[notacop31337]

I experienced this in the form of a conversation with a member of University PMC not too long ago, they bragged about how they'd recently eliminated the function of bin emptying from the cleaning staff, and were now forcing all faculty to empty their own bins, they bragged about the cost savings whilst all I could think of was the absolute joke that is asking a highly credentialed person to spend their, quite expensive time, emptying bins. Even funnier when you consider that this just take even more time off the very likely zero hour contracted cleaner that was previously doing the bins. They even told me some faculty members in pretty well respected positions got mad (the fucking audacity) about the changes and how they so quickly put them in their place.

"Because they see universities as stages on which they are destined to display their own professional and moral superiority, they hold in low esteem the matters that preoccupy professors—sound pedagogy, academic rigor, publishing in one’s discipline, even reading books."

In amongst all of this, I have a neighbour who is a member of teaching staff at a local University, and the stories I'm told about digitisation, low salaries, bullshit job requirements and unpaid overtime, have all contributed to me deciding that University in my country is all in all, a massive ponzi scheme, and when it all goes to shit, the Universities themselves will be the only ones to blame.

[gnicholas]

I used to be an associate at an international law firm. One of the partners told me that the firm was structured to maximize the percent of time that lawyers spent on billable matters. There was substantial support staff to take care of scheduling, handling mail, reimbursements, and other non-billable matters.

I've been shocked to see how this mentality is not duplicated in university environments. I know tenured professors at Stanford who spend countless hours arranging travel with visiting scholars, dealing with reimbursements, and other office minutiae. It boggles my mind that these people — who are supposed to be focusing on teaching and research — spend to much time on menial tasks.

It isn't that these tasks are 'below them'. Rather, it's that there are a limited number of hours in the day, and every hour they spend handling reimbursement paperwork is an hour they're not spending doing award-winning research or writing an award-winning book.

[alisonatwork]

Annoyingly, this exact same thing happens in tech companies too.

In my current company, one of the employee perks is a lunch allowance. But to get the lunch allowance, you need to get a tax receipt from the place you bought lunch, and then scan it, submit the scan to a woefully slow and painful expense system, then also physically glue it to another claim sheet, and annotate it with some more details, etc etc. From my perspective it's essentially rewarding employees who waste the company time not doing the work they were hired to do. To me it's utterly absurd that any software developer spend their day doing expense claims when a professional administrator could do the job much faster and (probably) more cost-effectively.

And this isn't the first place I've worked like this either. I miss my job 20+ years ago when we had a secretary who not only took care of these things but also did stuff like take meeting minutes too. The loss of administrative staff has made the workplace far less efficient, in my opinion.

[gnicholas]

Somebody needs to bring his/her kid to work over the summer and start a side-business of processing reimbursements for a buck or two apiece.

> From my perspective it's essentially rewarding employees who waste the company time not doing the work they were hired to do.

I think they're counting on the fact that relatively wealthier employees won't miss $15 in reimbursements, or will feel 'cheap' submitting the receipts. The company has found a way to just subsidize lower-paid/cost-sensitive employees.

It's creating friction in order to get employees to self-select into (1) those who find the free lunch to be a meaningful perk, and (2) those who don't care that much. But I completely agree that it creates frustration for those who do it (and those who don't due to the time-consuming nature). I wonder if people would feel better about it if the company came out and said that they have an inefficient submission system specifically to deter wealthier employees from claiming the benefit?

[indeedmug]

> "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's razor

There probably isn't a grand strategy when it comes to awful processes. The process was probably setup by some woefully overstretch person. No one bothered to update the process because there are too many fires from the other awful processes that was also setup by another woefully overstretch person.

[gnicholas]

I'm not suggesting malice at all! An economist would even call it 'efficiency'.

It's also possible this is a hybrid — that the process grew in complexity for exogenous reasons, and when someone considered streamlining it, they realized that doing so would result in more reimbursements processed (specifically for more well-off employees) and decided to leave it be.

