Investing in excellence, not bureaucracy
I believe it is time to stop bureaucratic bloat and to invest in excellence.
Despite its substantial endowment, the College’s resources are finite. Anyone who doubts that need only remember that in 2002 the College, faced with a budget deficit, proposed eliminating the Dartmouth swim team, one of the oldest collegiate swimming programs in the country. It was only a firestorm of protests from students and alumni–and alumni giving earmarked for the swim team–that saved swimming from the chopping block.
The College must be a faithful steward of the money that alumni so generously give to the school they love. College funds must be spent wisely, in ways that ensure that Dartmouth will be the very best place in the world to get an education and remain true to our institutional values and mission.
A major problem is that the College overinvests in bureacracy to the detriment of core academic and athletic programs. Monies that could’ve gone to more important uses that would directly benefit Dartmouth students and faculty–by reducing class sizes, expanding the curricular offerings available to undergraduates, increasing faculty pay, and improving athletics–are instead lavished on administrators, whose numbers and salaries keep growing.
The “McKinsey Report” bears this out. On April 25, 2006, McKinsey & Co., a management consulting firm retained by President Wright, issued a report concerning the state of administration at the College. The report leaves little doubt about the growth of administrative bureaucracy at the expense of academics.
The report finds that, over the last five years, administrators within the College have come out ahead of the Arts and Sciences faculty (who teach the bulk of Dartmouth students). Over that period, the College added “111 new positions” to the College administration ranks for a “net gain of 86 full-time equivalents.” The number of administrative jobs added (which would’ve been higher if new administrative positions outside of the College were included) was literally double the number of faculty positions added in Arts and Sciences, where students regularly complain that classes are often oversubscribed and filled above capacity. As the report notes, the “College-only administrative growth . . . compares to an increase in Arts and Sciences faculty of 50 new positions.”
The McKinsey report also shows that the last five years have seen administrators come out ahead of faculty on the compensation front. The following finding says it all: “Administrative compensation grew more quickly than . . . faculty compensation.” As a result, the administration is on a path that rewards administrators at the expense of faculty–and to the detriment of undergraduates.
The College’s own budget confirms these disordered priorities. Comparing the official budget figures for 2000 and 2005 (the most recent year for which data are available), we see that the amount spent on administration increased by 72%–almost six times the rate of inflation over that period. The 72% increase in administrative spending was roughly 50% higher than the increased expenditure on academic and student programs (which went up only 50.1%) and scholarships (which only went up 55.7%).
Interestingly, the increase for administration was exceeded only in one area: research. The amount spent on research in 2005 was 87.7% higher than the amount spent in 2000 for that purpose. By contrast, spending on academic and student programs increased during that same period only by 50.1%. The differential shows that President Wright meant what he said when he declared in his inaugural address that Dartmouth is a “university in all but name.” Research–not undergraduate teaching–is becoming the major academic focus at the College.
It is time for the College to put its money again where its mouth is.
If our highest priority remains undergraduate teaching (as it must, and as the administration says it does), then the amount we spend on academics versus bureaucracy should show it. We need fewer deans and more full-time Dartmouth professors teaching undergraduates, and better pay for Dartmouth professors so that we can continue to attract and retain the very best teachers and researchers.
If, as we must, we are to remain a “college” in name and in fact, not a “university in all but name,” we must support teaching just as vigorously as we support research. To do otherwise risks sending professors the message that research–not undergraduates–is what really matters. To the extent we underfund teaching, we run the risk that the educational experience that undergraduates receive will be harmed, leading to the perennial course shortages and drift to large, impersonal lecture classes that Dartmouth students have so vocally complained about in recent years.
As a Dartmouth professor anonymously told a student task force investigating the issue, what is needed is a “balance” between research and teaching–a balance which, at present, is tilted heavily in favor of research. Boosting the funding of academics would allow the College to achieve excellence in teaching and in research.
Finally, if athletics remains a vital part of the Dartmouth experience (as it must, and as the administration says it does), then there, too, the funds we allocate to athletics must show it. At a school where athletics is recognized as part of the process of forming well-rounded students, it doesn’t make sense to take a major sport, such as swimming, and to defund it–much less to do so while increasing spending on bureaucracy. The administration, however, would have done just that but for the outcry from students and alumni.
To be fair, since Buddy Teevens returned to the Dartmouth coaching staff, the administration has committed greater funds to the football program. This, like the rehiring of Coach Teevens, is a welcome step towards rejuvenating Dartmouth football.
Of course, the football team isn’t the only athletic program that deserves the full support of the administration. All of our student-athletes deserve the support they need to be competitive in their chosen sports.
Have other Dartmouth teams received the same degree of support that the football team is now receiving? The recent experience with the swim team suggests that the answer may be “no.” As a parent of a Dartmouth experience recently wrote in The Dartmouth, the swim team receives “no college money” and has “arguably the worst facilities that any Dartmouth Division-1 team sport must tolerate and inarguably the worst acquatic facilities in the Ivy League and among the worst in D-1 swimming.”
As a Trustee, I will fight for better stewardship of College funds. I will also work hard to make sure that, as an institution, we put our money where our mouth is by ensuring that our expenditures reflect the values and institutional mission of Dartmouth and the best interests of undergraduates and the faculty who teach them.
Click here to view the Report’s Executive Summary. The full report has not been made available.
