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Comment by rovolo | Hacker News Reader

Yale is not a representative college. It makes 4x the income from its endowment than from tuition, room, and board. It also has multiple research labs and a hospital. They don't break down the staff (admin) by department, but 2/3 of all faculty are in the school of Medicine, most on the clinical side. I would assume most of the staff (admin) are also working at the hospital.

https://oir.yale.edu/data-browser/faculty-staff/faculty/facu...

Universities are not just educational institutions. You can't just compare students numbers to employee numbers without also examining what the university does.

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Of course Yale isn’t representative, it’s just one data point in a national trend.

I don’t understand your point.

Do you dispute that admin staff have grown at a high rate?

My point is that universities have too much admin and that it’s growth quickly. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to compare this trend without knowing exactly what specific universities do.

I agree that comparing medical system admin staff wouldn’t make sense, and the article I linked excludes medical system and other non-university staff.

My point is that Universities don't just teach. They also perform research, which requires staff. Yale is researched focused and has more grad students than undergrads. Grad students and research faculty require more administrative staff than undergrads. An increase in admin staff could be caused by a shift to more research rather than bloat in undergrad.

For example, a teaching university like Central Washington University has 500 faculty, 500 admin, 11.4k undergrads, and 900 post-grads. They do research at CWU, but their primary focus is teaching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Washington_University

In comparison, UTHealth Houston is a medical university and has 2.1k faculty, 5.3k admin, and 5.2k students. UTHealth requires far more staff than CWU because it has a different focus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_Health_Sci...

Finally, Stanford is a mix of the two and has 2.3k faculty, 15.3k admin!, and 17.2k students. (Stanford includes the clinic staff in their numbers. I think that clinical staff is split between Yale proper and the New Haven hospital.)

https://facts.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/...

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This brings me back to Yale. From the article:

> In 2003: 5,307 undergraduate students ... 3,500 administrators and managers. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on student enrollment, only 600 more students were living and studying at Yale, yet the number of administrators had risen by more than 1,500 — a nearly 45 percent hike.

So the first issue is with the student number. Yale had 12,438 students in 2019, an increase of 1278. This isn't a huge issue because the % increase is the same, but leaving out grad students is a huge oversight.

> 2003-p19(21) 11,160 students; 5,307 undergraduate, and 5,853 ... Graduate [students]

https://your.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2002-2003_annual_f...

> 2019-p7(9) 5,964 undergraduate students ... 3,032 Graduate [students] ... 3,442 [professional] students

https://your.yale.edu/sites/default/files/annual-report-2018...

Secondly, the admin:faculty ratio has decreased. Yale expanded their faculty from 3.2k to 4.9k, which is +1.7k (+53%). This tells me that Yale increased their research focus and are not (necessarily) bloating their undergrad program.

> 2003-p22(24) The University employs approximately 3,200 faculty, 3,500 managerial and professional staff, and 4,000 unionized clerical, technical, service, and maintenance personnel.

https://your.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2002-2003_annual_f...

> 2021-p13(15) With 4,937 faculty, 1,428 postdoctoral associates, 5,066 managerial and professional staff, and 5,205 clerical, technical, service, and maintenance personnel

https://your.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2020-2021-yale-uni...

Research is done by professors and students, not admins.

The overall average trend in the US is for administration costs to increase and instruction costs, relative to admin, to decrease [0]. Some universities will vary, but the trend is important to look at overall.

My point is that the article you linked to is not a data point supporting your assertion that tuition cost increases are caused by more admins.

A) Yale is a research-heavy university so the admin:student ratio shouldn't be expected to be constant. B) Yale's admin:faculty ratio decreased from 2003-2021, directly contradicting your claimed trend.

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