[bumby]

I ran into this with a safety reporting system that required a hand-mailed complaint to company HQ. When we inquired as to the possibility of updating to an online system, one primary reason was that they did not want it too easy to report safety issues because then they would be obligated to process the higher volume of complaints. They felt this bureaucracy made their side more efficient (but I would argue less effective).

[taylorius]

I don't subscribe to Hanlon's razor. I'm not convinced there is a clear dividing line between stupidity and malice. Is greed and selfishness malicious, or stupid? Both? And who is to know the contents of a bureaucrat's heart when they reject your form? Hanlon's razor is nothing but a broom to sweep bad intentions under the rug.

[hoseja]

I stop Hanlon's Razor at the individual level. As soon as you have a meme-entity subject to evolutionary pressure (corporation, government, nation, religion, charity, ...), assume maximum malice only loosely limited by its effect on fitness.

[raverbashing]

> by some woefully overstretch person.

Doubt. And if they're overstretched it's most likely because of their own shortcomings

No, sounds more like playing whatever little amount of power they have

[mrtksn]

That's strange because this problem is actually solved with specialised payment cards that you give your employees and they can spend their allowance they way they like and there's no paperwork because the card network handles the restrictions on what the card can be used.

Maybe those are not available everywhere?

[setr]

That’s.. interesting. My current company has had issues with optimizing reimbursements, mostly because it was previously an honor system but with recent growth you’ve gotten abusers (usually people coming from large companies e.g. minorly more convenient flights for triple the price — solved by travel agent — Uber black rides — solved by manual review, family outings billed as client dinners, etc). Not sure how much would really get captured by automated credit cards, but it seems like something worth suggesting.

Any idea what the actual name of it is?

[palebluedot]

TripActions Liquid is one of these solutions. Spending categories and limits are enabled on the VISA card, and can also be time-blocked (for trip per diems). No receipts necessary, you can only use it in the approved categories.

[mrtksn]

Sodexo Restaurant Pass is a big one, there are many other alternatives. I see Sodexo offers the service in Germany, India, Turkey and probably other countries but apparently it's not a global thing. Ticket Restaurant is another big one.

[hackeraccount]

Just pay people more.

[rsj_hn]

I think these companies are exploiting the fact that many tech employees value the $20 lunch perk more than an extra $5K in salary. I've seen this first hand, and for a lot of employees, a paid lunch is valued far more than it should be.

This is the basic reason for a lot of office perks. I'd personally prefer the cash and arrange for my own gym/lunch/coffee bar, as I don't want work to swallow up my life, but I'm in the minority.

[neilknowsbest]

To be sure, $20 per day at ~250 days per year is $5k. And that's tax-free to the employee, so if they're going to be spending that money on lunch anyways, it is better for the employee to trade the $5k pretax salary for the lunch benefit.

[rsj_hn]

It's not tax-free. It's compensation and taxes must be paid on it. It makes no difference whether your employer buys a sandwich and gives it to you or gives you money to buy a sandwich, it all adds to your income and is taxable, as is your gym reimbursement, etc. Firms that do this increase the withholding taxes and add these benefits to your total compensation which you can review -- go take a look at your employer-provided withholding forms.

[shandor]

I've been wondering this exact same thing, with added bewilderment from the fact that after all this non-core work pushed onto the academic staff the administration is still the one function growing, and growing fast.

We used to joke at my alma mater that the administrators were just trying to fill up their building to get a new one. The joke turned more than a little sour when it actually happened. And no, the university hadn't seen anything resembling necessary growth for such an explosion in administrative staff. If anything the faculties had been under cost-cutting for some years when it happened.

I think the phrase "you can't make this shit up" was coined for these situations...

[musicale]

Stanford University actually built a separate campus for administrative staff. As you note it's hard to make this up:

"Stanford Redwood City is a center of excellence for critical administrative areas. Learn which departments are working at Stanford Redwood City."[1]

A university administration's primary objective, and successful accomplishment, appears to be administrative growth.

