Something feels really off when I read that for 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrators.[a]
[a] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptabl...
Only if a "bad year" is one where the majority of college-age students in the world are precluded from applying to college due to natural disasters or the like. A realistic "bad year" would mean that the same number of students are admitted, but Stanford breaks some informal non-poaching agreements with Harvard / Yale / Princeton, or perhaps admits some students at a lower bar than the administration was hoping.
But https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts shows somewhat different numbers.
https://reason.com/2022/12/01/students-at-yale-faced-mental-...
But digging in it seems they may have been a little sloppy in their statement.
As sad as it may be, Poe's Law[0] really is a thing:
Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that,
without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any
parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers
for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
Of course, there seem to be a lot of administrators these days if all the articles are right, so perhaps there are now extra ones doing nothing particularly useful or administrators whose job is to make policy.’
There is no administrator that actually helps students with daily tasks.
I'd say an alternate time[0] (up to ~50 years ago) rather than an alternate world.
That said, domestic servants are still common today in some parts of the world.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/liaise
amluto notes: >"There is no administrator that actually helps students with daily tasks."<
We graciously thank you for pointing out this oversight and shall take measures immediately to correct it and ensure it never happens again!
Major universities aren't primarily about educating undergraduates, and of course graduate students (about half of that student population at Stanford) are essentially "employees" from a economic production perspective. So really it's about 8k kids paying to learn near the activities of 10k researchers and academics, and the 16k administrators are just the staff needed to keep those 10k workers productive. Which... sounds about right to me?
That's the same logic you see on Fox Business when guests demand that we defund the entire federal government because something they don't agree with got funded. Whether or not you personally see value isn't really the issue here. You get that, right?
Even granting that the post is likely to ineffective and silly (something I'd agree with, FWIW) lots of people at the school value things like inclusion, community and "integrative learning" and want to see the school prioritize it in its staffing decisions.
Also post-secondary tuition has been beating general inflation, but lagging many other areas. This link says it's been growing at 4.63% for the last decade, which is less than most real estate markets. The idea of tuition being "out of hand" is mostly just a meme.
It makes it trivially easy to bait mainstream liberals into seeming to embrace wacky ideas. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
That may be true, but why would you do that here?
There is literally no genuine reason why any of this has to exist at the scale it does. Standford's 16,000 administrative staff are not solving problem core to what a University does; they are solving problems they invented, or they're simply not actually solving problems at all, but will nonetheless defend their paychecks with their life.
Diversity & Inclusion is a totally reasonable thing to want. What impact have they had? In 2021, Stanford's admissions statics were: 28% white, 25% asian, 18% hispanic, 7% black. Compare that to US-wide statistics: 75% white, 19% hispanic, 14% black, 6% asian (its multiple choice). 65% of Stanford's admissions did not come from California, so this is a more fair comparison than just California's population.
What someone with a title in that department would say is: well, we've made progress, but there's clearly still more work to do. Internally; they're likely just as frustrated as anyone; because they'd know better than anyone that the system is wholly rigged against their ability to make equity a priority. The system, in any organization, optimizes only for one thing: Revenue. Any change which could hurt revenue (in Stanford's case: maybe reducing international admissions) will never be given serious consideration.
That's the critical piece: when a Fox News rightwinger says they want to defund the federal government, or a leftwinger says they want to defund the police: Absolutely, they're overreacting with respect to the scope of their specific issue with the system they're criticizing. But our systems have become too big within which to create meaningful change and these systems' reward functions are so perverted to any generally optically good goal that what little people can influence them is always implemented through the lens of that reward function (in nearly every case, the reward function is revenue, but there are cases like the Police where the reward function is more-so something like "keeping officers safe"; ultimately this is the same reward function though, its "keeping the system's insiders happy").
Its worth being abundantly clear about this: these giga-systems like Stanford or the Federal Government are another symptom of the low interest rate environment. Its always macroeconomics. Every good and bad thing that has ever happened has macroeconomic causes. If we end up entering a decade+ period of more expensive money, you'll slowly start wondering if your statement that "the school should staff someone dedicated to inclusion and community" makes sense. The fact that they are capable of hiring people to review the guest lists of parties is a problem of excess; not a symptom of the system approaching an ideal state.
Universities are a tremendously interesting case study on what impacts cheap money has had on our macroeconomic system; because there's literally nowhere else with cheaper money. Students bundle up on loans, which they can't default on, and thus there's zero acceptance criteria for loan eligibility. What isn't paid for in loans comes from donations and investment returns, during the largest bull market in the history of economics. All of this will come crashing down in the next five years, and Universities which let themselves balloon up to solve problems that few of their customers (students) actually care about will have a substantially harder time adjusting than one which, say, never hired twenty people to review the guest lists of parties in the first place.
