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Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

> Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a]

Are administrators exclusively for administrative work? Or does this also include people like teaching aides, lab assistants, etc. which aren't exactly "faculty" but also aren't doing, well, administrative work?

On the face of it, this number sounds completely bonkers. So bonkers that I suspect that there's some nuance to it and that these "administrators" are doing more than just "administrating". Maybe not, but really needs some more detail than this.

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Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article recently [1] about how Princeton's endowment generates more than enough income to fund the entire school forever- no need for tuition. Yet, they still employ hundreds (thousands? I'm guessing given I know USC employs over a hundred full-time fundraisers, then all the fund managers, etc.) of people as part of their fundraising machine.

These schools really are bureaucratic monsters. They need to make more money so they can hire more fundraisers so they can make more money etc.

1. https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-university-is...

Even if it's including all support staff that seems like kind of an insane ratio to me.

"Seems like", sure. But a lot of thing "seem" this or that until you actually look at the details and context. Without that, it's essentially meaningless information.

Sure. How many businesses have more employees than "customers"? It's not a perfect analog but it's not unreasonable to ask "what are we really doing here?" either.

> How many businesses have more employees than "customers"?

Um, lots.

How many of those have customers who generate less than the average employee's salary in revenues?

Other than some niche tiny firms catering to the stupidly wealthy (the 0.1% and above) like a dynastic family investment fund, I can’t think of any. Can you elaborate on some examples?

> Other than some niche tiny firms catering to the stupidly wealthy (the 0.1% and above) like a dynastic family investment fund, I can’t think of any.

Very much not niche, not tiny firms catering to the even more stupidly wealthy than any individual human: customers aren’t always natural persons.

The reason it makes sense is the common view of “administrators are useless” is backwards.

It’s the faculty that are replaceable. Students go to a university because they like the administration. It’s like a resort.

(The faculty may be adding value by being in academia at all, but it doesn’t matter for students which particular ones you meet. It could if you wanted to enter academia yourself, but you definitely don’t want to do that.)

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