"This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University...
School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and provide clinical care, financed by external research funds from government and industry sources"
Total staff numbers are only marginally useful without further breakdown, as that article points out.
A family member works for an eatery at a large university. Technically they are employees (staff) of the university, but pretty much in name only. They work for a business unit which receives no financial support from the university. They are profitable on their own and if they aren’t, they would close down. They are provided benefits via the university, but it is part of their budget.
Including them in the count relative to students is about as useful as including the employees of the (independent) Starbucks on campus.
(It’s not Stanford, so I can’t speak to that specific institution)
What is "staff"? Is there a break down on how much "staff" is involved in research tasks vs admin tasks? Research nowadays is complex and requires a lot of technical support, a lot of people who are hired as technical-administrative stuff may do actually purely research tasks [0]. As usually faculty captures people in some "professorship" level, it completely misses this big crowd of research-related work.
> Stanford also has unique characteristics that create high staff headcount, former Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty Senate during a May 2023 meeting: Unlike other institutions, Stanford requires more staff to maintain Stanford Research Park, a large housing portfolio and other facilities.
from one of the sources [0] that paragraph linked to:
> It’s also important to understand how Stanford defines terms used in headcount growth since those definitions vary widely among research universities, Drell noted. For example, clinician educators, which have grown significantly in number, are categorized as “staff” at Stanford, while at other universities they are often counted as “faculty.” In addition, and in contrast to many other institutions, Stanford has chosen to focus more on hiring staff in many areas rather than using outside contractors whose employees would not count as Stanford staff.
and from [1] also linked in the above paragraph:
> We recognize that stable, affordable housing is critical for student success. Stanford guarantees housing for undergraduates for all four years and provides housing for over 70% of graduate students. We also provide as much as three times more student housing than large universities across California in similarly constrained housing markets.
given the context, it seems perfectly reasonable that Stanford would have more "staff" employees than the University of Southwestern North Dakota, even normalized for different numbers of student enrollment.
It might be insane, if you believe that "staff" are all doing administrative duties. But, as was pointed out, "staff" are often anyone who is not a tenure track faculty. So librarians, research technicians, environmental health and safety, IT support, etc etc.
A more useful comparison would divide staff into "supported by tuition" (should be related to student count) and "supported by external grants and clinical income".
This idea that costs have increased because of administrative staff expansion is a popular one, but one that ignores what R1 universities spend money on, and where that money comes from. (Ironically, I suspect that the university may be spending more money on research, because of limits on indirect costs.)
This is also the fallacy of looking at one metric.
Do staff include productive researchers producing net positive incoming?
Other comments mention the medical school. Are these staff providing patient care (and billing insurance)?
University staff aren’t necessarily just your traditional educators. A whole lot of productive stuff (both for the university and everyone else) can potentially benefit from “staff.”
Universities run small cities. That staff number includes the people who mow the lawn, cook food, clean dorms, work security, maintain their networks, etc the list is massive.
Without knowing more about the numbers, the only one I have an issue with is the number of students. These universities should be doing everything they can to increase enrollment and let in more students.
I went to a smaller school in my city, but at the time most everyone I know who applied got it. I would not get it today, and people end up wait listed, etc... IMO, that is the failing of the US higher education system. Next is cost to the student.
virtually every sector of the economy has 'excess staff;' it is not confined to higher ed. It's the obvious conclusion of decades of automation not being realized as less working hours, but in the dilution of responsibilities into more complicated and larger corporate apparatuses. Some of them are called "bullshit jobs" some of them are given credibility, while being utterly purposeless ultimately. This is largely ignored as a general trend because it is usually contextualized to a narrative within each company (as is the case here) rather than seen as a larger phenomenon.
This is the inevitable conclusion of unprecedented concentration of capital, which is not new but only being revealed during a time of seemingly limitless automation potential.
We might need to know the FTE values to understand what this means. Are staff positions full-time FTE? Are faculty positions full-time, tenure positions? Have they added part-time staff, adjunct faculty, etc.?
The other insane thing is 10 students to one teacher? I don't understand that because when I went to SJSU, I was almost always in a class with 60+. For CS, it was around 30 people in the room.
So you're saying the ratio has improved? An education improving their ratio of faculty to students seems like a good thing.
Aren't all the big bad billionaires self-made autodidacts?
