Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the giving-them-a-lecture dept.

Meaningless tasks and faux-business strategies prioritised by British universities have skewed their real roles of teachinig and research. Looking at decades of university growth, most expansion has been by university administration, not faculty. On the other side of the pond, one US study found that between 1975 and 2008 while the number of faculty had grown about 10% the number of administrators had grown 221% during the same period. In the UK, the large majority of universities have more administrators than they do faculty members. We are on the way to realizing an “all-administrative university” if nothing is done. André Spicer at The Guardian comments that since universities are broke, we should cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:15PM (1 child)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:15PM (#558444) Homepage Journal

    At my college, 10 years ago, we had just over 50% teaching staff. That's now down to 40%. Looked at another way: the ratio of admin to teachers used to be 1:1; it is now 1.5:1. That's a dramatic increase.

    Needless to say, we are under continuous budget pressure. Equally needless to say, the budget pressure doesn't lead to the obvious solution: eliminating 1/3 of the administrative positions, to bring us back to 50% teaching staff.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 25 2017, @02:36AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Friday August 25 2017, @02:36AM (#558704) Homepage

    Each teacher has their own administrator??!

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.