Jay Greene, administrative bloat, and “Snoozester”

In a follow-up to his report a few weeks ago about university and college budgets, earlier this week Jay Greene described an $11,000 contract at the University of Central Arkansas for a program to make sure students wake up on time. Sure, it's a complete waste of money. It would be cheaper to put up a website at the university titled, "How to set your cell phone's alarm" or even "How to shop for an alarm clock at a nearby store." Maybe the university could make "able to set an alarm" as one of the admission criteria. Insert your own joke here.

Contracts such as UCA's "Snoozester" program are easy pickings for ridicule, but I am not sure how important this little tidbit is. Or the University of Arkansas's hog statues. Or my university's topiary bull (which the administration swears up and down came from donated money, which makes me wonder at the values of that particular donor, but at least it wasn't your or my tax money). In a billion-dollar budget such as at my university, I would be very surprised if there aren't at least a few idiotic $10,000 expenditures every year. Every such example I hear of irks me, especially in hard economic times, but I'd rather focus on million-dollar problems.

And at least the Snoozester program was purchased in the service of academic goals (getting students to class). One of the difficulties of analyzing university expenditures is that the spending categories reported to the federal government do not cleanly split "academic, education-oriented" from "fluff" or even "clearly not related to instruction." A faculty member is counted as instruction-related… but what about advisors? Or others who help keep students on track but aren't counted as instruction? And what about faculty time spent on research?What if that research time is spent with students, teaching them how to do it properly?

Or, to take another example, consider the IPEDS "Other professionals" category, which is the main contributor to the data set Greene examined. In the Goldwater Institute report, Greene abbreviated the definition, eliminating some job categories that are clearly education- or research-related:

A primary function or occupational activity category used to classify persons employed for the primary purpose of performing academic support, student service, and institutional support, whose assignments would require either a baccalaureate degree or higher or experience of such kind and amount as to provide a comparable background. Included in this category are all employees holding titles such as business operations specialists; buyers and purchasing agents; human resources, training, and labor relations specialists; management analysts; meeting and convention planners; miscellaneous business operations specialists; financial specialists; accountants and auditors; budget analysts; financial analysts and advisors; financial examiners; loan counselors and officers; computer specialists; computer and information scientists, research; computer programmers; computer software engineers; computer support specialists; computer systems analysts; database administrators; network and computer systems administrators; network systems and data communication analysts; counselors, social workers, and other community and social service specialists; counselors; social workers; health educators; clergy; directors, religious activities and education; lawyers; librarians, curators, and archivists; museum technicians and conservators; librarians; artists and related workers; designers; athletes, coaches, umpires; dancers and choreographers; music directors and composers; chiropractors; dentists; dietitians and nutritionists; optometrists; pharmacists; physicians and surgeons; podiatrists; registered nurses; therapists; and veterinarians. (emphasis added)

Greene and his coauthors never acknowledged that counselors and librarians are among the employees they claim as administrative bloat unrelated to instruction or research.

In the end, the higher-ed expenditure and occupational categories analyzed in various reports are largely for the purposes of arbitrary reporting purposes. I sympathize with Greene's desire to cut down on perceived bloat: every dollar spent on something I consider to be fluff is money that's unavailable for faculty salaries. And given that Greene works at a university with a sumptuous football stadium, I can understand the suspicion that a great deal of spending either is unrelated to or undermines the educational mission of colleges and universities. But the personnel and financial reporting categories are not functional categories, and it's important to understand the difference.