Most people aren't. Most people benefit from education. If there are unlimited AGI educators, that seems like an extraordinary claim and I haven't even seen a pilot. Is the plan to move fast and break education? Cause that seems kind of extreme rather than any sort of conservative I've ever known.
Do you just want to destroy those posh academic institutions? Or are the billionaires offering to subsidize education with donations by increasing taxes on themselves?
Or you don't realize that "faculty" can include researchers?
It could also just mean they do more research and less education. But hey, let's quickly jump to conclusions, that seems to be a popular hobby nowadays.
Contemporary academia especially in the West has a massive surplus of staff.
Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other.
Occasionally, folks outside of the circle come in and they start finding ton of fraud in the research with multiple big cases in past few years on top universities like Harvard for example.
You don’t spent an endowment, you spend the interest. The entire research budget comes from outside funding. In Cornell’s case, the research funding amounts to $1B a year.
Just for perspective, the annual research budget of a university I looked at the numbers for recently (not Cornell, but R1) would go through that in less than two decades, even if it were completely dedicated to research and nothing else.
And what?
You know that for example endowment funds have restrictions on what they can be spent on.
This is really victim blaming.
I would not have an issue if the government has said that for future grant rounds there will be limits on overheads, but this lot just decided they cut already agreed and planned budgets and no matter the consequences.
Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card.
What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber
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On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League is feeling a result of this economy and administration. What does that say about any other public school? Is post-secondary education going to collapse?
It's all about the choices. Post secondary schools had easy money (student loans, grants, expanding endowments) and rapidly expanding enrollment for decades. It seems many schools thought that would continue, but we saw enrollment plateau and even decrease. Ivy schools have options - lower prestige to increase enrollment, or lean on prestige and endowments to raise prices. Other schools will likely cut staff/services and increase class sizes. I went to a state school and their enrollment has dropped 25% since I was there. It seems tuition went up, state funding per student is higher (not sure if total is the same or higher), some upgrades were put off, and some services seem to have been scaled back.
How are the ivy leagues NOT financially independent? People claw/cheat/do whatever it takes to get in. Ivy's employ some of the best raw IQ people we have. Endowment funds over years should blossom.
Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and truly cannot afford things?
if scenario 1) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 75% prior budget levels
if scenario 2) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 25% prior budget levels
*in both cases we need to remove regulations on schools so they can fire all the admin (they claim to need to keep up legally inane wild things) and pay the professors/researchers more.
Colleges and Universities are already on a downward trend; the perfect storm of declining enrollment/population numbers and AI potentially wiping out what they offer. Colleges and University were meant to be a special protected Eunuch class studying 'the dark arts', but they've publicly become known havens of scheming Eunuchs trying to overthrow the emperor. Too close to the sun
I assume they, like most orgs, make a planning based on some available budget. If the budget gets higher, they will expand. If it gets lower, they will reduce their expenses/spread. I also assume that the reduction of overhead in particular is gonna hurt such institutions _a lot_ because they have exactly planned based on that.
I cannot speak about Cornell specifically, I do not know if they have a bloated administration or superfluous expenses. But the truth is that admin stuff are necessary for supporting education and research. Having been in universities during admin reforms reducing admin stuff (claiming that they make "smart restructuring") it always negatively affects work done in the university in one way or another. Usually, it means that research staff will have to pick up some of the admin work themselves, or be offered less support doing it. As research staff are usually paid more than admin stuff, that is not necessarily effective (unless it is assumed that research stuff will be working overtime anyway). In any case, it does not seem like an efficient move most of the times, even if it seems so to the bureaucrats who make these plans.
I imagine they are, but they will still have some mindset of a business and cut spending in lieu of economic headwinds. Like pretty much every industry in the last few years.
I think the ivies will be fine. It's 99% of other universities without 10b in endowments I'm worried about.
you got the academic and economics right. but ignored the politics. academic politics is very exclusive... and the circle in it owns lots of capital. so when capital goes on strike, they fall in line.
If anything in any country should be free, it should be education.
And, obviously, the administration of education should never be a for-profit venture.
Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.
>If anything in any country should be free, it should be education.
I can't tell you're being serious or you're being hyperbolic for the sake of defending education. Most people, given the choice would rather get free food, water, or healthcare.
It’s never free. People in Europe say it is when they want to take a jab at the USA. But the reality is that earning potential is severely limited in Europe. And let’s not pretend that every degree obtained is beneficial to society. People get degrees with no marketable skills all the time. And the losses are distributed among all the taxpayers.
