This is a ponderable piece on the current financial situation colleges and universities have found themselves in. Who benefits from the money coming into a school? Hint: It’s probably not the faculty or the students.

Here’s an excerpt:

An interesting point to consider comes from the U.S. Department of Education, which surveyed nearly 3,000 colleges and reported, “Colleges have added managers and support personnel at a steady, vigorous clip over the past 20 years, new research shows, far outpacing the growth in student enrollment and instructors.”



Not only are the numbers of administrative personnel growing rapidly, the salaries and benefits they command are taking a large amount out of the universities’ revenues. The same cannot be said of faculty members. As an example, at Eastern Michigan University, our faculty salaries and benefits are less than 25% of the total expenses. The school has experienced a decline in instruction expenses in recent years, meaning that the core academic operations – teaching and research – are now a smaller piece of the pie. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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