alt Hacker NewsI'd be curious to know the breakdown of "wages and benefits" between academics, teachers and administrative staff. I've heard that admin takes up a huge fraction of the cost. How large can it be?
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JadeNB • today at 6:27 PM
What distinction do you draw between academics and teachers? Those are usually overlapping roles.
According to https://publicaffairs.vpcomm.umich.edu/key-issues/compensati... (just an example of a public university), it's $376K to executives, $481K to deans, and $152.7K to faculty in FY2013. Deans usually count as ~50% admin, so we could call that $376K + $240.5K = $616.5K to admin and $240.5K + $152.7K = $393.2K to faculty, roughly a 3:2 ratio.
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From https://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-facility-a...:
> Duke has a F&A rate of 61.5% with the NIH, which means that for every dollar provided to a Duke faculty member conducting research, an additional 61.5 cents is given to the University to compensate for its F&A costs.
This is not an uncommon overhead rate for a large university, and is competitive with overhead rates at the largest government contractors. That doesn't mean it's entirely reasonable or a sign of an efficient operation.