While I understand that people have their problems with universities tuition and loans ..etc. The problem is here is that funding for basic and applied science on all front is being cut. It does provide a lot of jobs and supports a lot of universities operations too. Universities build labs which does provide infrastructure (buildings and other facilities) and NSF, NIH and DOE provide funds to use these facilities to pursue research. So these agencies have dependency on universities to provide these research facilities and manage hiring and compliance with rules.
Now there are many problems with current system which need to be addressed. But you don't solve the cancer in the cells by killing cells and thus killing patient. But you use targeted approach to the problem. This needs some modifications to the rules and deep changes in laws that will require further study and discussion. This is of course not going to happen currently.
Now some people argue that the budget is a problem and debt and deficit is more important. But again lets talk data. The whole NSF and NIH budget is less than $60B dollars in 2024 which amounts to a little bit less than 1% of the total budget. If you compare it with other Items in the budget percentage wise you will get (DoD - 7.5%), (Medicare - 6.7%), (Social Security - 4.6%), (Medicaid - 10%),(National Debt Interest - 15%). So even cutting it all will not achieve any significant improvement while create a lot of problems. There are a significant part of economy and jobs are supported by these money. The return on investment is positive in most cases and you are leading in innovation and most of scientific frontier. One can argue that these two items are very cheap to maintain you dominance than another couple of air craft carriers (and their operation costs).
If you tried and achieved any reduction in the big items in the federal budget you will be saving something near the total budget of NIH and NSF. But again for some reason a lot of focus on these programs while less focus on big items for some reason.
My working theory is that wage growth was getting to be too much for the corporations so flooding the market with candidates is meant to counteract that.
> due to "significant financial uncertainty" in higher education,
This is directly linked to the new Trump administration's policies. The university explicitly cites potential deep cuts to federal research funding, new tax legislation affecting endowment income, and ongoing concerns about rapid growth and escalating costs as primary reasons for this decision.
This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. The university's four-month hiring freeze coincides with similar measures at other prestigious institutions like Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern, all responding to the broader context of the Trump administration's proposals to eliminate the Department of Education and Executive Orders reducing scientific research funding.
This new US government is deeply hurting itself and destroying most valuable assets. Which it needs to compete against China or Europe.
> This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million.
This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure there is a strong case for causation here.
> To ensure that we continue to thrive in an even more complex future, we must commit, across every part of our institution, to a sustainable budget today.
Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an unsustainable budget so far?
Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs students+faculty would suggest that’s the case…
Their budget is unsustainable in the same way that your budget is unsustainable if your boss cuts your pay. They have setup education and research programs based on decades of past funding, but that was unexpectedly subject to illegal reductions with the promise of permanent reductions, nothing like which has happened before and which is completely disconnected from any kind of economic necessity. It’s not like we had some kind of natural disaster or pandemic which actually shrunk the economy and tax revenue but simply a political power play trying to cancel perceived class enemies.
> The pause best positions us, due to the increased level of review, to carefully and with due restraint, advance only those positions that are determined to be essential at this time.
Not mentioned -- Cornell has an $11bn endowment that can be tapped to make up some of the shortfall. Any issues with Federal funding will be hurting smaller schools and schools with smaller endowments way before hurting Cornell.
Can't speak in regard to Cornell, but I think it's well past time to revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments. It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums.
My university jacked tuition 24% in one year; and when asked why, they essentially said "because everyone else did."
For this and other offensive behavior, I instructed them to never again ask me for a penny; and they haven't.
Let's say a University has $1m in the bank. In this case, they decide to use it to "endow" a "chaired professorship" to retain some top faculty member. The reason it works - the professor stays at said University - is because they give the professor the proceeds from the endowment (usually, this is like 5% expected rate of return, or in this case, $50k), which he/she uses for their research.
So now, should the University instead reallocate funds like that, thus (perhaps) losing top faculty, to (marginally) lower tuition?
Similarly, imagine a university raises millions of dollars for scholarships. Once again, they use the proceeds to fund the scholarships. Should they instead use the principal (as you're kind of suggesting), thus eventually running out of funds, or should they keep the endowment, and thus keep giving out scholarships?
Before condemning endowments, it would be better to first understand how they're being used. For example, if you found out that some large fraction was for student scholarships, would that change your position?
