I sit on the House Higher Education Committee which has the intent of taking a close look at our State-run Universities. Don’t get me wrong, our universities are top notch universities, but they haven’t had serious legislative oversight for 50 years or more. Some of the things happening at those schools just aren’t what the average citizen of Iowa wants to see happening in our taxpayer funded institutions.
With that said, we have looked at the cost of our higher education universities and below, I explain what we found as far as cost is concerned.
The cost of college is going up. But what is included in that cost and what are some of the reasons behind it? One is the rise in administrative support versus instructional staff. According to US News, at public four-year schools in 2010, 32.1% of expenditures were for instruction and 23.7% were for academic support, student services and institutional support. In 2021, 27.4% was spent on instructional spending and 22.9% on academic support, students’ services and institutional support.
US News states that the steady growth in these administrative and nonteaching staff positions is in part due to DEI initiatives, as well as mental health, entertainment, intramural sports, and workforce preparedness and initiatives.
Many agree with the sentiment that there is administrative bloat. Andrew Gillen, senior policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation; Gregory Price, a business professor at the University of New Orleans; Bengamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, Todd J. Zywicki, professor at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, and Christopher Koopman, executive director of The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, to name a few, have all spoken out about the issue or published research on the issue.
Iowa Regents data on Instructional vs Non-Instructional Staffing pulled from the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) database is below. As you can see, the non-instructional staffing numbers are much higher than instructional staffing numbers. Coming from my military background, I understand that the people who are doing the instruction need logistical support but really almost 5 times the number of administrative staff seems a bit extreme.
The graph below shows what that split is for the top 25 endowed universities. Again, there is a large gap between instructional and non-instructional staff.
The increase in non-instructional staff cannot be separated from the discussion the continually rising cost of college. Non-instructional staff numbers are on the rise and the instructional staff are on the decrease. Is that what we really want or do we want a well-trained/instructed work force? I know the answer to that. We don’t want to waste taxpayer dollars if it isn’t going for what we want and need.
