Brown University is an Ivy League university that charges a huge amount in tuition — $68,612 per year. It also has an endowment of more than $7 billion — less than other Ivy League universities, but still quite large.
But it still is facing a budget deficit, due to unionization and administrative bloat:
An Ivy League institution recently announced its plans to tackle a $46 million budget deficit, which the school attributes partially to “unionization” and the “rapid growth in faculty and staff positions coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.”…
”As Brown evolves its academic and financial model to align with our community’s aspirations for continued growth as a leading research university, we must contend with the key drivers of the deficit.”… Such factors include “downward pressure on tuition increases,” as well as the “macroeconomic factors of unexpected high inflation, growth in salaries and benefits, and national trends toward unionization; and rapid growth in faculty and staff positions coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, with staff growth outpacing growth in faculty.”
Brown has identified multiple steps that it will undertake in order to reduce the deficit over the next five to six years, including limiting faculty headcount growth to one percent, and decreasing Ph.D. budget growth from six percent to four percent.
”We are seeking to slow expense growth in a sustainable way, with an eye toward long-term solutions that allow Brown’s resources to continue to support our community’s priorities and aspirations,” the school writes. “This work is important to ensure the University’s long-term financial health and its standing as a leading research institution, today and for years to come.”
In November, Boston University similarly limited its admissions of Ph.D. applicants following increased costs from a recent graduate student union deal.
The “staff growth outpacing growth in faculty” at Brown is common at America’s colleges. Harvard University has 2,600 more college staff than it has undergraduate students.
Harvard alumni such as former Massachusetts ACLU leader Harvey Silverglate have argued that the growth in college bureaucracies chokes off free speech and results in college rules micromanaging student life and killing off fraternities and other voluntary institutions. Silverglate recently ran an unsuccessful campaign to be elected to Harvard’s Board of Overseers to curb administrative bloat. His platform included a proposal to “dismiss 95 percent of the bureaucrats.” “Having so many administrators…adversely affects the academic culture…Administrators, with little useful work to do, enact speech codes, with the codes enforced by ‘kangaroo courts’ composed mostly of administrators. These administrators have no idea what academic freedom is, much less due process,” he said.
Harvard employs dozens of full-time administrators and staff in diversity, equity and inclusion positions, both at the university level and in each of its schools. A study by a California State University professor found that an increase in “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies at a college is linked to rising opposition there to free speech. “The rise of DEI bureaucracies has actually coincided with the beginning of a ‘Free-Speech Crisis on College Campuses,’” noted the study.
College DEI staffers encourage illegal discrimination against whites and Asians. For example, at the University of California at Los Angeles, the Director of Race and Equity advocated denying white employees leave because of their race. That director, Johnathan Perkins, also claimed that “every white person is racist to some degree”, and falsely claimed that “white people cannot be victims of racism,” and “only white people can impose racist harm.” These claims disregarded court rulings finding that whites can be victims of racism and nonwhites can act illegally in committing racist acts. Perkins tells whites not to wish him a “Happy Juneteenth” because he will “flip tf out” if they do. He reacted to the death of England’s Queen Elizabeth by saying,“Good riddance.”
Harvard is not unique in having a large and costly bureaucracy devoted to diversity and equity. By 2011, there were already more college administrators than faculty at California State University, many of them devoted to diversity and equity. And the University of California, which claimed to have cut administrative spending “to the bone,” was busy creating new positions for politically-correct bureaucrats even as it raised student fees and tuition. As the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald noted in 2011:
The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.
