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The ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty in public universities and its implications. CHEN CHAO Nankai University 2014.3.3. Background. What happened?
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The ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty in public universities and its implications CHEN CHAO Nankai University 2014.3.3
Background What happened? • The jumping development of higher education is a popular topic in the world, How to measure and review the development? How to balance the scale expansion and quality improvement? • The administration sector had grew quickly with the expansion of higher education. What’s the implications of administration grows or administrative expansion of higher education institutes? especially from the perspective of employ? Is the administration grows means bureaucratization, how to debureaucratizate the higher education institutes?
Research purposes • Puts forward and erects a new measurable indicator in higher education evaluation and statistic； • Empirically analyzes the ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty of Sino-American public universities; • To find out the implications of administration grows or administrative expansion for bureaucratization of higher education institutes.
Vertical direction Faculty to administrator ratio (latitude) landscape orientation Student-to-faculty ratio (longitude)
Definition • Student-to-faculty ratio
Definition • The ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty/Administrators-faculty Ratio/The ratio of administrators to faculty What is it? How to measure and review it? What its implications to universities? How to control it?
Literature review • "the steady, inexorable increases in administrative personnel and services .... " (Duryea ,1973) • "Universities have become top-heavy with a wide assortment of vice-presidents, provosts, deans, directors, and miscellaneous assistants to all of those..." (Lewis ,1975)
Literature review • McGrath's study appears to have been the first serious attempt to trace the development of administrative offices. His dissertation entitled "The Evolution of Administrative Offices in Institutions of Higher Education in the United States from 1860 to 1933" traced the development of the administrative offices then in existence at the major colleges and universities in the United States and concluded that the median number of administrators in 32 selected institutions of higher education ranged from 3 in 1890 to 30.5 in 1930.
Literature review • In a 1969 thesis, Witner reviewed McGrath's study and a similar unpublished study of liberal arts colleges done by Partridge (1934). Witner supplemented the McGrath and Partridge studies by comparing administrative growth during the 1860 to 1933 period with growth in student enrollments and increases in faculty size. He concluded that the growth of administration in universities and colleges had paralleled the general growth of higher education.
Literature review • In 1955 with the help of a grant from the Kllogg Foundation, Terrien and Mills undertook a study of the California school districts which supported the hypothesis that "the relationship between the size of an administrative component and the total size of its containing organization is such that the larger the size of the containing organization, the greater will be the proportion given over to its administrative component" . Most of the subsequent research on administrative size, however, contradicts this early study.
Literature review • In 1965, Boland examined 97 public institutions of higher education and concluded that the number of full-time administrators per 100 faculty members decreased with an increase in size. The study suggested, however, that the relationship may be curvilinear, with administrative size first increasing disproportionately and then decreasing disproportionately with size.
Literature review • Perhaps the most significant study on administrative size in higher education in the literature reviewed was The Organization of Academic Work, published by Peter M. Blau in 1973. This study, based on surveys of 115 institutions, determined that the ratio of administrators to faculty members in the average American academic institution was one to four or 20:80. Blau was able to gather data on the growth of faculty size to conclude that "the growth in faculty appears to correspond rather closely to that in students"
Literature review • In 1981, a study was undertaken to attempt data collection on numbers of administrators followed by analysis of the data. It was hoped that the study would determine, at least in one small segment of higher education, just how valid criticisms regarding administrative growth are: whether administrative growth has been excessive when compared to the growth in the size of faculties and numbers of students. An effort was made to determine increases in numbers of university administrators at four regional universities in Kentucky during an ll-year period (1967-68 to 1977-78) and to determine how these increases related to other indicators of growth, such as numbers of students enrolled, numbers of graduates, and numbers of faculty members. (Alice Brown,1981)
Statistic and calculation • Data source: from official websites of flagship public universities in 50 states(27); 985 universities from China in random(14). • Software: SPSS15.0 • Formula: ratio= numerator/denominator=administrators and administrative staff/faculty
The ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty (US)
The ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty (US, continued)
Findings • Big ratio means huge administration expansion; • The average ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty of US universities is 3.79, and it is in a decrease trend • The average ratio of administrators and administrative staff-to-faculty of Chinese universities is 1.09, and it will be sustainable in a long period; • There is no such concept or indicator in Chinese higher education evaluation.
Further discussion • Is administration grows means administrative bureaucratization? • Bigger or smaller? Which one is better? • How to control the ratio?
Reference • Blau,Peter.The Organization of Academic Work[M]. John Wiler & Sons. 1993. • Brown,A. HOW THE ADMINISTRATION GROWS: A Longitudinal Study of Growth in Administration at Four Universities[J]. Research in Higher Education. Vol. 14, No. 4, 1981. • Ase Gornitzka、Svein Kyvik、Ingrild Marheim Larsen，The bureaucratization of Universities[J], Minerva, (1998)36:21-47. • Patricia J. Gumport, Academic restructuring organization change and institutional imperatives[J]，Higher Education, (2000)39: 67-91.