(to be clear, I'm not particularly on one side or the other here; I just think more nuanced positions are needed...)
> rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments
As has been mentioned elsewhere, sitting on endowments is what you're supposed to do—you don't burn through the principal, you spend the interest. The point of an endowment is to provide a sustainable baseline income to keep the school going forever, it's not like an investment round where you're expected to use up the runway in an effort to reach profitability through other income streams.
> It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums.
Depending on which sports you're talking about and which schools, this might actually be an example of an investment that is expected to yield a return. At a lot of schools the sports programs subsidize the academics, so having a nice and roomy football stadium is actually a pretty sound investment into income streams that benefit everyone, even students with no interest in football.
>but I think it's well past time to revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that rip students off with sky-high tuition while sitting on huge endowments
As other people have mentioned in this thread, the point of endowments is to provide a steady source of income for the university's activities, not a piggy bank you can raid.
>It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums.
I'm sure the right is equally mad about universities "blowing money" on humanities programs as well. Should we get rid of those as well?
Check the top discussion for some perspective on what that really means. This barely covers two years of operation, funds have a lot of use restrictions by donors, and you can only spend cash once.
I’m so tired of this corporate jargon infecting academia. Universities used to value clarity, now they sound like HR memos. It’s the same playbook: bloat admin, cut actual workers, rebrand inefficiency as strategy.
I was on the faculty at several schools, private, top 10, public, top 20, etc. Staff categorically does not include graduate students and post-docs, or teaching faculty. The staff expansion problem is the main problem facing academia. There is staff for handling day-to-day functioning of a department, they are usually over-worked and under-payed. This has not expanded and is not a problem.
The main problem is staff at the dean and above level. They are nebulous and their job functions rather diffuse. My impression is that appointments in those functions are with some frequency obtained through nepotism. Furthermore the staff in those functions is often highly ideological. Their true main function seems to bully faculty so that we are constantly "put in our place". The point is to shred to pieces the old principles of shared governance. Essentially they want to make us _their_ employees. If you don't believe me, I can expand on the various interactions that I had with such staff. An extreme example of this is the expansion of staff at UC's into faculty hiring, they now pre-sift all applications for ideological compliance first and then pass on the pre-sifted packet to the faculty.
Here is the staff that I am aware of and that I had the pleasure to interact with: Staff that handles disability accommodations (a large percentage of students are now officially "disabled" and use this disability to gain advantages when taking exams) , staff that is assigned to each student to handle their academic problems or advise them on which course to take (unnecessary they can just talk to faculty), staff that is in charge of Title IX (they don't do much and those departments employ pricey lawyers), staff that handles your grant submissions (their only useful function is making the difficult budget computations for the draconian shares that the university takes for itself, they also sometimes pester faculty about irrelevant things and refuse to submit the grant unless you satisfy them). 99% of the work of that staff is busy work and could be easily cut. I am sure their salaries are all in the 100+K categories. I 'd venture to say that if they are cut faculty would be made more efficient. I have also met staff that is in charge of basically nothing, they attend an enormous amount of committees and pushes for some "change" that never materializes. It is understood these days among the faculty that anybody who wants a real salary increase (but doesn't have the chops to get an external offer) needs to become part of that staff, usually in the form of some deanlet handling some obtuse issue. You probably see the problem.
In the meantime faculty is still performing all the critical functions: we serve on admission committees for graduate students, we serve on post-doc committees, we do the faculty interviews, we do the research, we teach the classes, but our salary increases are barely matched with inflation, essentially regardless of individual performance.
By the way, there is no justification for a hiring freeze in this environment where no real hardship has materialized yet. It is also theater since most hiring has concluded by now. It will be used as a justification to give me no increase this year, I am sure, while the endowment will grow. All of course will be blamed on the bad orange man in the white house.
testfoobar|1 year ago
In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff.
In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff.
In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff
The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1
This is insane.
Reason077|1 year ago
> "This is insane."
"This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University...
School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and provide clinical care, financed by external research funds from government and industry sources"
LeafItAlone|1 year ago
A family member works for an eatery at a large university. Technically they are employees (staff) of the university, but pretty much in name only. They work for a business unit which receives no financial support from the university. They are profitable on their own and if they aren’t, they would close down. They are provided benefits via the university, but it is part of their budget. Including them in the count relative to students is about as useful as including the employees of the (independent) Starbucks on campus.
