Bureaucratic growth draws ire at Purdue, other universities

J. Paul Robinson, chairman of Purdue University’s faculty senate, strode through the halls of a 10-story concrete-and-glass administrative tower.

“I have no idea what these people do,” said Robinson, waving his hand across a row of offices, his voice rising.

The 59-year-old professor of biomedical engineering is leading a faculty revolt against bureaucratic bloat at the public university in Indiana. In the past decade, the number of administrative employees jumped 54 percent, almost eight times the growth of tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Purdue has a $313,000-a-year acting provost and six vice and associate vice provosts, including a $198,000 chief diversity officer. It employs 16 deans and 11 vice presidents, among them a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief.

Administrative costs on college campuses are soaring, crowding out instruction at a time of skyrocketing tuition and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans. At Purdue and other U.S. college campuses, bureaucratic growth is pitting professors against administrators and sparking complaints that tight budgets could be spent more efficiently.

“We’re a public university,” Robinson said. “We’re here to deliver a high-quality education at as low a price as possible. Why is it that we can’t find any money for more faculty, but there seems to be an almost unlimited budget for administrators?”

‘Administrative bloat’

U.S. universities employed more than 230,000 administrators in 2009, up 60 percent from 1993, or 10 times the rate of growth of the tenured faculty, those with permanent positions and job security, according to U.S. Education Department data.

Spending on administration has been rising faster than funds for instruction and research at 198 leading U.S. research universities, concluded a 2010 study by Jay Greene, an education professor at the University of Arkansas.

“Administrative bloat is clearly contributing to the overall cost of higher education,” Greene said.

Purdue and other public universities, which rely on state taxpayers, have become a flashpoint for anger about bureaucratic spending. State colleges have long been considered affordable havens for those of modest means, yet they have raised tuition faster than their costlier private peers.

Taxpayer cost

The cost of attending Purdue, in West Lafayette, leaped about 60 percent over the past decade. Including room, board and other expenses, undergraduates from Indiana pay $23,000—out-of-state students, $42,000—similar to other Midwestern public colleges.

“Parents can spend $60,000 to send their kid to Harvard—that’s their choice,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of a 2011 book critical of college administrative spending. “The taxpayers support state universities. It’s much more incumbent on them to justify their costs.”

Purdue says bureaucratic expansion hasn’t led to higher tuition.

Rather, state funding, which makes up 13 percent of its budget, hasn’t kept pace with the university’s rising costs, according to Timothy Sands, the school’s acting president. Purdue has beefed up its staff for fundraising and marketing, partly to attract full-paying students from other states and around the world, Sands said in an interview at his office, overlooking the school’s main quadrangle.

Lean operation

To maintain its position as a top-ranked university, Purdue must also administer hundreds of millions of dollars in government and industry research grants, Sands said.

“This is a $2.2 billion operation—you’ve got to have some people involved in administering it, managing it, running it, leading it,” Sands said. “We’re about as lean as we can afford to be.”

Purdue officials acknowledge that, as the administration has expanded, spending on instruction has lagged behind. The university plans to hire more than 100 engineering professors in the next five years. The average full professor at Purdue gets a $125,000 salary, according to the university. Unlike many other colleges, Purdue hasn’t turned to low-paid, part-time faculty, a move that has offset the declines in tenured professors elsewhere, the school said.

Administrative salaries and other expenses—as well as tuition costs and debt—are drawing ire on other campuses.

UConn salaries

Trustees at the University of Connecticut’s flagship campus in Storrs, known for its NCAA champion Huskies basketball teams, said last year they were reviewing the level of administrators’ pay. The move followed a controversy over the then campus police chief, who received $256,000 annually—more than New York City’s police commissioner.

UConn has a $312,000-a-year provost and 13 vice, deputy and associate vice provosts, including one overseeing “engagement” who makes almost $275,000 a year. The university has seven vice presidents and 13 deans. President Susan Herbst, who receives a $500,000 salary, has a $199,000 chief of staff.

UConn’s police chief had broad responsibilities, and he was replaced with a $165,000-a-year official with a narrower job, said Stephanie Reitz, a spokeswoman for the campus.

“UConn’s administrative structure is an appropriately sized, comparatively lean operation,” Reitz said in an e-mail.

At the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, the faculty senate studied its school’s own bureaucracy and found duplication among its eight vice presidents, said Russell Luepker, a professor of public health. In particular, most had their own communications office.

Faculty complaints

As part of an overhaul of its management, the university eliminated a senior vice president’s position this month and will cut an additional 5.5 administrative jobs, said Chuck Tombarge, a University of Minnesota spokesman. Eric Kaler, who became president in July 2011, is reducing annual administrative expenses by $1.6 million, Tombarge said.

