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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

This isn't an issue, despite the article's implication otherwise. Being a president of a college isn't exactly a low-impact position: in addition to being a public emissary to the college, they send the majority of their time on the road, raising money for their endowment. Colleges who offer poor compensation for their presidents will generally receive a commensurate return on their investment (though I'd love to see a normalized graph of presidential salary to yearly fundraising, as a point of comparison.)

(If you're interested in examining bloat and waste in universities, I recommend faculty-to-administrator ratio as a jumping-off point.)

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Right. As the alum, I don't want my university to skimp on its President or on fundraising. It's a small part of the budget but a major impact on how much money goes into the school. I'm far more interested in controlling bottom line costs (administrators, faculty salaries, construction). It doesn't seem to me that the salaries of university presidents (or the financial managers of the university endowments) are responsible for growing tuition. I feel like having an administrator for every imaginable function and the demolition and replacement of perfectly serviceable academic buildings might be more of a factor...

Construction (at least with public institutions) tends to come from different a completely separate place than general operating budgets. I'd argue that this is an issue in of itself (that it's so comparatively easy to spend money in such a manner), but I think from the college's perspective its generally rational, as they aren't allowed the luxury of weighing rebuilding a nine-year-old science lab (as is occurring at my alma mater) against smarter ways to spend that money.

>I recommend faculty-to-administrator ratio as a jumping-off point.

Anyone have an idea as to where I can get this data for US universities? Google yields some studies, but I'd like to see a list of each university's ratio.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to find the administrative numbers. First stop would be the Education Department's IPEDS database. The Carnegie Foundation would be the next place, although it is classification (high/low, etc) not primary data, it might meet your needs or point you to another data source.

With millions of your countrymen without basic health care, shelter and food, you think it's not a problem that someone makes $1 million a year? Wow.

I think the solution is that everyone should get subsidized health care, shelter, and food. I don't think you should need to work to have these things.

That's how it goes it many developed countries.

I don't get why we have free public education, but not these other things which are more essential.

Even with all the problems that this (or any other nation) has, do you really think that it would help if every single individual made under $1M/year (which I admit is a big salary, but it is not outrageous, in the marketplace of talent, in this big world)?

If someone provides this value, then they are this valuable. If they don't, then the salary should be lower. It is that simple.

Or, to put it in entrepreneur terms: If I start a company and sell it for $100M, and I keep $20M for myself, is this wrong, because there is hunger in the world? No!

PG has an essay about this. http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html tl;dr: If you take away inequality, you take away the appetite for people to take any risks, because there will be no payout. You will then have fewer entrepreneurs, leading to fewer big companies, and fewer jobs. Read the article, it is an interesting perspective on the matter.

Go back to reddit.

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