(It’s not Stanford, so I can’t speak to that specific institution)
freehorse|1 year ago
[0] source: me
metaphor|1 year ago
Nit: 181% increase
I do wonder what percentage of said "staff" are really just students working to fulfill student responsibility[1] for pennies on the dollar.
[1] https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html
evil-olive|1 year ago
> Stanford also has unique characteristics that create high staff headcount, former Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty Senate during a May 2023 meeting: Unlike other institutions, Stanford requires more staff to maintain Stanford Research Park, a large housing portfolio and other facilities.
from one of the sources [0] that paragraph linked to:
> It’s also important to understand how Stanford defines terms used in headcount growth since those definitions vary widely among research universities, Drell noted. For example, clinician educators, which have grown significantly in number, are categorized as “staff” at Stanford, while at other universities they are often counted as “faculty.” In addition, and in contrast to many other institutions, Stanford has chosen to focus more on hiring staff in many areas rather than using outside contractors whose employees would not count as Stanford staff.
and from [1] also linked in the above paragraph:
> We recognize that stable, affordable housing is critical for student success. Stanford guarantees housing for undergraduates for all four years and provides housing for over 70% of graduate students. We also provide as much as three times more student housing than large universities across California in similarly constrained housing markets.
given the context, it seems perfectly reasonable that Stanford would have more "staff" employees than the University of Southwestern North Dakota, even normalized for different numbers of student enrollment.
0: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/05/provost-provides-d...
1: https://housinginfo.stanford.edu/by-the-numbers
fastaguy88|1 year ago
A more useful comparison would divide staff into "supported by tuition" (should be related to student count) and "supported by external grants and clinical income".
This idea that costs have increased because of administrative staff expansion is a popular one, but one that ignores what R1 universities spend money on, and where that money comes from. (Ironically, I suspect that the university may be spending more money on research, because of limits on indirect costs.)
grapesodaaaaa|1 year ago
Do staff include productive researchers producing net positive incoming?
Other comments mention the medical school. Are these staff providing patient care (and billing insurance)?
University staff aren’t necessarily just your traditional educators. A whole lot of productive stuff (both for the university and everyone else) can potentially benefit from “staff.”
trescenzi|1 year ago
matwood|1 year ago
I went to a smaller school in my city, but at the time most everyone I know who applied got it. I would not get it today, and people end up wait listed, etc... IMO, that is the failing of the US higher education system. Next is cost to the student.
mrtksn|1 year ago
elif|1 year ago
This is the inevitable conclusion of unprecedented concentration of capital, which is not new but only being revealed during a time of seemingly limitless automation potential.
grounder|1 year ago
almosthere|1 year ago
42772827|1 year ago
daveguy|1 year ago
Aren't all the big bad billionaires self-made autodidacts?
Most people aren't. Most people benefit from education. If there are unlimited AGI educators, that seems like an extraordinary claim and I haven't even seen a pilot. Is the plan to move fast and break education? Cause that seems kind of extreme rather than any sort of conservative I've ever known.
Do you just want to destroy those posh academic institutions? Or are the billionaires offering to subsidize education with donations by increasing taxes on themselves?
Or you don't realize that "faculty" can include researchers?
I'm confused. Can you clarify?
atoav|1 year ago
machinekob|1 year ago
Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other.
Occasionally, folks outside of the circle come in and they start finding ton of fraud in the research with multiple big cases in past few years on top universities like Harvard for example.
loganriebel|1 year ago
fny|1 year ago
derbOac|1 year ago
fsh|1 year ago
ricardobeat|1 year ago
sega_sai|1 year ago
This is really victim blaming. I would not have an issue if the government has said that for future grant rounds there will be limits on overheads, but this lot just decided they cut already agreed and planned budgets and no matter the consequences.
DrBenCarson|1 year ago
_m_p|1 year ago
MinimalAction|1 year ago
[0]: https://hr.mit.edu/jobs
[1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring
[2]: https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-freeze-f...
[3]: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-diego...
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber
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On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League is feeling a result of this economy and administration. What does that say about any other public school? Is post-secondary education going to collapse?
giantg2|1 year ago
tdeck|1 year ago
I'm curious if this is because you never heard about what was in Project 2025, or didn't think Trump would win, or didn't think he would enact it?
mi_lk|1 year ago
AznHisoka|1 year ago
ineedaj0b|1 year ago
Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and truly cannot afford things?
if scenario 1) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 75% prior budget levels
if scenario 2) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan to build up funds. return to 25% prior budget levels
*in both cases we need to remove regulations on schools so they can fire all the admin (they claim to need to keep up legally inane wild things) and pay the professors/researchers more.