The fight over such costs has become especially public and bitter at Purdue.

Nestled in the corn and soybean fields around its main campus, 65 miles northwest of Indianapolis, Purdue turns out engineers sought by blue-chip employers, such as General Electric Co., which recruits on its campus. It counts 23 astronauts among its graduates, including the first and last men to walk on the moon: Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan.

Purdue’s faculty senate, led by Robinson, has taken its complaints to both the trustees and the school’s soon-to-be president, Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s Republican governor known for his budget cutting.

President-elect

Daniels says he’s sympathetic to faculty complaints.

“When your spending goes up at a rocket rate, it’s pretty hard for state support to keep up,” Daniels said in an interview at the Indianapolis State House. He wants to take a look at administrative costs that he suspects are “marbled” throughout the university, he said.

Daniels said he was horrified when he heard that Purdue was renovating his 4,000-square-foot campus office suite in anticipation of his move—a decision he called “not the right signal, not the right priority.”

The cost: $355,000.

Amid controversy over such spending, the debt of the average Purdue graduate who took out loans rose 74 percent in the past decade, to about $27,000.

John Stucker, a senior from Cincinnati, must pay back $80,000 he took out in student loans or borrowed from his parents. During a break from an engineering lab, he questioned the number of Purdue administrators.

Frustrated students

“It’s frustrating,” said Stucker, a 21-year-old engineering major. “They’re making ridiculous money, and they’re not even teaching students.”

Kyle Pendergast, a 20-year-old junior from Orange County, Calif., heard faculty complaints about administrative spending at a student-government meeting this month. Pendergast, a student senator, expects to graduate with $20,000 in loans.

“It seems ridiculous that some Purdue administrators make so much money when I don’t know what they do on a daily basis,” said Pendergast, a biomedical engineering major.

Alexander Francis, an associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences, said he used to have as many as four teaching assistants for his speech course, with about 70 students. Now, he has two for 100 undergraduates. Purdue has reduced the number of graduate teaching assistants by 17 percent over the past decade.

“We keep cutting what we’re supposed to put first, which is teaching,” Francis said.

Purdue Pete

Professors also question Purdue’s brand spending, led by Teri Lucie Thompson, a former insurance executive who is the school’s $253,000-a-year vice president for marketing and media, and chief marketing officer.

A recent campaign played with Purdue’s nickname of “Boilermakers,” or factory workers who made steel boilers in the heartland. The marketing department came up with the slogan: “We are Purdue. Makers, all. What we make moves the world forward.”

The athletic department also tried to make over Purdue Pete, the school’s mascot, a muscle-bound, hard-hatted boilermaker with a hammer. Last year, football fans gave a chilly reception to a softer-looking Pete, produced at a cost of $25,000.

“He was booed off the field,” said Charles Bouman, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Campus rebranding

Not counting the Pete makeover, which was killed after two days, the rebranding campaign cost $500,000. That figure included $300,000 for broader brand research, which will be used for as long as a decade, said Chris Sigurdson, assistant vice president for external relations. Purdue said it uses donations, not tax or tuition money, for marketing.

To quell an outcry over the shortening of boilermaker, the marketing department also changed the slogan, removing the phrase “makers, all.”

Purdue must advertise, especially on the Internet and through social media, to attract young people, as the number of college-age students in the Midwest is projected to decline, Thompson said.

“You want that mind share,” Thompson said.

Another administrative initiative has agitated the faculty: possibly changing the academic calendar to a trimester from a semester system. The switch would let Purdue use empty buildings year-round. It could also offer popular courses to students over the summer, so more will graduate in four years.

More committees

First, though, the concept required hiring a new administrator: Frank Dooley, a $172,000-a-year associate vice provost and professor of agricultural economics. Dooley and a part-time financial analyst will cost the university $212,000 a year, excluding benefits.

The associate vice provost works in an 8-by-10-foot windowless office in the building that houses Purdue’s president. Dooley plans to establish seven or eight committees of professors, administrators, students and others for discussion and fact-gathering. He expects a decision in 2015.

“I look at myself as an envoy or ambassador,” Dooley said. “My job is to make sure these seven or eight committees are aware of what’s going on in the other committees.”

Marcus Rogers, a Purdue professor of information technology, views Dooley less as a diplomat and more as a symbol of misplaced priorities.

“We have more vice provosts, vice presidents and assistant vice presidents than we’ve ever had before,” Rogers said. “Now, we’re spending $250,000 a year to oversee something we haven’t even agreed to.”