My point was exactly the converse: let's look at evidence for the "general problem of systemic bureaucracy" instead of using ridiculous job titles as a stand-in straw man to beat up.
Laughing at a woke job title is a logical fallacy. If you want to make a broad point that Universities spend more on administration than necessary, I'd want to see numbers comparing them to similar private organizations, etc...
Over the past four decades, the rise in the cost of post-secondary education has outpaced everything else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition_in_the_United_...
The cost attending a comparable elite university in other countries is often multiple times lower. For example, tuition at Cambridge University for British citizens is ~$9K/year: https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.undergra...
The only people I personally know who think bureaucratic bloat isn't a big problem at elite universities in the US are themselves members of that bureaucracy. All the college professors I personally know think bureaucratic bloat is a problem. All the college students I personally know (mostly relatives) also think bureaucratic bloat is a problem.
Because the costs are hidden. Ask them if they'd continue to fund that bureaucracy if they knew that cutting it would cut their tuition in half. I think you'll see a very different result.
> The idea of tuition being "out of hand" is mostly just a meme.
You're in a bubble. US tuition is the most expensive in the world.
Probably true. Although you might find considerable disagreement as to what, exactly, “community” means.
> and want to see the school prioritize it in its staffing decisions.
Prioritize how?
If you mean that hiring for unrelated positions should be require DEI statements, I think you’ll find this is an unpopular view.
If you mean that one should choose one’s hires inclusively such that one preferentially hires people of specific races, ethnicities, etc, then you may find that this is unpopular, or illegal, or dubiously legal, or maybe even unproductive for the purpose of improving the degree to which one’s staff is a representative sample of the population.
If you mean that a university should hire such that the student community feels like a community, then I bet many people agree but may feel that the universities are not actually succeeding.
At the department level, there were of course deans, provosts, counselors, admissions people, etc etc etc, but even that departmental overhead wasn't more than maybe a 1:8 ratio compared to the number of grad students.
I'm sure there was similar or even greater proportional administrative staff once you got to the university level, but even if you include every single employee in big departments like Research and Graduate Admissions, it wasn't anywhere close to even half the number of students. I know this because the entirety of the administration fit into a few old buildings in half the campus, while the rest of the buildings on that half and all of the buildings in the newer part of campus were filled with labs and classrooms.
So in the ensuing twenty years, administrators have either gotten massively worse at their jobs and required far more of them to accomplish the same things (running directly counter to the general trends in worker productivity in that time), or they've created an immense amount of new make-work for themselves and their colleagues. Articles like this point pretty strongly at the latter explanation.
I feel that since they have no shortage of money, they don't feel the pinch of hiring more admins. Thus the number of admins has increased.
Only if you close your eyes and shut your ears and not count any of the facilities, HR, finance, legal, admin, media, procurement, and janitorial staff.
I personally haven't seen a lot of SWEs spending much of their time paying the power bill, laying out offices, cleaning toilets, or sending out W-2s.
Outsourcing the tail doesn't mean it doesn't exist (it might make it slightly more efficient, or it might just be a convenience bevause it gives you someone else that is liable in the event of a mistake.)
In another place we had maybe 30-40 two person offices, and 3 of them were occupied by HR/finance/admin/facilities etc...
So 1/100 does not sound very realistic (maybe for all-remote orgs?), but 1/10 I can easily believe.
There guest list two weeks in advance seems useless for that.
From memory (the last time this came up) That number includes staff at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (a National Lab, Stanford University Medical Center (which runs two hospitals and a bunch of clinics), Stanford University Press, and all of the research administration needed to manage the (many) grants Stanford gets.
These are admin-intensive things: federal contracting involves lots of paperwork, healthcare + insurance is a nightmare too. Plus, many of these involve staff that aren’t students (nurses at the hospital, scientists at SLAC, etc), all of whom still need “normal” admin things like parking, HR, and payroll, so the per-student denominator is a bit misleading.
And they have their own police force, own thousand of houses, and all the infra too (including streets, roads, sewers, etc).
Stanford is immensely rich, just considering their land holdings alone...
Are administrators exclusively for administrative work? Or does this also include people like teaching aides, lab assistants, etc. which aren't exactly "faculty" but also aren't doing, well, administrative work?
On the face of it, this number sounds completely bonkers. So bonkers that I suspect that there's some nuance to it and that these "administrators" are doing more than just "administrating". Maybe not, but really needs some more detail than this.
These schools really are bureaucratic monsters. They need to make more money so they can hire more fundraisers so they can make more money etc.
1. https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-university-is...
Um, lots.
Very much not niche, not tiny firms catering to the even more stupidly wealthy than any individual human: customers aren’t always natural persons.
