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Behold the Glory of the University of California System
I’m doing research for a consulting project and came across this little gem. It’s a simple breakdown of staff and students in the entire University of California system that gives a pretty clear indication of why the state is falling apart. (The information comes from UC Financial Reports).
Academic staff—18,896 (Fall 2011) — [update: this number would be better labeled full-time instructors. UC considers student TAs and non-instruction research as academic staff, and list 42,327 FTEs as Academic staff. However, subtracting TAs and research, this number is pretty accurate.]
Administrative staff—189,116 (Fall 2011) — [update: this number appears to come from the headcount reports, and does include health care and allied services. UC lists the most recent headcount, 194,783, as 142,163 FTEs.] See links below in comments.
The student numbers are accurate.
Students 236,691 (Fall 2012)
Undergraduates 184,562 (Fall 2012)
Postgraduates 52,129 (Fall 2012)
More administrators than undergraduates and 10 times as many administrators as instructors. Seems like an excellent use of resources to me!
Published in General
That depends on several factors.
First, if it’s a research school or a teaching school. Research schools have a lot more non-teaching staff. Lots of RAs, post-docs, facilities people, technical people, grant people etc.
Second, depends if its a flagship university in a State system, or if its one of its branches. The administrative staff is concentrated in the flagship, where also the research is going on and where usually a medical school is too. The branches are usually teaching schools.
But the most important thing, I think, is that there’s no reason to assume that all this “staff” is somehow “dead weight”. Especially since in most cases its double-counting all the grad students who also work as RAs or TAs.
I assume that there should be fewer staff than students.
I don’t know what the ideal ratio is though.
I wonder what it was historically when prices were under control.