Colleges and Universities are already on a downward trend; the perfect storm of declining enrollment/population numbers and AI potentially wiping out what they offer. Colleges and University were meant to be a special protected Eunuch class studying 'the dark arts', but they've publicly become known havens of scheming Eunuchs trying to overthrow the emperor. Too close to the sun
freehorse|1 year ago
I cannot speak about Cornell specifically, I do not know if they have a bloated administration or superfluous expenses. But the truth is that admin stuff are necessary for supporting education and research. Having been in universities during admin reforms reducing admin stuff (claiming that they make "smart restructuring") it always negatively affects work done in the university in one way or another. Usually, it means that research staff will have to pick up some of the admin work themselves, or be offered less support doing it. As research staff are usually paid more than admin stuff, that is not necessarily effective (unless it is assumed that research stuff will be working overtime anyway). In any case, it does not seem like an efficient move most of the times, even if it seems so to the bureaucrats who make these plans.
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
I think the ivies will be fine. It's 99% of other universities without 10b in endowments I'm worried about.
1oooqooq|1 year ago
EternalFury|1 year ago
Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.
gruez|1 year ago
I can't tell you're being serious or you're being hyperbolic for the sake of defending education. Most people, given the choice would rather get free food, water, or healthcare.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
userbinator|1 year ago
It's called The Internet.
f6v|1 year ago
elashri|1 year ago
Now there are many problems with current system which need to be addressed. But you don't solve the cancer in the cells by killing cells and thus killing patient. But you use targeted approach to the problem. This needs some modifications to the rules and deep changes in laws that will require further study and discussion. This is of course not going to happen currently.
Now some people argue that the budget is a problem and debt and deficit is more important. But again lets talk data. The whole NSF and NIH budget is less than $60B dollars in 2024 which amounts to a little bit less than 1% of the total budget. If you compare it with other Items in the budget percentage wise you will get (DoD - 7.5%), (Medicare - 6.7%), (Social Security - 4.6%), (Medicaid - 10%),(National Debt Interest - 15%). So even cutting it all will not achieve any significant improvement while create a lot of problems. There are a significant part of economy and jobs are supported by these money. The return on investment is positive in most cases and you are leading in innovation and most of scientific frontier. One can argue that these two items are very cheap to maintain you dominance than another couple of air craft carriers (and their operation costs).
If you tried and achieved any reduction in the big items in the federal budget you will be saving something near the total budget of NIH and NSF. But again for some reason a lot of focus on these programs while less focus on big items for some reason.
araes|1 year ago
Operating Budget: Sources and Uses: https://finance.cornell.edu/financial-guide/operating-budget...
Operating Capital Budget Plan (PDF): https://dbp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FY-2024-O...
Consolidated Financial Statement: (PDF): https://finance.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/cornell-fina...
From pg 45 of CFS, compensation and benefits is definitely Cornell's largest category. Instruction and Healthcare services making up about $1.3B each.
Instruction, student services and academic support: $1,336,694 Research: $481,268 Public service: $108,197 Healthcare services: $1,339,074 Institutional support: $539,278 Enterprises and subsidiaries: $146,630
Total Compensation and benefits: $3,951,141
42772827|1 year ago
submeta|1 year ago
This is directly linked to the new Trump administration's policies. The university explicitly cites potential deep cuts to federal research funding, new tax legislation affecting endowment income, and ongoing concerns about rapid growth and escalating costs as primary reasons for this decision.
This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. The university's four-month hiring freeze coincides with similar measures at other prestigious institutions like Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern, all responding to the broader context of the Trump administration's proposals to eliminate the Department of Education and Executive Orders reducing scientific research funding.
This new US government is deeply hurting itself and destroying most valuable assets. Which it needs to compete against China or Europe.
cuuupid|1 year ago
This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure there is a strong case for causation here.
znpy|1 year ago
Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an unsustainable budget so far?
Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs students+faculty would suggest that’s the case…
acdha|1 year ago
sega_sai|1 year ago
hooloovoo_zoo|1 year ago
What twisted mind concocted this sentence?
bfLives|1 year ago
throwaway-blaze|1 year ago
motbus3|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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DidYaWipe|1 year ago
My university jacked tuition 24% in one year; and when asked why, they essentially said "because everyone else did."
