SMU to cut $35mm through layoffs etc

[RGV Pony]

Excess debt through construction... What happened to only starting when 80% of the cost has been raised?

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/communit ... illion.ece

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Bad news for sure.

[PonySnob]

Have several friends on the faculty and they all say that SMU has added layer upon layer of "administrative" people in the last few years.


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[GiddyUp]

Somebody messed up

[CalallenStang]

We should be finding ways to streamline operations annually, not just when we get into some financial trouble.

[couch 'em]

Someone made a great point - enrollment has changed much but we have twice as many buildings. Seems like going from Perkins admin bldg to Perkins, Blanton, and an office tower implies a few expendible positions

[NavyCrimson]

Better start working on that endowment boys -including the 'should be/long over due' athletic one. Perhaps this will finally get their attention.

[skyscraper]

Seems like there's plenty of needless admin type jobs that can go. No need to go after any professors or adjuncts.

[Digetydog]

Have several friends on the faculty and they all say that SMU has added layer upon layer of "administrative" people in the last few years.


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For years, students and parents ignored student loan debt. As a result, schools were able to raise tuition without worrying about who would pay. If you look at our budget, the teaching cost has not gone up by anything close to what tuition has increased. The main driver is administrators and their staff.

BTW - Law School budgets are going to get hammered in the coming years. With good jobs hard to get, students aren't willing to pay $50K for 3 years to end up doing document review by the hour.

[03Mustang]

If they can cut $35 million in a single year that says a good amount about the needless administrative layers that are in place.

[Digetydog]

If they can cut $35 million in a single year that says a good amount about the needless administrative layers that are in place.

If the keep saving $35M per year, it is like adding $350M to the endowment.

[b_caesar]

Seems like there's plenty of needless admin type jobs that can go. No need to go after any professors or adjuncts.

Yup, all kinds of needless "admin type" jobs on campus - and we all know it won't be higher level admins who will go first, but those support staff "admin types" - sure hope those profs and adjuncts know how to answer the phone, transfer calls, turn on their computer, make copies, type their own letters, enter their own grades, complete all the necessary forms and paperwork when they travel or to get reimbursed for something they had better have gotten in-advance permission first to purchase, not to mention buying their own office supplies and setting up (and cleaning) the coffee machine and, and, and... If not, they'd best get to learning how pretty quickly. Time for the educators to get educated. Looks like they have until mid-January or so.

[ObeyMyDog]

BTW - Law School budgets are going to get hammered in the coming years. With good jobs hard to get, students aren't willing to pay $50K for 3 years to end up doing document review by the hour.

This will get very nasty. Law schools were revenue drivers with such force until just a few years ago, everyone was leveraging the crap out of them. That equals higher enrollments across the board which equals too many lawyers. Natural correction occurring. Add the fact in also that career services in law schools are utterly incapable of thinking outside the box and placing anybody themselves (i.e. they need the firms/non legal openings to come to them in almost every case) they have no choice but to trim fat with lower enrollment coming.

I'm glad SMU is doing this. Academia's nonsense really makes me angry most of the time. If you are truly good at your job and/or valuable you aren't going anywhere.

[Planter's Punch]

The admin expenses need to be cut. Law Schools are not longer the cash cows they used to be. Fewer families can carry the debt required for full undergraduate tuition. High admin cost also result in taking a large chunk of research dollars professors bring in, which results in less funding for equipment and graduate students. A lower graduate tuition would make Masters degrees more attractive to people in the DFW area (as masters degrees are revenue generators). The fact SMU is so reliant on dirt cheap adjunct professors for educating undergraduates, and yet has skyrocketing tuition, is a sign things need to change. Has SMU ever hired Teaching Professors (Professors who main goal in teaching as opposed to research)?

Hopefully this will result in high end donors seeing their money going farther and not being trapped in bureaucratic waste.

[RGV Pony]

They could carve out a lot by doing away with most of the fluff mail they send. 86 the presidents associated calendar and just have rgt text thanks