Administrative Bloat at W&L

December 10, 2019 The W&L Spectator

By Will Tanner ‘21,

Washington and Lee is currently experiencing an extreme case of administrative bloat. Like many other institutions of higher education, it has focused on expanding administrative positions. Rather than adding classes that students are interested in, adding tenured faculty with impeccable credentials, or making tuition costs more reasonable, the administration has instead focused on increasing school involvement in student affairs and a further increase in the number of deans, assistant deans, and directors.

A quick check of the online budget reports for 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 confirmed my initial suspicions that W&L has been prioritizing administrative positions at the expense of academic ones. According to the 2019-2020 budget, the University plans on adding only three faculty members on the academic side for the school year. However, it does plan on adding four directors of some sort, another counselor, and another staff member to focus on campus recreation. That is concerning because it signals a shift away from higher learning and academic pursuits and towards the school becoming an all-encompassing nanny state. Academically serious students would be far better off if the school spent its money on professors rather than deans. Why? Because academics are what a school is and should be best at. A university’s mission is to teach, not to host events for special interest groups on campus. Worst of all, according to the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 operational budgets, the school is planning on a 4.96 percent increase in tuition, after a 3 percent increase last year, to pay for its increased expenses.

While continual tuition increases might be acceptable if they were going towards academic pursuits, that does not appear to be the case. The extra revenue is instead being used to fund administrative positions that are of dubious value to the average student. For example, there are currently close to thirty deans, directors, and assistant deans in a student body of ~2000.

That overstaffing has manifested itself not only in increased costs for students but also in an expansion of the University's traditional purview. The focus of a university used to be primarily on academics. Students were free to sort out their personal lives on their own and deal with problems as they saw fit. That is no longer the case; the University has now decided to take on the new responsibility of involving itself in almost every aspect of student life. From “The Stall Street Journal” to mandatory meal plans, the University is finding new ways to be the academic embodiment of a nanny state. Meanwhile, it is focusing less and less on improving academics and access to classes that students want to take. For some reason, there aren’t enough resources to have enough sections of Accounting 100 or Econ 100, but there’s always enough money for another University-hosted event. Whatever the class, education is at the core of he academic mission. Though diverting resources so that not enough class sections are available, the school is neglecting that mission.

Its resources are not infinite. The University needs to reprioritize academics. It can do that through hiring and granting tenure to high-quality professors rather than hiring ever-increasing numbers of administrative personal dedicated to intruding upon student life. I’m all for social activities; vibrant Greek Life and a socially active student body is one of the main reasons I chose W&L over a school like Davidson. But students should be responsible for their social lives, not the school.

Growing up and learning how to solve problems on your own is a crucial part of becoming an adult. That's why it used to be part of the W&L experience. Up until quite recently, students would find housing on their own and deal with landlords for junior and senior year, create social activities independent of the school, often through Greek Life, and otherwise learn how to manage the responsibilities that come with the independence of adulthood. Now, however, that is increasingly not the case. There's an administrator to run to every time one student or group has a problem with another student or group. The school forces us to live on campus junior year and has plans to construct fourth-year housing. That housing will undoubtedly be qualitatively superior to anything available in Lexington, but it comes at the cost of delaying adulthood. And if you can't find ways to make social plans on your own, the school will provide social activities for you. Who needs Greek Life or cocktail parties when there's a “intramural ping pong tournament” or “casino night with fake money?”

While those activities undoubtedly have value to some students, the problem is that the University is spending time, energy, and money on providing social events for students. It should spend that money on being a school, not being a daycare. If the school cannot exercise ts primay function, then why is it expanding into other realms?

If a student or organization wants to host those events, then that's great. But they should find a way to do so on their own rather than spending university money on social occasions. The University should spend our money on finding ways to expand the number of business and politics classes, most of which are always full. It should not be spent on a poetry reading in the library. Some events, like the Mock Con Gala or Fancy Dress, are wonderful events that are integral to the campus culture and benefit the student body as a whole. Those are undoubtedly worth the money spent on them, especially since the students going pay for tickets. While both organizations do receive some EC funding, the bulk of the funding comes from students who buy tickets or are in a delegation. In other words, those who participate are the ones who pay for the event. However, the free events that benefit only special-interest groups on campus need to be cut. The resources spent on them could be much more productively employed in building up any manner of programs.

Alongside the decline in student independence, there has been a perceptible decrease in student self-governance. Mock Con, for example, has been the recipient of significantly increased school involvement compared to past Mock Conventions. According to a current state delegation chair, administrative badgering has mainly manifested itself in the T-shirt design process. That oversight mainly includes insisting that every shirt design be approved by the school.

While requiring that t-shirt designs be approved is not overly demanding, it is indicative of a sea change in administrative involvement in student self-governance. The Mock Convention officers should be the ones making decisions about what designs are appropriate to go on shirts and where to sell the shirts, not W&L administrators.

The aforementioned examples, although mostly anecdotal, present a clear and disturbing picture of administrative bloat at W&L. As the University has hired more and more administrative personnel, those deans and directors have begun to insert themselves into university life in ways that limit student independence and decrease student self-governance. Furthermore, at a time when many students struggle to get into classes they need to take to complete any C School major (Economics, Accounting, Business, or Politics), the University needs to devote more of its finite financial resources towards those in-demand programs and fewer resources towards administrative positions and sparsely attended events. In the words of Wendy McElroy of The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, "administrative bloat is directly opposed to academic excellence and the intellectual well-being of students." It's time for W&L to recognize that fact and begin to cut down on administrative bloat to reduce expenses and increase our academic experience.