For this and other offensive behavior, I instructed them to never again ask me for a penny; and they haven't.
Upvoter33|1 year ago
So now, should the University instead reallocate funds like that, thus (perhaps) losing top faculty, to (marginally) lower tuition?
Similarly, imagine a university raises millions of dollars for scholarships. Once again, they use the proceeds to fund the scholarships. Should they instead use the principal (as you're kind of suggesting), thus eventually running out of funds, or should they keep the endowment, and thus keep giving out scholarships?
Before condemning endowments, it would be better to first understand how they're being used. For example, if you found out that some large fraction was for student scholarships, would that change your position?
(to be clear, I'm not particularly on one side or the other here; I just think more nuanced positions are needed...)
lolinder|1 year ago
As has been mentioned elsewhere, sitting on endowments is what you're supposed to do—you don't burn through the principal, you spend the interest. The point of an endowment is to provide a sustainable baseline income to keep the school going forever, it's not like an investment round where you're expected to use up the runway in an effort to reach profitability through other income streams.
> It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums.
Depending on which sports you're talking about and which schools, this might actually be an example of an investment that is expected to yield a return. At a lot of schools the sports programs subsidize the academics, so having a nice and roomy football stadium is actually a pretty sound investment into income streams that benefit everyone, even students with no interest in football.
gruez|1 year ago
As other people have mentioned in this thread, the point of endowments is to provide a steady source of income for the university's activities, not a piggy bank you can raid.
>It's even worse when they're blowing money on athletic programs and new stadiums.
I'm sure the right is equally mad about universities "blowing money" on humanities programs as well. Should we get rid of those as well?
muaytimbo|1 year ago
mnky9800n|1 year ago
etc-hosts|1 year ago
jimnotgym|1 year ago
> Together with all of American higher education, Cornell is entering a time of significant financial uncertainty
From Wikipedia
>As of 2024, Cornell University has an endowment of $10.7 billion
ricardobeat|1 year ago
rambojohnson|1 year ago
cabbagepanda|1 year ago
The main problem is staff at the dean and above level. They are nebulous and their job functions rather diffuse. My impression is that appointments in those functions are with some frequency obtained through nepotism. Furthermore the staff in those functions is often highly ideological. Their true main function seems to bully faculty so that we are constantly "put in our place". The point is to shred to pieces the old principles of shared governance. Essentially they want to make us _their_ employees. If you don't believe me, I can expand on the various interactions that I had with such staff. An extreme example of this is the expansion of staff at UC's into faculty hiring, they now pre-sift all applications for ideological compliance first and then pass on the pre-sifted packet to the faculty.
Here is the staff that I am aware of and that I had the pleasure to interact with: Staff that handles disability accommodations (a large percentage of students are now officially "disabled" and use this disability to gain advantages when taking exams) , staff that is assigned to each student to handle their academic problems or advise them on which course to take (unnecessary they can just talk to faculty), staff that is in charge of Title IX (they don't do much and those departments employ pricey lawyers), staff that handles your grant submissions (their only useful function is making the difficult budget computations for the draconian shares that the university takes for itself, they also sometimes pester faculty about irrelevant things and refuse to submit the grant unless you satisfy them). 99% of the work of that staff is busy work and could be easily cut. I am sure their salaries are all in the 100+K categories. I 'd venture to say that if they are cut faculty would be made more efficient. I have also met staff that is in charge of basically nothing, they attend an enormous amount of committees and pushes for some "change" that never materializes. It is understood these days among the faculty that anybody who wants a real salary increase (but doesn't have the chops to get an external offer) needs to become part of that staff, usually in the form of some deanlet handling some obtuse issue. You probably see the problem.
In the meantime faculty is still performing all the critical functions: we serve on admission committees for graduate students, we serve on post-doc committees, we do the faculty interviews, we do the research, we teach the classes, but our salary increases are barely matched with inflation, essentially regardless of individual performance.
By the way, there is no justification for a hiring freeze in this environment where no real hardship has materialized yet. It is also theater since most hiring has concluded by now. It will be used as a justification to give me no increase this year, I am sure, while the endowment will grow. All of course will be blamed on the bad orange man in the white house.
baggy_trough|1 year ago
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very_good_man|1 year ago
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