UPDATED: Sept. 16, 2015 at 5:05 p.m.

Out of the many faces of Syracuse University, there is one that has grown to carry more clout than ever.

That face is represented by the high-paid, professional administrators whose titles begin with the words chancellor, executive, vice president, chief and provost, among others. Over the course of nearly 25 years, SU’s full-time administrative staff has grown by more than 400 percent, according to a recent study by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. This change mirrors a trend across higher education institutions nationwide.

While the number of SU’s non-academic administrators continues to skyrocket in size and salary, some say the trend has detracted from the relationships that matter most — those between students and professors.

“We thought we were the people that kids came to college for,” said Jeff Stonecash, a former professor emeritus of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “The administrators began to see themselves as the body and expression of the university.”

A Powerful Inertia

Around 2009, Stonecash began to pick up on a trend.

As chair of the University Senate Budget Committee, part of his job was to compile a yearly report of the university’s finances and make recommendations where the committee thought necessary. The report is usually compiled from data given by administrative sources, but sometimes senators do their own research.

Stonecash pored over 20-year-old, university-issued phonebooks — now a relic of the past — counting the number of provosts, vice presidents, associate provosts and directors — all administrative titles.

The total number of administrators was “unbelievable,” Stonecash said. Employees titled “director” had increased by approximately 285 percent, he said.

He confronted then-Chancellor Nancy Cantor about his findings at a University Senate meeting. Cantor was less than pleased, arguing that administrators are the face of the university, Stonecash said.

“Everyone looked at her like, ‘What are you talking about?,’” Stonecash said. “You just got the feeling that there was this powerful inertia to hiring admins and no one could figure out why.”

The growth in administrators creates an unbalanced scale of power relative to faculty, Stonecash said. As a result, he said non-academic efforts such as a university’s amenities and stadiums can begin to overshadow those in the classroom.

“The whole thing is just out of whack,” Stonecash said.

A Culture of Comparison

For universities nationwide, the cost of keeping up can manifest itself in many ways.

Each university typically has 12 to 15 peer institutions that it may compare itself to in size, enrollment, cost and program offerings. Those institutions can be either comparative or aspirational, said Pamela Taylor, the principal program evaluator for the Program Evaluation Division, a nonpartisan legislative staff unit of the North Carolina General Assembly.

UNC’s Program Evaluation Division recently conducted a review of the UNC system’s administrator-to-student ratio and found that there was one administrator for every 3.5 students.

UNC Chapel Hill’s efficiency was evaluated in 2009 by Bain & Co., a global management firm that also evaluated in SU in 2014. Among other things, Bain & Co.’s evaluation determined that UNC Chapel Hill’s administrative spending was growing faster than its academic spending, according to a 2014 Daily Tar Heel article.

UNC Chapel Hill has since launched Carolina Counts, a committee dedicated to implementing many of the recommendations outlined in the Bain & Co. review. By 2012, Carolina Counts presented a model to make their administration’s duties more efficient, according to the committee’s website.

Carolina Counts also saved the university $54 million in annual costs, Taylor said.

Following Bain & Co.’s evaluation of SU, the university created its own implementation strategy — Fast Forward Syracuse. As part of its evaluation, Bain & Co. identified that SU spent more money on raises and promotions for non-faculty salaries in the past seven years than any other level of faculty and staff members.

And with most administrators’ salaries equal or above $120,000, this can prove to be an expensive endeavor. Some institutions weigh what they should pay administrators by how much their peer institutions charge, said Michael Miller, a professor in higher education at the University of Arkansas.

“So there’s a constant push to raise salaries and what you’re paying people and that’s not sustainable,” Miller said. “Part of the reason that tuition is expensive is to cover these costs somehow.”

Checks and Balances

SU has and will continue to go through a series of university-wide changes that involve restructuring, redesigning and re-envisioning. Five new deans began leadership roles at various schools and colleges in 2015 alone. More than ten renovation projects were completed at various dorms or buildings on campus this summer.

Some changes may be less visible, said Craig Dudczak, a former chair of the Senate Budget Committee. But times of transition are when transparency is most needed, he said.

SU initiated a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program in June, a program offered to staff members whose age and years of service combined are equal to or greater than 65. The initiative allows staff to receive half their yearly paycheck in exchange for them leaving the university.

Kevin Quinn, SU’s senior vice president for public affairs, said the outcome of the program is still being finalized. It is unclear as to how many academic staff members versus non-academic staff members took the buyout.

Although the program is by no means a method of ‘clearing house,’ SU said in a letter to employees that it would be a way to advance the university’s success.

“We must make smart choices about where we allocate our resources,” said Andy Gordon, SU’s senior vice president and chief human resources officer, in a letter to employees.  “We have to examine opportunities to further invest in our academic priorities and further distinguish Syracuse as a place for excellence in teaching, research and scholarship.”

Whether it is high-paid administrators or low-level secretaries who opt into the program, Dudczak said the buyouts set the tone for how the university values its employees.

“So budgets are not just, ‘Do we have enough money to keep the lights on?,’” Dudczak said. “It’s a statement of what our real aspirations are.”

Published on September 15, 2015 at 2:23 am

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