In a presentation to its Board of Visitors, administrators at George Mason University showed a graph (seen above) comparing the number of employees per student at Virginia’s six public research universities. GMU shared with Old Dominion University the distinction of having the lowest employee-student ratio of the six. The purpose, of course, was to make the GMU administration look good by comparison.
Perhaps it’s a chart that the UVa Board of Visitors should see as well, though for entirely different reasons. By this reckoning, UVa has two-and-a-half times as many employees per student as GMU. On the face of it, that seems scandalous.
The disparity is so stark that one might legitimately inquire if the GMU functionaries who compiled this data were comparing apples with apples, so I don’t rush to any judgment. However, it would seem reasonable for UVa’s board members to ask for an explanation.
— JAB
Jim, excellent point. I listened to the BOV meeting via Zoom. All the speakers spoke about was sources of revenues (tuition dollars and endowment income) and various massive spending projects. Absolutely no mention of expense control.
UVA is not run with any business principles whatsoever.
Keep their feet to the fire.
Are the numbers for the Medical Center included? Perhaps that could explain part of the discrepancy. Nonetheless, it is a legitimate inquiry warranting an explanation.
It would be interesting to see what percentages of these schools’ employees’ compensated time is spent dealing with DIE compliance enforcement. And perhaps knowing what portion of students’ tuition and fees is taken for DIE would be interesting information.
Peter, it’s DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) not DIE…..but that could be a Freudian slip!😉
My bet is that the higher the ratio of employees to students, the greater the “wokeness” of the university.
The Szczerbicki Theorem.
I like it!
(But why couldn’t you have had an easy name like Smith or Jones! MIght make it hard to catch on..)
I’m betting the Theorem postulated is true…
…and despite this UVA continues to decline in the national ranking of public universities… falling from #1 to #2 to now #3
God forbid you fall into some computer/bureaucratic snafu at GMU. You’ll never find anyone to answer a phone call or email with the exception of an automated email reply or undergraduate working as a receptionist who has no authority to help you. One must compare what undergraduate and graduate students receive from each university before assuming raw numbers are telling a particular story.