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Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

> as long as they first outsource the football coach and the President's personal administrative staff.

This is bitter and pointless. At many (most?) US universities with football programs, the program is with cost neutral or profitable.

Saying that the president should outsource his staff isn't compelling. You should be making an argument for why outsourcing IT is bad if that's what you think, not just saying "well then outsource this other thing!" as if that's an argument. Or will you actually be happy if the president outsources his/her staff?

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There are two points to my argument:

1) the administration cannot properly value IT because they (likely) do not understand how it works

2) the administration likely values their own staff and their athletics much more than the revenue they generate, and thus would never outsource those staff even if it was costing the school a lot

Regarding (1), I would point out that it's unlikely they realize how inefficient having remote IT can be, but they'd realize how inefficient it would be to have remote coaching. For instance, the reason that you wouldn't outsource a football coach is that they need to have direct, personal communication with their team. Having someone in a foreign country "coach" your team would be very unproductive. Likewise, a President in another country would never be able to keep up with the many meetings with professors, deans, and bureaucrats that keep the school running.

So, my point is more that a President would easily recognize the problems in outsourcing certain jobs, but not realize that many of the same problems will occur when you outsource IT. The truth is that infrastructure is often extremely complicated, with many interdependent features. But when you aren't in the same location, you cannot as easily manage it.

> the administration cannot properly value IT because they (likely) do not understand how it works

If they cannot value IT then you should expect them to contract it to the lowest bidder. You don't pay a premium for something you don't value.

Well it's a university. Maybe the president should put in some effort?

Outsourcing IT is one of those things that seriously diminishes the academic credibility of a educational institution. Outsourcing IT is something I would expect from, say, ITT Technical Institute or Trump University.

I'm not saying they should outsource. I'm saying that if you start with the claim that "the administration cannot properly value IT", the logical conclusion is outsourcing. Don't start by assuming incompetence if the goal is to argue in favor of a sound decision. Make a real argument in favor of in-house staff. Basically calling the administration incompetent is not an argument against the decision.

I already did in my second paragraph.

But if you need the obvious answer: Outsourcing IT in an academic institution where ostensibly the operation of said infrastructure should be a valuable topic for research means that somebody isn't thinking.

Not to mention the issue of outsourcing out of country private data.

There are more obvious answers also. It all depends whether you're thinking about long term success or just the next quarter.

> Outsourcing IT in an academic institution where ostensibly the operation of said infrastructure should be a valuable topic for research means that somebody isn't thinking.

IT is not a viable research topic for a medical institution.

https://www.ucsf.edu/

That is the sort of attitude I would have expected to encounter from someone in the 1990s.

This link is only two clicks away from the link that you provided.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/12/405331/ucsf-joins-multi-un...

> That is the sort of attitude I would have expected to encounter from someone in the 1990s.

This is not a rebuttal.

> This link is only two clicks away from the link that you provided.

I fail to see the relevance of this. UCSF literally has no school of computer science or engineering. It's absurd to suggest that they should create one in order to handle their IT needs. Also, FYI, many (most?) schools' IT departments are separate from their actual research departments.

If UCSF decides to partner with Johnson & Johnson, will you take that as evidence that UCSF should start a school of janitorial studies to handle their housekeeping needs?

Medicine is interdisciplinary.

Medicine requires engineering skills. Prosthetics? How about that metal plate holding a femur together? You think they buy that off the shelf at Wal-Mart? Engineering is without a doubt the worst counterexample you could have provided.

As for IT systems in medicine, just ignoring the digitizing of medical records, there are countless improvements that can be made in medicine at the IT level. If IT and research are completely partitioned and cannot interact, then they aren't considering the effect of IT on medicine. That means they're trending towards being a sub par institution.

And your facetious J&J example is still entirely applicable. Deunionization of support and janitorial staff has caused worse overall outcomes for hospitals. Considering how dangerous staph infections are in hospitals, you've provided another stupid example. I'd much rather go to a hospital with unionized and well paid janitorial services than one saving 20% in costs and profiting off of minimum wage janitors.

Your lack of imagination makes me hope you're not in charge of anything important.

You think the guys designing prosthetics should be administering SAP systems for UCSF? They have the appropriate skills for this and it's a good use of their time?

