This is for Alan and anyone else who loathes the press releases on the next highly paid administrator at the university. The number of administrators since FY2012 has increased from 1,419 to 1,489 about 5 percent. The number of Group I faculty, the highest faculty classification has declined from 841 to 807 a 4 to 5 percent decrease. Administrative staff salaries have increased 12 percent between 2010-2017 with faculty only up 7.2% while student employees have taken an 8.6% decrease from their meager salaries. In other news this fall is projecting 18,228 undergraduates up 350 from last year due to record freshman classes the previous few years.

http://www.athensnews.com/news/campus/ou-s---budget-inclu...

When I started Chairing FDU's Industrial Advisory Committee I wanted to put together a program to raise money for the Engineering Technology programs.

I could not believe the number of Administrators who each had to sign off,with the college's Dean making the final call.
That meant if all the mid level Administrators said "yes',the Dean could still kill it.

I told the first Administrator I met with that I wanted to meet with the Dean,since he had the final say anyway.
If not,the Committee would just go in a different direction.
After the shock wore off,he scheduled the meeting.

On another note.
I'm not for reducing faculty.
But another thing that shocked me is how few classes professors have to teach.

Research is fine,but I believe their primary role should be teaching.

Come on Wes, you should know by now that we can't use the ANews as source material for posts.

Dr. Ping I believe had it right that the way to improve a schools reputation was to concentrate on high end academics and keeping enrollment in check with a high faculty to student ratio. The direction the school has moved in under McDavis is toward a generic major state university model with corporate approaches and starting a nursing program for example because its popular. OU was a step above Ohio State with a smaller more selective university but the school is now reduced to overflow for OSU. Take faculty salaries, OU didn't even target to compete with OSU and is content with aiming to be within the Top 3 of public university salaries. How is hording 18,000 undergraduates at a school in Southeast Ohio is in the best interest of the state? Sure the additional students have helped to revitalize Athens but they've put pressure on the housing stock in town. More faculty buying in Athens and fixing up the properties is a smarter way to go. The appeal of Athens as a smaller liberal arts focused public school is what was bringing students in but that's fading. With it the hope the school would ever be considered among the elite public universities.

They never do.

Really respect their business model though. Tabloid seems like easy money IMO.

What's better is 15,000 students studying to be doctors and engineers and other higher end academic offerings such as the J school over 18,000 students majoring in lower tier allied health professions. Cut the student faculty ratio down and raise the incoming freshman stats. Let someone who wants to become a nurse graduate from Marshall who desperately needs the students. Once a school moves beyond the mid teens in undergraduate enrollment its no longer a mid sized public university.

Have to take exception to the "nurse" comment.

My wife was looking into get her Maters in Nursing using O.U.'s distance learning program.
Unfortunately,O.U. doesn't have any clinical affiliations in N.J.

What she found was that O.U's got one of the top nursing programs in the country.
Why would you want to get rid of that ?