Size Matters

Opinions on matters of interest to the university and higher education.

Share your thoughts on this topic or other issues with the provost.

Now that I have completed almost a year on the Knoxville campus, I have begun to reflect back on the time since I arrived. In retrospect one of the things that surprised me most was the paucity of staff in the Provost’s Office. Last August, when I assumed my new position, I was supported by one secretary, one accountant, and a Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. The Vice Provost was supported, in turn, by one assistant. On occasion we shared a person with the Chancellor’s staff, which is also astoundingly small.

I was used to significantly more support. As Dean of the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley, I had responsibility for interdisciplinary programs, college advising, and undergraduate enrichment programs. In that office I had an 80%-time assistant and five direct reports, including a senior analyst and budget analyst.

When I looked to the Provost’s Office at Berkeley, I saw a great number of individuals charged with running the institution. The Provost has three Vice Provosts; the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Faculty Welfare has four full-time staff members in the immediate office and 17 staff reports, including 8 persons in academic personnel and 5.5 FTE in academic compliance. The other two Vice Provosts have 6 and 3 FTE in their immediate office. The Provost also has 10 individuals in his immediate office, including a chief of staff, an executive assistant, two senior administrative analysts, two administrative analysts, and two special assistants. Even if I consider that some of the functions performed by this comparatively enormous staff are done on this campus in other offices, the administrative support and structure for the Provosts in Knoxville and Berkeley are simply not comparable. It is interesting to note that by traditional measures of administrative costs, Berkeley is the leanest administration in the UC system.

Looking at web sites for other universities, I found a similar story. At the University of Florida the Provost’s Office has 8 in office staff and 7 in the executive staff; at Illinois there are a dozen individuals listed as assistant or associate provosts in various capacities. Taking an institution of a somewhat smaller size, more comparable to Knoxville, I looked at the University of Iowa, which has an executive staff of 4 in the Provost’s Office and 9 in support staff. For each of these institutions I did not count executive or support staff whose analogs at UT exist outside of the Provost’s Office (e.g. director of institutional research or dean of admissions).

What do these institutions have that we don’t have—besides the larger staffs? One difference is that they all have AAU status. It seems to me, however, that what these institutions have, what separates them from our campus, is better and more varied programs, a greater ability of the central campus to oversee what is happening on campus, and, consequently, better support for faculty and student activities.

As many of you know, I have begun to expand modestly the staffing of the Provost’s Office. We lost our accountant, and I plan to replace her with a budget analyst soon. I have hired a Vice Provost for Academic Operations and a senior analyst. For the past six months we have had the half-time services of a graduate student who has acted as a research resource on various issues of academic importance.

This increase in staffing doesn’t bring my office to anything near the size or the functionality of Provosts’ Offices at major research universities in the United States. Nor do I have plans to expand my office greatly over the next couple of years. I thought it would be good for the campus to know, however, how lean we are even though we have expanded.

I also feel it is important for the campus to know that the Provost’s Office is no exception. There is no Chancellor at any decent research university who operates with less staffing than Loren Crabtree. And I could say the same thing about other central campus offices and units, from Student Affairs to Finance and Administration, from the recently reestablished Graduate School to the Student Success Center or the Chancellor’s Honors Program.

What does increased staffing provide that we can’t otherwise provide? Let me give a few examples. Without the additional staff in the Provost’s Office this year we could not have implemented the program in freshman seminars, which will start this fall, and we could not expand orientation and welcome week activities in our program “Light the Torch of Academic Excellence.” If the Success Center does not reach a level of adequate staffing, it will not be able to serve students and assist those students who come to us with inadequate preparation; if the Chancellor’s Honors Program is understaffed, we will continue to be unsuccessful in competing for many of the best students in Tennessee’s high schools. In short, additional administrative staffing is not necessarily bloated bureaucracy; rather, it can mean providing the services that enable faculty to achieve at their highest potential and students to attain their maximum success. It can make the difference between a first-class and a mediocre university.

I continue to believe that faculty are the most significant element in our mission to become a better institution. But administration must be able to facilitate the programs and operations that faculty count on for their careers. At present we simply do not have an administrative structure that is commensurate with our goals.

Unfortunately, size matters in administration. Greater size alone, of course, will not lead to improvements, but it is difficult for me to see how we will make significant steps forward without further increases in administrative staff.

When I was a faculty member, I remember that the constant plaint from faculty (myself included), students, staff, and even the public and the legislature was that the administration was bloated. At some institutions that may be an accurate description. But at Knoxville the current size of the administrative support structure is an impediment to better education for students, enhancement of faculty productivity in teaching and research, and the smooth and effective functioning of processes essential to all of us – and to the future of the campus.

05 June. 2007