Category: Administration

So, thanks to UBC, everyone wants to talk about Boards of Governors these days.  How they’re not transparent enough, how they’re not representative enough, etc.  What should we make of these claims? On the transparency thing, I think the radicals have at least half a point, regarding some universities at least.  Practice varies from one institution to the next, but it’s not hard to find some boards where harmful secret practices exist.  Some parts of board meetings must be in

In yesterday’s blog, I ended on the observation that over the period 2000-2012 at the 12 major universities where we have data (UBC, SFU, Alberta, Calgary, USask, Manitoba, Carleton, York, Toronto, Waterloo, Western, and Memorial) the rate of growth of support staff and administration was 16% faster than the rate of growth of academic staff.  To wit: Figure 1: Growth in Support/Admin Positions vs Faculty Positions, 12 Large Institutions, 2000-2012               But that’s a 12-institution

So, last week we talked about growth in non-academic staff; however, due to data limitations, we could only talk about dollars rather than numbers.  This is because no one actually collects non-academic staff numbers in Canada, and so most of the data (and anecdotes) around “academic bloat” comes from the US.  Last winter, I became sufficiently frustrated with fact-free arguments about “bloated administration” that I devoted part of my holiday to gathering data on this phenomenon.  I never quite finished the project back then, but