10/23/2011: Very interesting RG story by Greg Bolt, on UO’s role in Lane County employment:
Employment at the UO has grown across the board, with increases seen in nearly every job category. The university has more teachers, professors, administrators, clerical staff, laborers and technicians today than it did before the recession began.But the growth hasn’t been even across those categories. For example, the number of faculty members who are tenured or on the tenure track grew by 9 percent between 2001 and 2010, while the UO sharply ramped up hiring of nontenured faculty, increasing it by 32.5 percent. …The UO also has hired more administrators, whose ranks grew 36 percent over the past 10 years. Over the same time, the number of classified employees — front-line workers in clerical, technical and maintenance jobs — grew 22 percent and enrollment 26 percent.The growth in administrative jobs has drawn criticism, from front-line classified workers and faculty who think the UO has bloated its managerial ranks at the expense of other needs. But Penny Daugherty, the UO’s affirmative action director who also coordinates non-classified hiring, said it’s more a matter of catching up. …
Enrollment up 26%, TT faculty up 9%, and administrators up 36%.
And Penny Daugherty is now the highest level UO administrator who will publicly comment on administrative bloat. That is what Harry Truman would call passing the buck, President Lariviere.
UO has certainly reduced the local unemployment rate for incompetent administrators.
The problem of disappearing TT faculty jobs is troubling and endemic throughout academia. However, it’s wrong to equate this with increasing non-academic staff. Many universities have bloated administrations, but the UO is not one of them. Perhaps the admins here aren’t the sharpest tacks but perhaps there is some fat in the “equity and inclusion” sphere, but in general admins here are overworked and some departments are quite understaffed.
I know faculty don’t always have a great relationship with admins, but believe it or not, sometimes your problems can be fixed with more, or at least different, admins, not fewer.
Bad data makes favoritism and cronyism much easier – that’s why our top administrators don’t want good data.
I would love to see some data comparing UO to other universities on this the admin cost dimension. If I were a UO administrator, I would insist on seeing this data. I’m guessing there are understaffed and overstaffed depts.
But the number that was given to us at the furlough meeting by Jim Bean was that we spend 38% of our peers on administration. Laughable.
From what I see the recent growth in administrative spending – which has continued under Lariviere – was done without any serious evidence as to which departments needed to grow and which were bloated.
Just Bean, Dyke, and Tomlin making decisions on the basis of favoritism and hunches.
The Union had the best data on this I’ve seen, because Howard Bunsis of EMU got the Delta project data and dug through it with a comb.
What does it say about UO’s administration that IR doesn’t have good data on this posted on their website? Or has JP Monroe posted it, and I’m missing it?