via donsurber:
WVU is broke due to crazy overspending, and needs to make cut. But cutting only teaching faculty and no administrators looks like a stunt to squeeze more money out of the legislature.
The reaction to cutting programs instead of fat is as one may expect. Fools fell for it. The local paper blamed Republicans. It said, “The West Virginia Legislature has continually slashed funding for its public colleges and universities. Specifically, the state has cut funding for WVU by 36% over the past 10 years. Really, though, the issue goes back even further.”
And yet despite a Republican legislature, WVU’s budget grew by 26% in those 10 years. It rose from $951 million in 2013-2014 to $1.2 billion in 2023-2024. Enrollment shrank, which pushed spending per pupil through the roof.
E. Gordon Gee, the elfin president of WVU, is to blame for this mess as he was overly optimistic about the college’s growth. He believes in magic.
The Wall Street Journal reported, “Gee said in 2014 that the university, which at the time enrolled about 33,000 full- and part-time students across its three campuses and online, should grow to 40,000. That would require new investments.
“The students didn’t come—enrollment fell to about 27,500 last fall—but the spending continued.”
The failure is his and his alone. He budgeted for more students than the state can provide. And by state, I mean New Jersey because so many kids from the Garden State attend WVU.
So the school is cutting classes — not administrators. The bureaucracy of any organization is the first hired, last fired because the people who run the organization see the bureaucrats every day. They are nice and friendly. The people who actually do the work are less in touch with corporate management.
In Surf City, there are two girls for every boy.
At WVU, there are four administrators for every faculty member.
I could do better budgeting in an afternoon. But this isn’t about a good budget.
UPDATE: From the comments:
I do budgets. In the real world, when you have a budget shortfall you generally cut middle/upper management first if possible, that way you aren’t affecting the customer-facing portion of the business.
WVU’s shortfall is $45M. There are 7500(!) administrators. Assuming an average compensation cost of $150,000 (and that might be on the low end), you just need to cut 300 administrators to balance the budget. That’s just 4% of administrators. Heck, you should probably be doing this every year even if you don’t have a shortfall just to remove the bad apples.
But of course there has been no accountability in higher education in decades.
No, it’s been turned into a money laundry for the left, especially the administrative staff.
h/t Glenn
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