As the new chairman of The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, I am determined to trim costs in order to keep our flagship university affordable. Since 2000, tuition and fees at Texas A&M have risen from a little more than $1,500 per semester for 15 hours to more than $3,900 for the same course load. Even if you factor in inflation, the cost has more than doubled for our families.At the Carpe Diem blog, Prof Mark Perry of the Univ. of Michigan has some graphs about the drivers of costs at US universities.
Vision 1920 wonders what the data looks like for A&M and for the TAMU System.
As a TAMU non-faculty professional staff member, I can safely say that we don't sit around with our thumbs up our rears. We do end up spending quite a bit of time reading SAPs, collecting and collating documentation to prepare for audits, and making sure that we're in compliance with some very detailed, mutually contradictory, and absolutely nonsensical state and federal laws.
ReplyDeleteThose laws and other tasks that take up about 1/4 of my personal work week would need to go away if the staff percentage was to shrink. I don't see that happening - in fact, I see it happening more as time goes on.