[vizeroth]

I realize this is days later, but I felt the need to respond even though I didn't feel the need to check for responses earlier.

I do see how it can be easy to believe that ratings have more influence than students. At the same time, many ratings include student surveys as a substantial part of the ratings process.

Additionally, I can see how it can be easy to believe that there is significant administrative bloat in universities, even when the reports on funding sources and costs state that the administrative costs have been going down. For many the budgets and administration of public universities simply don't have enough transparency, and even when they strive to achieve transparency there may not be enough historical data to give people any real perspective.

Further, it's easy to point the finger at all sorts of practices within a University as sources of said administrative bloat, regardless of whether the budgets support those arguments.

When you have a significant reduction in state funding for public universities, you drive those institutions to look for ways to overcome those budget shortfalls. Generally speaking, it's hard to get people to accept salary reductions, so cost-cutting measures come from other directions. Where I work, tenured/tenure-track faculty in some colleges are teaching significantly more credit-hours than they would have ten years ago, so there are fewer lecturers, students, part-time faculty teaching classes. Since the tenured faculty don't get paid more for teaching more classes, this is a pretty effective cost-cutting measure for some colleges, but it has its limits, especially since those faculty are also expected to continue with other intellectual contributions (such as research).

Every new staff or faculty member hired anywhere within the University has to be justified. They no longer hire someone simply because a position has been vacated, so when someone retires it's possible that their duties simply get distributed among others and the position goes away.

However, if someone's job is basically fund-raising, it's probably going to be easier to get approval for that position, especially if you can find a candidate with a proven history of improving the budget situation for an educational institution.

Meanwhile, programs and physical things like buildings and equipment tend to be attractive to donors. You can put up buildings and fill them with equipment by demonstrating a willingness to pay for 50% of the cost and then creating a big push for donors, and with the right people working on the project you can end up paying significantly less (or nothing). Further, you can then leverage the new building/equipment for further facilities/equipment upgrades.

Good luck getting someone to pay someone's pension or to pay the salary of any of the staff dealing with the budget, custodial work, IT, etc.