My Alma Mater, Dartmouth College, is projecting budget shortfalls of $100 for 2011-2012 fiscal years. According to an email sent out to Alums by David Spalding, the College’s lackey, claims:
growth of expenses continues to outpace revenues
The budget website states:
These numbers entail serious downsizing. Our planning efforts will be intensive and fast-paced, and will include all of Dartmouth – each division, department, and school.
Every educational institution is suffering because of endowment drops related to the economy. Like most liberal-liberal colleges, Dartmouth’s budget shortfalls, much like the federal budget, is caused by out of control spending and lack of institutional control.
Joe Asch, a frequent critic of the Dartmouth administration wrote in an article earlier this year:
…in 1998, the “Administrative Support” line in the audited Statement of Operating Expenses showed spending of only $14,183,000.
By 2007, spending on administrative support was up to $32,608,000. That’s a jump of 130 percent over nine years, a period during which the U.S. Department of Labor’s inflation calculator showed a total increase of only 27 percent.
… After endowment gains of 11 percent, 14 percent and 22 percent in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively, the administration decided to really let the good times roll. From $32,608,000 in 2007, outlays for administrative support in fiscal 2008 shot up to $47,398,000 — an increase from one year to the next of 45.4 percent, in a year when inflation was only 2.45 percent!
… subtracting [legal] costs, you are left with a budget jump of 39.2 percent.
Asch also explains where all this excess money went:
…if you examine the evolution of Dartmouth’s personnel directory from 1997 to 2007, you will find that every administrative office has increased its headcount dramatically.
In 1997, the President’s Office numbered 6.5 full-time employees; 10 years later there were 10. During that time period, the Dean of the Faculty Office went from 14 to 28 full-time employees. The Dean of the College Office went from 16 to 26; the Provost’s Office went from 6.5 to 11.5; and the combined headcount of the First-Year Office, the Office of Student Life and the Office of Residential Life went from 26.5 to 47.
These figures … do not include … “shadow organizations” — added College structures that duplicate the work of dysfunctional parts of the bureaucracy.
All of these bureaucrats receive generous salaries, but their paychecks are only a fraction of the total cost of their presence. Beyond wages, one must take into account the cost of office space, technology and support, professional training and conferences. Additionally, the College’s astoundingly expensive benefits package adds about 45 cents onto each dollar of salary paid out to bureaucrats.
The College’s response was simple. Provost Barry Scherr explained it all away by saying:
…the ratio of Dartmouth’s administrative staff to total students is in line with that of peer institutions…
A 39.2% jump in administrative costs cannot be justified by this explanation. Had the costs not gone up, there would have been a much lower budget shortfall.
$47 million – $14 million = $33 million.
The budget shortfall would have been at least $25 million less than what it is now, had President Wright’s ultra-liberal administrative expansion policies not been implemented. That’s a savings of 25%.
I personally have experience with Wright’s unbounded expansion. For instance, during my sophomore/junior years, the Office of Plurality and Leadership was created, with a high paying director and other associated staff. The stated mission of this organization is:
OPAL aspires to develop socially-conscious leaders who have the disposition, knowledge, and skills to positively influence our ever-changing and diverse society.
OPAL facilitates the academic, social, cultural, and leadership development of undergraduate students and communities by serving as a central resource on issues related to gender, race, culture, sexuality, and socio-economic class.
We already had several advisors catering to the needs of the various groups on campus, such as blacks, Asians, gays, and so on, under the Office of Student Life, which itself has a very similar mission:
Student Life staff members range from skiing and debate coaches to culture specific advisors and our student activities staff. They manage budgets and facilities, advise students organizations, produce large scale programs for the entire campus community, and teach skills from building a cabin to leading an organization.
When it was created, OPAL had about 6-8 staff members. It now has 13 full-time paid staff members, including an “International Student Programs Director.” The erstwhile International Students Office has been transformed into the Office of Visa and Immigration. ISO used to provide the same services as the International Student Programs Director, in addition to its current role of visa processing. Just more bureaucratic red tape.
Another expansion that comes to mind is that of Dean Stuart Lord. He was an Associate Provost and, more importantly, an endowed Dean of the Tucker Foundation – obviously a high paying position. Lord was moved full time into the Provost’s office in 2008, in the middle of the recession, to:
“work strategically” with different parts of campus, and … to develop and manage the office’s diversity plans, which were due for revision.
But, the College’s diversity plans should be managed by the Office of Institutional Diversity & Equity with a staff of 10. What did Lord do that 10 dedicated staffers couldn’t?
Even David Blanchflower, a Dartmouth economics professor and former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee acknowledges this asymmetrical growth:
There’s been a significant growth in non-faculty staff, a nearly unsustainable increase … That would certainly be something you could look at.
Dartmouth’s binge spending has now come to a painful end, but it won’t end Wright’s excesses. I was shocked that the First Year Dean’s Office was reorganized and the First Year Dean was laid off. This office would provide much needed one-on-one support for freshmen.
In the next round of layoffs, the College may even fire faculty members:
College officials have also not yet said whether they will eliminate faculty positions, which could affect potential savings. Tenured and tenure-track faculty members were exempted from last year’s workforce reductions, but no decision has been announced on whether faculty members will be included in the next round of layoffs.
So, it seems to me that the focus is shifting from providing support and education to students to diversity related crap and bureaucratic expansion. Dartmouth should change its mission to “promoting administrative excesses.”