[1] https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu

[quickthrower2]

Parasites, not unlike this: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/absurd-creature-week-glyptapan...

[lkrubner]

Since the 1990s there's been a massive effort to get rid of all the secretaries, and this was coupled by the idea that the secretaries were not doing crucial organizational work. The end result is that secretarial responsibilities have been given to other people in the organization, and therefore many organizations are worse run, compared to 30 years ago. This has also been the rare case where labor specialization went in reverse, with secretarial work being given to doctors, professors, computer programmers, police, etc. If you know what Adam Smith said about specialization, you should understand how much worse things have gotten as specialization went into reverse.

[MontyCarloHall]

>I've been shocked to see how this mentality is not duplicated in university environments

Why? Maximizing billable hours maximizes the amount of money the law firm as a whole makes, and thus the amount of money law firm leadership makes. Maximizing research output does not maximize revenue for the leadership of the university as much as further bloating the administration does.

[thaw13579]

At a research university, it would help get grants, a large chunk of which goes to the university via indirect costs. In practice, they expect the grants to flow on top of of these other minutiae often as unpaid overtime.

[hoseja]

This assumes grant-granting makes sense.

[thaw13579]

Right, unfortunately the grant funding model is deeply embedded in university research. Some folks get some startup funds on hiring (usually for lab construction/setup), but the rest is dependent on outside resources via grants. There are a few exceptions, e.g. Janelia, NIH intramural, Allen Institute, but they are unfortunately rare.

[feet]

I'm not sure I understand your comment, could you please expand on it?

[thaw13579]

I think the parent is suggesting that the grant-based model of funding research is itself flawed. There are many issues, so it could be related to how the grants are chosen/reviewed, funds are allocated, universities depend on them, careers of scientists are decided by them, etc.

[barry-cotter]

People, don’t downvote this. Partners at law firms follow their incentives. Administrators follow theirs. Expecting people not to follow their own interests is a recipe for disappointment. If you want good results making a good system works. Relying on gassing good people doesn’t.

[gnicholas]

How does adding administrative bloat increase revenue for the university?

I would contend that maximizing the amount of time that professors spend on the work they are uniquely qualified to do does maximize revenue for the university. It allows them to win more prizes, to cultivate and educate PhD students who can go on to become successful (to the credit of their PhD-granting institution), and educate undergrads (which can lead to more donations from parents or from grateful alumni).

I would think that on the whole, a university that was trying to maximize revenue would enable their braintrust to spend more time on activities that involve their brains.

[lmm]

> How does adding administrative bloat increase revenue for the university?

It doesn't, but administrators' salaries aren't really connected to the university's revenue. (And if they were, they'd probably focus on building more stadiums, selling more merchandise, and doing more advertising for deep-pocketed sponsors).

> It allows them to win more prizes, to cultivate and educate PhD students who can go on to become successful (to the credit of their PhD-granting institution), and educate undergrads (which can lead to more donations from parents or from grateful alumni).

The feedback loop for publishing better papers -> getting a better reputation takes decades, and it's not even clear you'd end up with more revenue at the end of it. As for attracting donations from grateful parents and alumni, the most effective way to achieve that is lowering your grading standards.

[tlb]

Maximizing research time helps over a much longer time horizon than getting lawyers to bill more hours. The principal-agent problem gets a lot worse when the time horizon goes beyond 10 years, as decision makers probably won’t even be around then.

[fxtentacle]

The difference is that scholars don't generate revenue for the university. Also, hiring PhDs in academia is surprisingly cheap.

[dontbenebby]

>There was substantial support staff to take care of scheduling, handling mail, reimbursements, and other non-billable matters.

I know many a phd student or professor who use freemium apps to handle that, at the expense your travel itinerary is now marketing data.

Not a great thing, especially when agents of foreign power will do things like show up in your hostel to pump you for “business intelligence”.

Americans don’t get much vacation, if you bother us in the hostel common room it makes us want to do a”social experiment” where since the EU has no death penalty we drown you in a Dutch canal and see if they give us a 1 bedroom with a PlayStation like they did Anders Brevik, not tell you the inner working of our NGO.