It’s the faculty that are replaceable. Students go to a university because they like the administration. It’s like a resort.
(The faculty may be adding value by being in academia at all, but it doesn’t matter for students which particular ones you meet. It could if you wanted to enter academia yourself, but you definitely don’t want to do that.)
Students and administration will always disagree.
Ergo, any requirement that can be abused by administration eventually will be abused. Exactly as apparently happened here. The only check is to prevent that lever from ever existing.
Anarchy has many problems, but its foremost strength is standing in direct opposition to outside control.
And that's an unfulfilled and critical need in our modern society, as liberties are bricked up bit by bit.
(And before someone tosses it in, we can have the militia vs police end debate some other time, because "a bunch of college kids getting in trouble" is far short of anything that serious to themselves or the surrounding community)
> How the student group will prevent members and guests from bringing in their own alcohol and what they will do if they observe someone bringing in their own alcohol.
(Note: I am not suggesting the university isn't trying to protect their own interests. I am suggesting they are doing more than protecting their own interests.)
> All undergraduate student groups and residences may host only alcohol-free parties or events during Admit Weekend.
> Beer, wine and packaged pre-mixed alcoholic beverages (e.g. wine coolers, pre-mixed cocktail or seltzer drinks under 20% alcohol by volume, etc.) are the only alcoholic beverages that can be present at on-campus undergraduate student parties
> Shots of hard alcohol are prohibited at all parties.
> Games and activities that promote high-risk drinking or rapid alcohol consumption are not allowed on campus.
> While California has legalized certain recreational cannabis usage among persons aged 21 years or older, cannabis still remains illegal under federal law. […] For the avoidance of doubt, the possession, use, storage, delivery, cultivation, distribution and sale of cannabis in any form is prohibited on all Stanford University property, including university-owned and leased buildings, housing and parking lots. Cannabis is also not permitted at university events or while conducting university business.
> All undergraduate student groups and residences may host only alcohol-free parties or events during Admit Weekend.
Not sure what point you’re trying to make.
Underage Stanford students getting drunk is one thing (and one can quite reasonably debate the merits of the university trying to prevent it, trying to make it safer when it happens, etc m). Stanford students supplying alcohol that gets high school students drunk is another issue entirely.
When I was an undergrad, we took this extremely seriously. You do not drink with the prospective students. You do not host a party where you might mistake a prospective freshman for a Stanford student.
Even ignoring safety and liability, the purpose of going to a school like Stanford is not to get drunk. The prospective freshman have about 48 hours to learn what Stanford has to offer, and doing so drunk or hung over benefits no one.
Here’s an article about it. This policy apparently dates to 2001:
https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/03/students-reflect-on-adm...
(Other groups were surely less responsible.)
From the link you shared:
- The Party Review Committee will meet Tuesday each week during the Autumn, Winter and Spring quarters to review party requests submitted via CardinalEngage.
- The Party Review Committee will consist of representation from the following units/departments including, but is not limited to:
- Office of Substance Use Programs, Education & Resources (SUPER)
- Office of Student Engagement (OSE)
- Residential Education (ResEd)
- Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL)
- Residential & Dining Enterprises: Housing Operations (R&DE)
- Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS)
- Stanford University Fire Marshal’s Office (SUFMO)Jesus Christ. Kill it with fire before it spreads!
College students are adults, why the fuck is the college managing what they do off campus at all? You go to school for education, not for the school to manage your entire life.
That Americans have become increasingly okay with colleges being surrogate parents for literal adults is just bizarre.
It’s not. Stanford’s campus is huge, and almost all undergrads live on it. The parties in question were generally held on campus, often in university-owned and managed buildings and often on the front lawns. The university had insurance (I don’t remember the precise details).
And, to be clear, the university was generally fairly supportive. You could host a party in university space. You could coordinate with student who were not part of the hosting group to throw genuinely interesting parties. You were allowed to serve alcohol on university property under a fairly uniform set of rules, and guests knew what to expect. If the police showed up, the hosts wouldn’t get in trouble if they followed the rules. If an out of control guest set of the fire alarm, the host would generally be treated quite favorably. If a guest was out of control and the host needed to call the police or medical services, they would come and not bust the host. (And hosts were strongly encouraged to send excessively drunk people seek medical care if needed.)
Part of the point of preregistration was to make sure that everyone was prepared. If you’re going to buy wristbands, post flyers, etc, filling out a quick web form is not a great hardship.
Of course there were obnoxious parts of the policies, but overall I think the university did fairly well here.
When the students themselves are coughing up the $80k/year then you will see a permissive atmosphere. Or you'll find them reallocating their resources to $40k colleges and the rest on alcohol?
Well, college students are mostly not adults. They are young, inexperienced and incompletely developed intellectually and emotionally. This is nothing new and colleges know much more about this than HN does.
