There are extreme downsides - for many colleges athletics is a money-maker. So is administering IP. There's is also lots of real estate, which appreciates value, but needs maintenance.
The big reason for all the extras is that it makes the school known, in a very big and important way. They host conferences, have archives that receive donations, give out awards.
Donors give all sorts of weird tasks - and funding to achieve them.
Modern colleges are so many different things.
There is a subset of colleges that adopt the "keep it simple" approach, but they often run into lots of trouble. The big problem is without doing tons of stuff, people forget they exist.
It's a bit like drug companies advertising at the super bowl. They hate doing it, but don't have a choice.
Cut the top 20 salaries in half and fire 10% of the staff who are not directly involved in academics (must teach, learn, or research) for starters. Sever any major athletics organization (i.e. football, basketball, etc) into a separate legal entity with something like a license fee to the university based on team revenue as a percentage so funds flow exclusively in one direction.
University admin work expands to the available workforce and I've heard first person accounts from long time senior university staff about admin employees who literally didn't do anything of any conceivable consequence.
I mean actually breakdown exactly where the spending is going and then show the cuts.
You can say “cut salaries in half” about any industry. You could say it about software engineers. But just because you say that doesn’t mean it’ll work out well for the industry. Non-minimum wage salaries should be market driven. I doubt you could just cut salaries in half and keep a reasonable work force.
There are extreme downsides - for many colleges athletics is a money-maker. So is administering IP. There's is also lots of real estate, which appreciates value, but needs maintenance.
The big reason for all the extras is that it makes the school known, in a very big and important way. They host conferences, have archives that receive donations, give out awards.
Donors give all sorts of weird tasks - and funding to achieve them.
Modern colleges are so many different things.
There is a subset of colleges that adopt the "keep it simple" approach, but they often run into lots of trouble. The big problem is without doing tons of stuff, people forget they exist.
It's a bit like drug companies advertising at the super bowl. They hate doing it, but don't have a choice.