JUSTIN POPE
AP Education Writer

Colleges and universities are cutting budgets by the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. But what exactly are they cutting – fat or lean?

Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg has buttressed his acerbic attacks on higher education’s “bureaucracy gone wild” with a new book. But a report out Wednesday from a research group concludes that compared to previous downturns, colleges have better resisted the temptation to balance the books with easy cuts to teaching, and are trying to make structural reforms.

The University of North Carolina system has eliminated more than 3,000 positions – mostly adjunct professors – to bridge a $414 million state budget cut this year. The beleaguered California State system – which has lost roughly $1 billion in funding – has turned away 50,000 otherwise admissible students in recent years for lack of resources to teach them.

But at the same time, major system reorganizations are under way in several states. Last week, the University of Wisconsin detailed plans to cut 51 jobs at its system HQ, giving more autonomy to branch campuses and shielding them somewhat from even harsher cuts. Missouri’s university system has cut central-office jobs, while universities in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are all at least starting to collaborate on bulk purchasing.

At Cal State schools, more than two staff and administration jobs have been eliminated for every full-time faculty spot reduction over the last two years.

The latest Delta Cost Project, which studies university spending patterns and has sharply criticized “administrative bloat” on campus in the past, covers only spending through 2009, so it captures only the early stages of the latest budget pressures. But it does suggest universities have begun making important changes in where they spend money.

Over the past 10 years at public universities, instructional spending rose only around 10 percent per student, while spending on “institutional support” rose 15 percent and maintenance 20 percent. But more recently the figures have turned. In 2009, instructional spending rose 1 percent, administrative spending 0.4 percent and operations fell 5 percent.

“The first place that they’re going is in those administrative areas,” said Jane Wellman, executive director of Delta Cost Project. “There’s big money in that. It’s painful but they have to do it.”

Ginsberg’s book notes that in 1975, roughly 275,000 administrators and staffers supported 450,000 professors on college campuses. By 2005, staffers and administrators easily outnumbered teachers.

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, sympathizes with Ginsberg’s take on the sprawling higher ed bureaucracy – but also agrees things may have changed lately.

“There’s been more cutting form administration in the last two years then I’ve ever seen before,” said Nelson, a professor at the University of Illinois who is also a vocal critic of high presidential and administrative salaries. “It’s partly symbolism. If you’re going to make the faculty and staff take furloughs, if you’re going to cancel positions that are scheduled to be filled, and you don’t want to be hung on the quad, you have to show some willingness to cut some administrative fat. But there’s so much fat they’ve gotten nowhere near the meat on the administration side.”

Ginsberg says universities could cut one-third of their administrative jobs with nobody even noticing the effects.

Few would go that far. The Delta Project data, for instance, typically make finer distinctions than Ginsberg between top-level administrators and support staff like mental health counselors and financial aid advisers who are inarguably front-line workers for the university’s educational mission.

Meanwhile, few would count staff like IT coordinators or campus police – both of whose ranks have surged in recent years – in the same category as executives with titles like “director of institutional effectiveness” (one that particularly irked Ginsberg).

Meanwhile, the legions of fundraisers and grant-writers whose jobs barely existed 40 years ago probably would not have survived the chopping block this long if they did not usually bring in more revenue for the university than their positions cost.

University of Wisconsin President Kevin Reilly says that between transparent public budgets and the steady state cuts – including $250 million the last two years alone – that he’s faced, he finds the idea of an out-of-control academic bureaucracy incredible.

He noted top Wisconsin executives, staff and faculty alike joined all state employees in taking eight furlough days after the last budget, amounting to a 3-percent pay cut.

“We haven’t been fat and happy and growing,” said Reilly, whose system is cutting the budget 25-percent at system headquarters.