The biennial battle over funding for the Montana University System is this time especially acrimonious, doubtless because the money needed is in shorter supply than ever. While The Montana Professor cannot keep up with all the moves being made in this battle--that is more the business of the newsmedia--the Editors have decided that the faculty members of the MUS deserve to have available to them some information which might be helpful in understanding what is going on, thus this Special Supplement.
In Vol. 2, No. 2 we ran an article titled "Bloated Administration, Blighted Campuses" by Barbara Bergmann, Distinguished Professor of Economics, American University. Professor Bergmann made the point that the proliferation of administrators has reached the point that the cost is consuming a disproportionate share of the resources of the institutions of higher education. A similar point about public institutions in general was made by Osborne and Gaebler in their book Reinventing Government, which we understand has been widely read in government circles in this state. Now this concern has emerged as one of the points of controversy in the debate over the funding of the University System. Specifically, the Governor's Office has taken the position that the MUS is topheavy with administrators and that too much of the system's budget is devoted to administration, rather than instruction.
The Commissioner's Office denies the charges and offers its own analysis of some relevant data. The way these data are presented results in their being confusing and/or contradictory. In this supplement we present these data just as we received them from the two offices except that we have added titles where there were none, added a definition of terms, a glossary, and two graphs developed for the purpose of comparing the interpretations of the data. Beyond that we leave it to the reader to draw the conclusions. Two faculty members have contributed to the Supplement. Ruey-Lin Lin contributed some charts that show a way of looking at the budget breakdown for the MUS and the various units. Richard Barrett offers some of the data and conclusions from a study he did comparing the size of administrative staffs in the various units to their peers. Finally a student from Rice University offers some views on administration.
We do not intend to give the impression that the only issue is the cost of administration. The larger question is the appropriate level of funding of the system as a whole. We cannot let it be forgotten that the MUS has been seriously underfunded for years! The government and the people of the state need to understand that the quality of education they expect for their children cannot be bought cheaply.
While it may be difficult to draw firm conclusions from all this, it seems clear to the Editors that the faculty members can benefit from more factual information than most of them have ever had before. It can be quite an eye-opener!
The following terms are used in the data presented. The definitions are by the editors.