tuition more affordable.
Thank you for your clarification, my bad not following you. The question I have since you seem more educated than me, is the problem with enrolling more students and expanding university services that you would require more administrators (much like government and healthcare). The only way to reduce administrators is stop services or make it in the hands of the student management. Given the sheer amount of value invested in these services, leaving it for students (especially as students as professor Haidt pointed are more bombarded than before) might end up misusing it. Another problem I see (coming from Egypt educated in American University in Cairo) is the belief that competition makes intra-university extracurricular activities good, however, the problem with expanding extracurricular activities (in absolute number without a substantial difference in purpose) is the lack of pooling resources.
Also an emeritus professor here... I agree only in part with your argument. Universities today are subjected, by the federal government, with large numbers of unfunded mandates that were not present in 1970. While perhaps they could be more efficient at doing such things, no directive from an individual state could make them go away. Those are only part of the total growth in administrative personnel, but they are a part.
Thanks for the comment.
I have not seen any thorough studies on the percentage of university administrator positions that are required by federal government unfunded mandates. I am skeptical that they make up a substantial percentage, though I may be incorrect. My guess is that most of them would be related to the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, which preceded 1970.
Either way, I believe the federal government mandates should be repealed.
I agree with you about what should be true, but… there are mandates about student privacy, health privacy, human subjects research, lab safety, what can be charged as overhead, and I think a lot of other things. If a University just leaves it to the professors to comply they will for sure face one bad publicity incident after another.
One could get rid of a lot by getting rid of research, but for the big Universities research is the engine that drives the reputation that brings in the top students.
Of course none of this justifies DEI staff or a lot of others.
Roughly what percentage of university administrator positions do you think are required by federal government unfunded mandates?
I wish I had a clue. I've never tried to look at that. I just encountered the consequences over a lot of years.
Having been interested in Chinese history, I have always found their early 20th century a fascinating time. The introduction of Simplified Chinese characters was enacted due to the belief that the writing system was an impediment to modernization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#Late_Qing_literature_and_Republican-era_reform_(1850%E2%80%931949)
Traditional Chinese has over 50,000 characters, but around 20,000 in a typical dictionary:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/mini_guides/characters/characters_howmany.shtml This is the writing system used by Hong Kong and Taiwan. I don't actually mind this as I think more can be better, more nuanced. But it seems the equivalent to a PhD or a post-doc in training, which is something not everyone can learn.
By contrast, from 1956-2009, the number of characters recommended were between 6100-8000.
According to the BBC, "An educated Chinese person will know about 8,000 characters, but you will only need about 2-3,000 to be able to read a newspaper."
This Substack article recently detailed the U.S. declining literacy rates: https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/how-to-teach-your-two-year-old-to
It quotes a professor who has noticed the incoming class with an inability to comprehend 10-20+page essays:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html
"For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding."
Granted, I was not a very good reader at 18. But by 25, I had greatly improved my reading comprehension.
The problem is that some students will never develop the minimum amount of analytical capability without some instruction to be able to teach themselves after a certain point.
I don't think it's right to blame parents, because there are multiple causes. The millenial generation is probably the first to have children that grow up entirely with cell phones. The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow prescription drug advertising. While The U.S. is trying to ban TikTok, it would not be unreasonable to view all social media and technology companies as school supplies, and attempt to regulate the advertising out of it, with some minimum standard of off-time. In practice I don't think it's very effective, but a lot of the social media companies have a lot of influence over the algorithms and what kind of positivity can appear at the top of the search results.
One could also attribute the issue to the the need for parents to work multiple jobs to pay bills leaving little time left to ensure their children are keeping up with schoolwork. So the inflated cost of living needs to come down.
Some of the curricula in colleges, have perhaps until recently, been a significant attempt to lower the standard of critical thinking. It's as if the alphabet were simplified from 26 characters to 16. I think the problem is that society doesn't value literacy/education, because visual media is given much higher preference and reward. But at the same time, visual media can also teach symbolic alphabets.
Before the internet, there was often talk about bad role models-in film and tv, etc. It is certainly true that internet influencers can be bad role models. There probably are a great number of Youtube channels that teach literacy and English as a Second Language. But how many more are completely ill informed?
If anything, influencers should be trying to increase their vocabulary, rather than partition it off. It seems like that has a limited utility- to employment, etc.
Please keep the comments focused on the topic of the article.
I read your entire article. I am not sure if you read my entire comment, but I began with an analogy to a writing system that has relevance to a college education. If college students aren't literate, they are less likely to stay in college. So I think that focusing on the core curriculum is only effective if they arrive at college capable of reading at a 13th grade reading level.