(For context, it’s my understanding since there’s no death penalty for espionage anymore, paired with no EU wide intel agency, many EU folks sell secrets back to the “motherland” - usually France or Israel - for money… to the point it’s basically decriminalized.)

[maegul]

All of this yes. Additionally I’ve been wondering what blame falls on the academics themselves. They’re the “credentialed” ones in this and allegedly hold and are committed to high values, and are, in the end, the final guardians of the virtues of the University and academic system.

Where is their guardianship? Their collective action at a global scale to uphold and ensure what really matters here? That the publication system evolved into what it did was probably a big red flag that modern academics were not capable or even willing. My own experience is that academics, especially collectively are sadly pretty spineless when it comes to big issues like this. So preoccupied are they with their own prestige, papers and grants they seem like broken-in domestic animals.

But as a class of professional how well do they serve society at large? I’ve brought this up with Academics before and they don’t like the topic. I feel like lawyers and doctors and even accountants do better.

[lmm]

Academics have very little power because the supply vastly outstrips the demand. So they're all caught in a race to the bottom, and there's a ready supply of scabs to undermine any collective action. Doctors have prevented this by setting strict limits on how many new doctors can be qualified at the national level; academics should probably have done the same, but it's a bit late for that now.

[therealdrag0]

But isn’t the limit if doctors a terrible thing for the rest of us?

[lmm]

Oh yes, absolutely; if there were more doctors being paid less the rest of us would get cheaper and easier medical care. It's a trade-off.

[ajmurmann]

It's quite bad, given rising health care costs

[HDThoreaun]

> Doctors have prevented this by setting strict limits on how many new doctors can be qualified at the national level

It's a bit more complicated than this. The bottleneck to becoming a doctor is residency, there are currently less spots than med school graduates. Every single residency loses money, so they're supported by the federal government. Congress could increase residency funding and more residencies would be created, and in fact the AMA consistently lobbies for that, but congress has refused.

[rsj_hn]

I have a hard time believing that it is easier to hire an academic than to hire an administrator. These are questions of power, and academia has ceded power to administrative staff in what is a good example of Nietzsche's Master-Slave dynamic, where the master has the slave take care of the unpleasant duties of life, and over time becomes dependent on the slave for the basics of life, and finally the slave rules over the master.

[antiatheist]

The guardianship should be built into the the societal systems, universities and technical colleges.

i.e. in the old days professors/students would leave the decaying institutions and start their own, seek some funding elsewhere.

The Institutionalization of Accreditation into the fact of modern capital requirements and regulatory capture at all social levels make this seem not so feasible though.

However there could soon be more of such social changes, perhaps someone could create some digital technology to facilitate analog socioeconomic action, instead of billion$ in silly valley vapourware like zuckverse or alphabets adworld.

[pyuser583]

I disagree a lot. There are a plenty of newer colleges.

For most of my life I was part of fundamental-ish religious group. They wanted schools and university to impart their worldview.

Had little trouble with established accreditation agencies, and as a backup created their own accreditation agencies.

[taylorius]

"So preoccupied are they with their own prestige, papers and grants they seem like broken-in domestic animals."

Absolutely this. It's their predisposition to be preoccupied with unworldly things, that's why they became academics. They want to be left alone to do their research, and hopefully they make some new discoveries now and again. That doesn't really fly these days though - because being left alone is incompatible with being measured and recorded every waking second, which is the fetish of our age. But if you want to be left alone, you probably don't like confrontation, and sooner or later you will be doing the bidding of those that do.

