Comment Re:Bloated administration (Score 1) 121
A research university like Stanford has dual goals, educate the students and perform world-class research. What is the 405% professional/non-teaching staff for? Are they doing research? Are they doing it on grants that the professors/staff have won?
If so, then it's not fair to hold that against Stanford--the staff they have hired is to do research not teach students, and they are not using tuition to fund this staff.
I've seen cases like this at other universities: non-teaching "Research professors" are hired to help do grant research, and have no role in teaching.
I don't know what the situation at Stanford is, but just on the face of it I am not sure that firing the staff and administrators will help the educational mission--those people may be executing grant work on grant resources.
--PM