[tyoma]

We don’t have to guess. Most US universities are public institutions so you can just Google up their budget.

As an example, here is the UC system:

https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4511

https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2021/chapt...

About 70% of the UC budget goes to salaries and benefits. Of that, 70% of staff is non-academic.

Full context below:

Non-academic staff employees constitute nearly 70 percent of UC’s workforce and are responsible for health services, student services, instruction and research support, compliance, and general administration (6.1.1). In October 2020, this group included 143,188 individuals. Overall, this staff workforce represented over 115,577 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees in that month.

STAFF WORKFORCE About six out of every ten UC staff FTE are working for the University of California Health system. These frontline workers (including doctors, nurses, administrators, technicians, and allied health professionals) are playing a critical role in California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 97 percent of these employees are supported by non-core funds, typically the revenues generated by hospital services. Students often work part-time on campus as part of their financial aid packages or for research experience. During the pandemic, UC campuses transitioned to remote instruction. With staff, faculty, and students no longer on campus, student employee headcount at general campus halved from 36,000 in October 2019 to 18,000 in October 2020. General campus, non-student employees are the remainder of the University’s staff, at 43,752 FTE. This includes student services employees, career advisors, IT specialists, research administration, laboratory staff, food and auxiliary service workers, accountants, maintenance and janitorial staff, safety workers, and analysts (6.1.1).

[frumper]

Looking into UC Statistics from your link gives an interesting insight.

I came away with the numbers 232k employees with earnings in 2021. https://universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-cent...

And Fall 2021 has student enrollment at 294,662. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-...

Some quick caveats, the employee count is for a year, and the UC system has about an 8% separation rate. The employee count also includes 29k student employees. Even so, that feels like way too many employees to service that student count, a bulk of which are listed as non-student professional and support staff.

[milesskorpen]

Note that these employee counts probably include whole hospital staffs (since teaching hospitals / academic medical centers are frequently part of universities).

[frumper]

Yes, that is a good point. Staff employed by the hospitals are included. UC Davis alone is more than 10 thousand employees. I'd imagine a few of the other UC hospitals are also significant portions of that support staff.

[colinmhayes]

So 40% of employees aren't paid by the university system's academic arm, but by the healthcare section. 30% are academic staff, and 30% are support staff.

[daxfohl]

Even with the cost of medicine going through the roof, college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average. So it's surprising the university would need to spend so much there.

[apcragg]

The UC Health system serves the general public through direct services and their research and teaching functions.

[colinmhayes]

They're effectively separate organizations. One runs the universities, the other runs the hospitals + med schools.

[ska]

> college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average.

These are typically regular (teaching) hospitals, they serve the community not just the university.