Ratio of faculty to office staff

[mythbuster]

We are trying to advocate for funding of an additional office staff member for our department. Doe anyone know of any sources that would indicate the appropriate ratio of faculty to office staff ? I can find lots of discussion of faculty to administrators, but not faculty to the staff that actually make things run. We are a huge department of almost 40, and more research active than most departments on campus, in case that matters. Thanks!

[Puget]

They have just cut us down to 2.2 FTE (from 3.7 FTE) for a dept. with 14 faculty members. Some functions are being centralized to the division in the name of efficiency (and to be fair, so far it actually is more efficient and professionalized).

I'm not sure it would really scale linearly with the number of faculty members though-- it really depends on the functions and work load of the staff, e.g., student-facing staffing levels depend more on the number of majors/minors. They used some sort of complex formula here, which wasn't terribly transparent, so I'm not sure all of what they weighed.

[OneMoreYear]

Another piece of anecdata.  Right now, we have 1.0 FTE staff position (combination of 2 part-time) for 10 full time faculty members. At one point in the not-too-recent past, we essentially did not have staff support.  We have approval to hire several additional faculty members on open lines d/t faculty leaving/retirement, but no indication we would also get permission to hire any additional office staff. I have no idea what the formula is here--I'd be interested to know.

[Hegemony]

We have 35 faculty and 4 staff, down from 5.

[fizzycist]

For R1 engineering departments you have something like 1:1 for elite privates like MIT and Stanford and something like 5 faculty:1 staff for elite state schools like Berkeley and Austin. (Used to have the source for this but can't find it, maybe I'm off on the baseline but I recall the variability was shocking)

[poiuy]

Regional state R2 here.  Our Dept. has 25 ish faculty who are research active and several who bring in multi million $ grants.  We have been cut from 3 FT staff down to 2 staff. 
I am also interested in the topic and wish we could hire more staff and give them the excellent working conditions and pay that they deserve.

[ratherbehiking]

We have 28 staff for 32 FT faculty at my R1 professional school. And yet, the support for things like expenditures still seems awful...

[Ruralguy]

 My SLAC (100 ish ranked, so definitely some highly research active and some highly not) has one EA/AA per 25 ish faculty and one technical assistant for
each natural and bio science. I think some of the fine arts have had such assistants from time to time as well.  Over everybody on faculty (full time), I'd say 7ish staff for 70-80 FTEs. 

[bio-nonymous]

Huge mediocre state school, professional clinical department: 15 faculty and 2.5 FTE admin support + a lab coordinator (1 FTE).

[Aster]

I've found that as a general rule, there is a direct correlation between the quality of the institution and the ratios of office staff.

[AJ_Katz]

We are trying to advocate for funding of an additional office staff member for our department. Doe anyone know of any sources that would indicate the appropriate ratio of faculty to office staff ? I can find lots of discussion of faculty to administrators, but not faculty to the staff that actually make things run. We are a huge department of almost 40, and more research active than most departments on campus, in case that matters. Thanks!

Can you pay for it with IDC?  Or offer to pay for half from IDC and have the college match it?

I don't think it's a simple matter of faculty to admin staff ratios, as so many other factors can drive up administrative needs for any given department.  My department operates four service centers w/ 9 staff, 120 undergrads in two undergraduate programs (one nationally accredited), 30-40 grad students, 21 faculty, about $3-5M/yr in grants, and just went from 2.0 FTE admin staff to 3.0 FTE admin staff -- one academic, one financial, and one clerical.  We have been chronically understaffed for years.  The only reason we were able to get an increase was due to an unexpected vacancy and the college having already prioritized the expansion of our admin staff when the time was right.  Other departments are not waiting for that kind of thing and are funding admin staff positions themselves through IDC or through entrepreneurial programs.  Best of luck!

Edited to add that conducting a poll of the DH's in your university will likely give you more persuasive powers to demonstrate that you are understaffed, rather than comparing your department to what is happening at other institutions that may have different revenue models and priorities.

[BadWolf]

Your IR office should be able to pull a comparative report using IPEDS data for any institutions you wish.

[Kron3007]

We have about 32 faculty and at least 8 admin staff (probably more).  However, I dont think this is too relevant for you as it will likely depend on how your university is structured (how much is done centrally vs at the department level), what kinds of programs you are running, and a number of other factors.  I dont know how some of your departments are operating with only 2 admins, but they must be doing very different things as we would definitely be overwhelmed if we dropped to 2.     

[Aster]

This is a bit dated but may be useful. I believe that the article is free to download.


Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive? Changing Staffing and Compensation Patterns in Higher Education. Issue Brief.
    Donna M. Desrochers, Rita J. Kirshstein
    Published 1 February 2014
    Education
    American Institutes for Research