I'm not sure what you're even trying to argue about anymore. My comment was specifically addressing the idea that universities should be funding their IT efforts with researchers, which is in general a poor use of research dollars, but especially for a university that literally has no relevant research program or school. You're not even trying to respond to my actual criticism. You're engaging in pedantry and rambling about staph infections instead.

> Your lack of imagination makes me hope you're not in charge of anything important.

Your incoherent responses and abrasiveness make be fairly confident you are not.

"You think the guys designing prosthetics should be administering SAP systems for UCSF?" Strawman your favourite argument? Of course I'm not arguing that.

I'm arguing that a medical academic institution shouldn't prevent possible avenues of medical research by outsourcing key implementations of health care to the lowest bidder. That includes janitorial, engineering, IT, ...

You don't staff janitorial or IT with researchers, but you staff it with people who will be able to work with the researchers. Outsourced IT kills the possibility. Thanks for the janitorial strawman. Keep in mind that doing research with outsourced IT will likely result in the provider manipulating data to provide whatever they think is the desired result from the client. Any research about improving IT in medicine will have zero value.

The reason why I said I hope you're not in charge of anything is because your statement quoted below offloads responsibility from those making decisions. It sounds like a strategy for deflecting responsibility and blaming others for your own lack of expertise:

"I'm saying that if you start with the claim that "the administration cannot properly value IT", the logical conclusion is outsourcing."

I think you're arguing it backwards: the claim isn't that it's impossible to value IT but rather that it's more work than sorting a column in Excel. The incompetence charge comes from making major changes to a critical function without being willing to first put in the work to understand those functions or critically compare the options.

That's especially questionable given the context for rising costs: switching to electronic medical records. That's not inefficiency but rather a change in the business and one which is important to future success. A good senior manager would make sure they understand the implications deeply before making changes to a core function.

Only 24 schools generate more money than they spend: http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athlet...

That's all athletics, not just football.

Although total expenses and the number of athletes have increased, budget allocations for three major sports have remained steady. Football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball garnered 13 percent, 5 percent and 4 percent of athletics expenses, respectively

I wonder what percentage of revenue the football programs generate relative to their cost.

You can't have just football: Title IX.

I'm aware, but that doesn't mean that football in itself isn't making the university money. The fact that the university funnels the football surplus (assuming they have one) into other athletics doesn't mean football isn't making money. I don't believe universities are prohibited from structuring their athletics in a way that is profitable. They are simply required to provide equivalent opportunities for women.

College football is common target for cries that its funding should be cut, but from what I understand, football profits are largely subsidizing other athletics at many universities.

That's ridiculous. Having football obligates the universities to spend a bunch of money elsewhere. That is part of the bill for having football! You wouldn't claim that your company ex costs is profitable and expect people to take you seriously; they'd cry what about the costs! (Wait, maybe this isn't a good example...)

As gp points out, net athletics almost always lose money. Since having football, once all required costs are taking into account, is almost always a money-losing proposition, it's very fair to ask why our universities should be subsidizing the NFL's development league.

There are at least 24 examples demonstrating that it's possible for a university with a football program to profit from it.

Further, football does not oblige a university to spend on all the athletics they choose to fund. It's easy to imagine that more universities would have profitable athletic programs if they cut more of the net-cost programs. e.g. Rowing and archery and scuba likely cost the university while generating little to no revenue. You could eliminate these for both men and women and thus reduce the overall cost of athletics without violating title IX. (I am not proposing that this would be good or bad, merely possible and cost-saving.)

Looking briefly, though, there are some legitimate articles indicating that profitable football programs are not the majority of cases, so it does appear that the profitability of football in colleges is overstated.

I work at a small selective liberal arts university with a pretty good football and basketball team. There is a feeling and maybe it is backed up by some research, I just don't know, that competitive sports teams attract more applicants.

If you have a larger applicant pool you are considered more selective. Being more selective, overtime, helps the school's 3rd party rankings.

I don't know if it really works out that way but that is the prevailing view. For us the sad part is that football games and basketball games attract very few students in the stands.

My wife and I enjoy going to some games and we are always surprised at how small the student crowd is.

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