Report Claims Number of Administrators is Growing

By Jay Antenen
Staff Writer

A new report released by Professor of Politics John Seery claims that the number of administrators at Pomona rose by 57 percent in the last ten years leading to a sea change in the ethos of the College.

Speaking passionately about the changes, Seery said that the increase reflects a national trend of replacing faculty with professional administrators for roles outside of the classroom.

“The traditional roles of [liberal arts] faculty are being outsourced to professional administrators,” Seery said. “Today, students are more likely to come in contact with an administrator rather than faculty member outside of the classroom. I fear [Pomona] is becoming impersonal and bureaucratic.”

Dean of Students Ann Quinley and Associate Dean of Students Toni Clark disputed Seery’s findings.

“I do not really perceive a shift from faculty to administrative engagement with students,” Quinley said. “Faculty are deeply engaged and so are my staff [in the Office of Student Affairs]. We may work with students on different aspects of their lives at Pomona, but we are all working to help students.”

Quinley did note though that “[Seery] is a smart guy and so he must be seeing something I am not.” Clark said she does not believe that there is less student-faculty interaction outside of the classroom and that in some cases there is more interaction.

A study by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that the national number of administrators at colleges and universities has doubled since the 1950s.

Seery based his claims on the number of administrators listed in the course catalog. The total number of positions listed in the administrative section of the catalog increased from 50 in 1990 to 79 in 2000, an increase of 58 percent.

Most striking was the increase in the number of positions in the office of Student Affairs. The 1990 catalog listed six administrators while the 2000 catalog listed fifteen. The biggest changes in the office occurred between 1990 and 1995: during that period six positions were added.

Vice President of Finance Carlene Miller said the portion of Pomona's budget spent on administrative salaries has decreased in the past few years relative to faculty salaries and overall expenditures. In a response to Miller's claim Seery said, "Miller insists on calling [some administrators] 'faculty,' because apparently she lumps those folks into 'faculty salary pools' as opposed to the 'administrative salary pool' and thus it looks as if the faculty at Pomona have higher average salaries than we otherwise would have."

The Human Resources Office declined to comment on the increase in administrators, deferring to Miller's office. A secretary for Miller's office said the office was too busy to provide an official count of the number of administration positions added to the college since 1990.

Quinley at first denied there that has been an increase in the number of administrators, but later said that by her count four positions have been added since 1990 in the office of Student Affairs. She said most of the additions have been part time and junior level jobs.

Clark contested Seery's figures by pointing out that other percentages can be produced depending on the definition of administrator. She asserted that most of the increases happened in the Development Office. Seery pointed out in his report that the biggest changes occurred in Student Affairs not the Development Office.

"This obfuscation and these games with semantics are red herrings," Seery said. "To be sure, they evidently serve certain people's professional purposes, but they may also rebound to the detriment of the character of residential life around here, which involves something quite beyond faculty versus administrative bickering."

Dean of Campus Life, Mathew Taylor said that the demands students and parents place on colleges have mushroomed over the past twenty years leaving colleges nationally no choice but to increase the number of administrators.

“Students see themselves as customers now,” Taylor explained. “They have higher expectations. Parents also expect that deans know their son or daughter and are able to respond to any problem they have.”

On a given day Taylor said he might respond to a discipline incident, physical plant issues, sexual harassment complaints and a concerned parent’s call.

The tradition at liberal arts colleges of faculty rotating through as deans no longer works Taylor said because of the specialization required for the job. Federal legislation on student privacy and disability rights also makes having rotating deanships difficult. Taylor pointed out though that professors still hold many of the top administrative posts including the top positions in the Office of the Dean of the College and Office of Student Affairs.

Professor of Politics and expert on organizational theory, Richard Worthington said he has not observed an increase in the level of bureaucracy at Pomona, but said that it wouldn’t surprise him. “Normally institutions tend towards an increase in specialization and thus an increase in number of people,” Worthington said.

Seery said he is not sure if the changes at Pomona and elsewhere are good or bad but he is discouraged by the lack of discussion that went into shifting residential responsibilities from the faculty to deans. “We need to return to the view that some of the most important education takes place outside the safety of the classroom, and that the

faculty shouldn't simply abdicate those spaces and opportunities to others,” Seery said.

Seery stated in his report, “Whether a small college can sustain an engaged sense of intellectual community through such professional outsourcing remains to be seen.”

Miller said that the change of responsibility from faculty and administrators has been caused by the “increasingly complicated and demanding lives of faculty members, which leaves them less time than their predecessors had.”

Professor of Geology Richard Hazlett said that often professors must pick between two programs in which they would love to participate. “I would love to live in a residence hall if it weren’t so noisy," he joked.

Hazlett said that an increase in the amount of committee work professors must do leaves many overburdened. Some professors even resent simply having a dinner meeting. Seery described the faculty as being “bludgeoned with committee work for the sake of committee work.”

Professors and deans point out that Pomona's bureaucracy is small compared to other institutions. “Pomona College is a little island of light in a sea of darkness,” Hazlett said. “It is very easy to take care of problems here. The school is small and there are lots of resources.”

For Seery though, Pomona's light is growing dimmer. “We need to return to more intimate, face to face interactions," Seery said. "The moral center of the college must remain between professors and students."