[scythe]

Historically, universities weren't organized by the faculty. They were organized by the students:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Bologna#History

>The university arose around mutual aid societies (known as universitates scholarium) of foreign students called "nations" (as they were grouped by nationality) for protection against city laws which imposed collective punishment on foreigners for the crimes and debts of their countrymen. These students then hired scholars from the city's pre-existing lay and ecclesiastical schools to teach them subjects such as liberal arts, notarial law, theology, and ars dictaminis (scrivenery). The lectures were given in informal schools called scholae. In time the various universitates scholarium decided to form a larger association, or Studium—thus, the university. The Studium grew to have a strong position of collective bargaining with the city, since by then it derived significant revenue through visiting foreign students, who would depart if they were not well treated. The foreign students in Bologna received greater rights, and collective punishment was ended. There was also collective bargaining with the scholars who served as professors at the university. By the initiation or threat of a student strike, the students could enforce their demands as to the content of courses and the pay professors would receive. University professors were hired, fired, and had their pay determined by an elected council of two representatives from every student "nation" which governed the institution, with the most important decisions requiring a majority vote from all the students to ratify. The professors could also be fined if they failed to finish classes on time, or complete course material by the end of the semester. A student committee, the "Denouncers of Professors", kept tabs on them and reported any misbehavior. Professors themselves were not powerless, however, forming collegia doctorum (professors’ committees) in each faculty, and securing the rights to set examination fees and degree requirements. Eventually, the city ended this arrangement, paying professors from tax revenues and making it a chartered public university.

[wolverine876]

That was just one model; there were others that were faculty run, church run, etc.

[bnralt]

I agree. We should go further, and think about what we, as a society, are actually trying to accomplish with higher education and how good universities are at achieving those goals. Not just some vague "it teaches you how to think"/"it teaches you how to be a good citizen" goals with no attempt made to actually see if we're achieving it. Real, concrete goals, with actual effort put into determining of the system is actually furthering those goals.

From what I've seen, the current university system is a very inefficient way of achieving what we're trying to accomplish.

[achenet]

this is exactly how admin bloat starts. Now we nee a dean of "Real, Concrete Goals", and some arbitrary metrics to 'measure progress' towards those goals, and more administrative underlings to enforce and measure those metrics...

Because obviously the current system of giving academics freedom to pursue their interests is just 'inefficient'.

[remarkEon]

I was writing more or less your text in response to a related comment, but you are exactly right.

The system is so broken that that only response would be to hire some "director" or "dean" of "making our education relevant again".

There is no solution other than blowing up the entire system. Maybe intentionally bankrupting some Universities would be a strong enough signal such that the ones that actually do want to stay relevant will self-select into a reform model.

[pdimitar]

So the current system is just perfect as it is and all criticisms towards it are misguided? Is that what you're implying?

[ajmurmann]

What are we trying to accomplish?

[melagonster]

like doctor focus to save people in front of him, scientists focus on resolve their problems. in another way, works on journal system is existing. many region had required open access journal and add preprint to internet.

[willis936]

Professors are stewards of nothing except their feud. Academics are nothing but serfs to their lord. Professors cannot be thought leaders because their position is always on trial. They go along to get along so they can do what they devoted their life to: some research, living a cushy life, and an inflated ego.

Administrators hold real power in academia.

[jojobas]

It is indeed a Ponzi scheme backed by government education loans. Pretty much the only way for an Egyptologist to make money is to teach more Egyptologists. Guess what, one day even the option to learn interesting stuff on the "future me"'s dime will not be attractive enough.

[jmopp]

There was a post a few days ago about Roman Egypt that mentioned how there are so many papyri that are just sitting there and not enough trained Egyptologists to read, translate, and contextualise them. There is clear value in training Egyptologists, since by learning more about Egypt's place in the Roman empire, we can learn more about Western society (as we are in some sense descendents of the Roman Empire) as well as Middle-Eastern society (as Egypt was one of the first huge conquests from the Romans by the Rashidun Caliphate, and thus an early example of how the Middle East became Islamic)

[jojobas]

The problem is that no government or other entity is willing to hire 1000 Egyptologists for their lifetimes in order to translate and digitize all that papyrwork, as there is perceived value of their contents is Not That High.

[biofox]

That's why researchers also lecture. They get paid for the latter (in a closely aligned topic), with some small amount of time to perform the former.

