Just because you work (or learned within) a system doesn't mean you understand how it works. The higher ed jobs crisis is significantly more complicated than "administrators" cutting your budgets

There are huge issues at play, that unless you work within them (most faculty and students don't), you might not know they exist.

For example, a whole bunch of states have moved to an FTE funding model, which would be fine if more and more students weren't part-time.

FTE = full time equivalency, meaning 12 credits equals funding for a person.

Except staff and faculty now need to deal with multiple humans only being funded as 1. 2 students at 6 credit hours still need advising, seat time, tutoring, library privileges, etc.

On top of that, part-time students don't get the same aid as full-time, so that affects how institutions get paid.

In addition to switching to FTE-based funding, *most* states have pulled back on their funding going on 20+ years - little bit by little bit. And now, the "3-legged stool" is mostly 1=legged, students finding cash or loans.

And, because of dodgy loan practices, many community colleges can't even offer private loans. So if a student doesn't qualify to have all of tuition covered by state or federal aid, they literally pay out of pocket unless they some how magically know about private loans.

Some schools have decentralized their budgets - College A gets so much and College B gets so much - sometimes based on enrollment. This might sound like common sense, until you think about required general ed requirements, so the English dept is serving 100% of the student body

But, because of "low" enrollment compared to say, engineering programs, those English departments get line cuts and have fewer and fewer full-time faculty. Even though they continue to serve more and more students.

And, we know more FT faculty means more successful students.

Another relatively "easy" place to cut is staff - except our current faculty requirements don't leave time for those admin functions.

An "easy" place to add, because they're most unregulated, are fees. And this is how some of your student affairs staff colleagues are paid.

On top of all of that, several states are increasing minimum wages incrementally - this causes wage compression. Most of the time wage compression is not accounted for in institutional budgets.

My student workers will soon be making as much as my professional staff.

My (least) favorite thing to see on here (this lovely free website) is rage against high paid administrators. Well, if you work at a public institution you can theoretically see how much those administrators are making.

I, an "administrator" with a Master's degree and pursuing a PhD, make a whole $36k. With a staff and a budget and direct connection to retention and student success. I took a pay cut for a promotion at a community college.

Anyway - higher ed budgets are complicated. I didn't link to anything in this thread because I'm tired and my brain is melty and I need to apply for scholarships because I'm self-funding my PhD.

Start with the Journal of Higher Education. Follow smart people here.

And if you're like "hey, she's smart, I wanna help her go to school" or even, I dunno, buy me a box of tea: http://paypal.me/chelmdo