It was the same way when I was in college and it will remain so as long as we have colleges. Colleges have always had to keep an eye on students and rein in problematic behavior.
They are young, inexperienced and incompletely developed intellectually and
emotionally.
Except we know this is not true, because plenty of other countries don't expect universities to micromanage their students' personal lives.
Your comment is a great example of, "well this is how it currently works in America, therefore it must be this way universally for all time." Please try to account for other countries existing before issuing sweeping generalizations about human nature. There's more to the world than just the US.
TulliusCicero says >"Your comment is a great example of, 'well this is how it currently works in America..."<"
Yes, this is part of what I was saying. Another part (also implied) is "that is how it was when I went to college (in USA)...". There are many underlying unspoken implications in speech, I haven't the time to tell you all of them for this particular sentence nor do I think that you would be interested.
>"...therefore it must be this way universally for all time.'"*<
No, this is NOT what I was saying. YOU implied this and YOU said this.
You are more eloquent and communication speeds up when you speak for yourself. Do not speak for me.
The above are all features of greek life at Stanford. You know why sorroties dont allow alcohol parties? Because adults who finished college long time ago run the larger organization and these are rules they impose. This has nothing to do with spontaneous self organization of students.
In what adult world do adult throw temper tamptrum for years because salamander took precedence over sand hill build during drunken party years ago? In what adult world is "social life" equated with fraternities? Like, in adult world, lakes on institution property do get sometimes close for public for whole host of reasons, without that being framed as "war on fun".
Unimportant side not is, if you go to university primary for education and do not want have large part of life mandated by institution, you stay out of greek life (as majority of students do).
As far as "level 3" is concerned, are you referring to this scale[0]?
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "i gotta be me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "i can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
My fraternity and half a dozen other groups would host parties with 2-300 people each weekend. Most groups hosting these large parties had practices in place to ensure everyone was safe (e.g. sober drivers, cutting people off who were too intoxicated, etc.).
Attendance was more valuable when events conflicted because it became a social status symbol. That being said, prominent groups coordinated with each other. I also disagree with characterizing throwing a party during finals as a “facepalm”. My friend group always prioritized studying and grades, and I believe others should as well. I believe to a greater extent that they should be given the freedom to make mistakes, or have fun if they believe themselves able to manage both their studies and their social life.
I doubt that diligent campus security could do a better job than responsible and respectful hosts and friends. Giving students resources to host safe parties would be more effective since they are closer to the source of issues and can stop small issues before they become bigger issues. The same resources could encourage other safe practices like not over-imbibing, traveling with trusted friends, etc., and would keep students safer than any campus security could, while giving students more freedom and responsibility.
I base this assessment in part off of personal experience. At my school one year, a girl went to a frat party with her friend, and got too drunk. The fraternity made sure she and her friend had a ride home. Her friend made sure she got to her dorm room safe. After getting home, she wandered out of her building to the nearby fire department, which neighbors the famous police office. She fell asleep in front of the bay door and was run over and killed by a firefighter responding to a call who did not see her.
This story demonstrates 1) the effort that other students made to ensure safety and 2) the failure of campus security to catch a massive safety issue right under their noses. I feel terrible for the girl and her family. Their experience was tragic and heartbreaking. That tragedy resulted does not negate the fact that all involved did everything they could (shy of not having the party) to ensure safety and campus security could not have done anything more without tucking her in to bed and watching her all night, which I find unreasonable.
As you said, parties can be dangerous. Hosts and attendees being cautious and responsible will go much further than more vigilant campus security.
Stanford was also known for allowing students to drink with friends in their own rooms, in undergrad dorms, with the doors open. It was quite strongly discouraged to close the doors when drinking. These weren’t “parties” for these purposes. I think this was an excellent policy — it encouraged being social, it helped keep everyone safe, and it steered undergrad drinking in a more mature and safer direction. Sadly, IMO, this is no longer the case:
https://stanforddaily.com/2021/09/20/from-the-community-stan...
I don’t know how the actual bureaucracy and effects of the policies have changed since I was there.
Pre-registration of large (“level 3”) parties has been a thing for a long time. But when I was there, one pre-registered a party, one did so online, and I imagine a single administrator could keep up with the entire workload.
This made sense for a few reasons, including:
Parties can be dangerous affairs, and campus security needs to know where to direct its attention. (There is no need for campus security to be hostile to parties, but a good campus police force should help ensure everyone’s safety.)
Student groups throwing parties generally want good attendance, and pre-registration allows them to coordinate dates.
Pre-registration helps avoid facepalms like throwing a party during finals.
For what it’s worth, the actual policy:
https://vaden.stanford.edu/super/education/parties/party-pla...
Isn’t that crazy.