[tonto]

sounds like ya might want a computational egyptologist

[quickthrower2]

All roads lead to ChatGPT this week

[skissane]

I have no doubt that there are some completely out-of-touch administrators. On the other hand, I have also seen the opposite – administrators having to deal with out-of-touch academic staff.

20 years ago, I was enrolled in my computer science degree, and working part-time as a programmer on a project to improve the university's "course handbook" website, and the automation of the publication of the printed edition. As part of that project, the administration ran focus groups with students and staff, to find out what their experience was with the current handbook, and how it could be improved.

In the student focus groups, the students all complained about how complex and confusing the rules around prerequisites/etc were. My own experience as a student supported that; it became even more clear to me when I tried to build a data model to capture that complexity. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything the administrative staff could actually do about it–the prerequisite rules were under the control of committees of academics, all of whom were quite convinced that this complexity was absolutely necessary.

The academic staff focus groups reported a very different concern. You see, the university handbook was actually printed in two volumes – the volume containing the degree/unit listing, which many students bought; but there was another volume, which few students ever bothered with, containing such fascinating information as a full copy of the Act of Parliament which established the university, and all the rules and regulations made under said Act. It also contained a list of all the university staff (both academics and non-academics), their job titles and qualifications.

Now, it turned out, that the publication deadline for this list each year happened before the annual academic promotions were announced. So, suppose you were an associate professor, and you just got promoted to full professor – you'd have to wait a whole year before your new title was printed in the university handbook – a situation about which a number of recently promoted academics were rather upset. The fact that just about nobody ever bought that volume, or read that section, didn't seem to register with them. The administrators involved couldn't do anything about that either – the university printer said the publication deadline couldn't possibly be moved, and no way was the university going to change the timeline of the academic staff promotion process. But I remember one administrator opining "if only some of these academics would spend as much time talking and thinking about the experience of students, as they do about their own job titles". I don't think she was wrong.

[VoodooJuJu]

Although admins have gotten out of hand, I think the classism "only the untouchables should handle bins" to be absolutely abhorrent. In my culture, we don't take kindly to that old world caste mentality.

[pjerem]

I understand the concept of maximizing the output of every employee. It’s something logical as a company.

But otoh, as a human, when I hear people complaining about what is basically cleaning after themselves, I cannot feel any empathy.

I really cannot acknowledge that there exist one person in the world who is so productive every minute of the day that they don’t have the single minute required to clean after themselves.

It’s like thinking that Apple loses tons of money every single time Tim Cook needs to clean its desk or needs to do the poo poo. It’s just not true.

I’m not advocating against paying someone to do all those tasks : it’s practical. But any decent human being should see this as a perk rather than some sort of human right they deserve because they are worth more than garbage mens.

[bryanrasmussen]

>But otoh, as a human, when I hear people complaining about what is basically cleaning after themselves, I cannot feel any empathy.

Cleaning up after yourself is taking the stuff off the top of your desk and putting it in the trash can. Also taking some things like cans and bottles down the hall to the recycling bin.

I could also of course take the bag out of the bin, walk down the hall, walk down two flights of stairs, go out to the garbage area and garbage things myself. There's a difference between the two things.

If everyone is going to the garbage down stairs to throw things out yes it starts to be somewhat inefficient.

>It’s like thinking that Apple loses tons of money every single time Tim Cook needs to clean its desk or needs to do the poo poo

sure, but if Tim Cook needs to take the bag out of the garbage in his office, walk out the office, take elevator downstairs to basement and throw it into the big bins there it might be that his time at that point is worth more to the company. It's really a question as what fragment of time is monetizable, a minute saved here or there is probably unmonetizable waste-time but saving greater than 5 minute increments together starts to be significant.

[mjburgess]

Right.. but the example is a cleaner, who is already hired to clean, emptying a bin.

And the point of the example is the malicious joy of the admin staff at humiliating the academics by adding "cleaner" to their CV for wholey pointless reasons.