Editor’s Note: Vice President of Administration and Finance Mary Stephens wrote a response to this article for the July 30, 2009 edition of the Summer Forty-Niner. The response can be viewed here.
We are Professors at Cal State Long Beach. We have been stunned to discover that the California State University and our Long Beach campus use accounting paradigms which allow them to lump together the costs of teaching with the costs of the administration. In this way, no one knows how much taxpayer money is wasted on administration and, therefore, never reaches the classroom.
However, we have been able to work through the financial records, painstakingly, line by line and unearth the truth.
The conclusion that flows from the real financial figures is that the administration component of the university can be consolidated to cover the university’s total budget reduction, without compromising the university’s teaching mission at all.
Here is what we found at CSULB:
1. 30 percent of the university’s total operating costs goes to administration — executive and management employees and their costs — while 45 percent goes to teaching — instructors and their costs. The remaining 25 percent goes to physical plant operations, student scholarships, auxiliary enterprise expenses and depreciation.
2. As between cumulative administrative salaries and cumulative
Teaching salaries, 43 percent goes to administration and 57 percent to instructors.
3. Cost of benefits to administration employees is 20 percent higher than the cost of benefits for instructors.
4. In the last 10 years, administrative costs have gone up by 85 percent, while enrollment has increased by only 20 percent. The numbers indicate that for every new taxpayer dollar spent on instruction, five new dollars are spent on administration.
5. By CSU mandate, enrollment is now being forcibly rolled back to
1999 levels over the next two years, but neither the university nor the
CSU has suggested cutting administration back to its 1999 levels.
6. At CSULB there are now 25 upper level “Titled” administrators, which include the president, the provost, two associate provosts and numerous vice-presidents, associate vice-presidents, assistant vice-presidents, directors and special assistants, as well as 20 deans and associate deans across the campus.
All of these upper level administrators have a vast supporting network staff of managers and coordinators. The cost of these administrators, and their staffs and operations, is more than $140 million per year.
The chancellor of the CSU and the president of CSULB each earn more in salary and benefits than the president of the United States.
7. In the past 10 years, the number of upper level administrators has more than doubled.
8. The average salary of an upper level administrator is 2.5 times the average salary of a tenured professor. In addition to salary, upper level administrators receive substantial perks and benefits that instructors do not.
9. The ratio of upper level administrators to their staff is 1:5. The ratio of instructors to their staff is 15:1.
10. We have been told that CSULB must cut its operating budget by approximately $50 million. Consolidation of the administration, and related staff positions and support costs, would lead to immediate savings that would cover all of the campus deficit without touching instruction.
11. Furloughing instructors means cutting instruction. Raising student fees means cutting instruction. Reducing enrollments means cutting instruction. What about cutting administration? What about capping administrative salaries, benefits and support at levels equal to instructors? The latter would cover the entire university budget cut that is mandated.
12. Administrative waste takes the form of job redundancy, featherbedding and cover-ups. Upper level administrators seem more concerned about keeping their jobs than doing their jobs. They have become “overseers” who can wash their hands of front-line responsibility by hiring multiple upper level “underlings” to do the jobs they were hired to do.
Then they eventually “retire” to higher paid “adviser” roles within the administration. As well, in order to “keep the lid” on their personnel mistakes, they arrange for suspended and/or fired employees to continue to be paid even after termination
Can California’s system of education be fixed? Yes, by recognizing that it is a multi-billion dollar public interest business that finally needs to be held accountable to following wise, honest and completely transparent business practices.
Professors Micheal Charles Pounds and Brian Alan Lane teach in the
Film and Electronic Arts Department at CSULB.