Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[EdnaMode]

Not sure where the money is going because their tuition is among the highest in the Big Ten.

Administrative bloat. Main campus has an absurd number of redundant administrators. They sign our emails so I know.

For grins, I decided to compare my doctoral alma mater to Penn State using publicly available data. Two institutions of similar size, similar number of students, smaller campuses dispersed across the state, similar types of programs offered in engineering, the sciences, humanities, etc. so a relatively equal comparison. Penn State has nearly twice the number of administrators (at similar salaries) and charges twice the in-state tuition of my alma mater. I think you may be correct, they seem to have an astounding amount of administrative bloat going on, and that may be where at least some of the financial problems come from. And the whole state seems to have problems in higher ed funding, from what others have posted. If I taught there, I'd be very concerned.

[selecter]

What publicly available info can show administrative bloat? I can imagine trying to glean it form IPEDS, or maybe from the top end of a form 990, but don't know what could get at it with accuracy.

[EdnaMode]

What publicly available info can show administrative bloat? I can imagine trying to glean it form IPEDS, or maybe from the top end of a form 990, but don't know what could get at it with accuracy.

There is data on The Chronicle for the pay and number of non-instructional employees, data on CUPA-HR (if you have a login), individual institutional websites often post data due to sunshine laws, and I'm sure my undergrad alma mater isn't the only place where the student newspaper publishes the salary of every single employee every year. I just had a bit of time on my hands and went searching for data. Is it 100% accurate? Probably not, but it's there if you look for it and can give a good idea of the number of administrators at a given institution. Just using the overall category of 'non-instructional employees' on the Chronicle's site shows that Penn State has a LOT more of those than my grad school alma mater so I wonder what all those people are doing and how necessary they all are?

[deepsouth]

Delta State University in Cleveland, MS releases a fiscal sustainability plan.

https://www.deltastate.edu/news-and-events/2024/05/delta-state-university-announces-plan-to-ensure-fiscal-sustainability/