What Does 58 Million Dollars Buy?

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Wednesday, May 14, 1997

The crest of Dartmouth College features a pair of men, one white and one Indian, striding together through the woods, with a book laid open in the background. The emphasis is on pure, unfettered learning and fellowship. Appropriately enough, there is not an administrator in sight.

How times have changed.

The College bureaucracy has run conspicuously amuck in the last decade, with the College spending far more on administration than faculty. Though it was originally created to serve the student body, the administration has, over time, retreated from its original purpose.

Worse still, this unchecked growth has been far from necessary to maintain the College. Entire departments have fallen out of use, but remain intact as dozens of administrators serve no useful function.

The web of the College's bureaucracy has not only grown but has become tangled and convoluted. In several conspicuous cases, administrators take instructions from multiple superiors, forming a bureaucratic nightmare that is fundamentally counterproductive and lacks direction or flexibility. Entrapped in a web of needless forms and formulae, Dartmouth's bureaucratic foot soldiers consistently horrify students by their unwillingness to serve and their general incompetence.

According to the College's financial reports for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1996 — and by the most conservative estimates —Dartmouth College spent $58 million on administrative salaries, excluding subsidiary businesses and graduate schools.

The 58 million breaks down the following way. The Department of the Office of the President, which includes Legal Affairs, the President's Office, and Affirmative Action, spends $1.5 million dollars on administrative compensation.

The Office of the Vice President/Treasurer pays its staff $19 million to run, primarily, finance and the College's physical plant — Dartmouth's buildings and
grounds.

The Office of Development and Alumni Relations pays out nearly $6 million to its bureaucrats.

The Office of the Provost, which oversees libraries, the Hopkins Center, the Hood Museum, Computing Services, and the Admissions Office, spends $18 million on salaries.

Although the Office of the Dean of the Faculty spends almost $44 million on salaries, most of that is paid to instructors, and is not counted as administrative compensation. The Dean of the Faculty does, however, pay $1.5 million in compensation for 'Administration and Support.'

The Dean of the College, who is responsible for Athletics, Health Services, and Student Services, doles out $11 million in bureaucratic salaries. There are additional, minor figures for the office of Financial Aid.

In the same year, Dartmouth received just over $80 million in tuition. So, 73% of the money paid by the Dartmouth student body went into the pockets of administrators. Given enrollment figures over that same period, it took the tuition of between 2,800 to 2,900 Dartmouth undergraduates each term to pay administrative salaries.

When you consider revenue other than tuition — such as endowment, donations, and capital gains — the College's total budget grows to just under $113 million. Still, administrative compensation alone continues to account for over half of the College's budget (51.9%). Dartmouth College spends more money paying its administrators than it does on everything else combined.

In the fiscal year for 1996, again according to the College's official financial report, Dartmouth's faculty earned $38 million. Administrators were paid 1.52 times that. Does Dartmouth College value its administrators one and a half times as much as it values it faculty? Is bureaucracy one and a half times as important to Dartmouth as instruction?

Administrative excess also shows up in the College's subsidiary operations. The Hanover Inn spends $3.2 million on salaries, and Dartmouth Dining Services spends almost $5 million on compensation, despite the uncommon benefit of a federally subsidized work force.

Administrative salaries are, of course, not the only barometer of bureaucratic excess. The College spends a total of over $96 million on 'Other Expenses,' essentially supplies and upkeep. This figure is two and a half times as much as is spent on Dartmouth's faculty.

Such excess might be more understandable if it were necessary. The facts, however, indicate otherwise.

The Department of Health Services, maintains two full time Directors of Multicultural services. Its Dean, Dr. John Turco, declined requests for an interview, so the Health Service's need for a multicultural director (let alone two) remains an unanswered question.

The Office of Residential Life maintains two administrators who deal with nothing but housing for commencement. This is in addition to the 38 other full time staff at ORL who deal with nothing but housing.

The Office of Student Life has a full-time Director of the Forensic Union of Debate.

The Office of Daniel Nelson, the Upper-class Dean, who also declined requests for an interview, maintains a permanent Liaison to the African-American Community.

The departments under the Dean of the College spend roughly $1.5 million on salaries to administrative support staff — secretaries for the Classics, English, and Biology departments, for example.

The office of Freshman includes the Freshman Registrar, whose duties should logically fall under the aegis of the Registrar's office.

The entire Office of Student Life (OSL) could be reasonably eliminated. In addition to the Director of the Forensic Union of Debate, The OSL sponsors the ski team, outdoors programs, Dartmouth Broadcasting and manages Collis Student Center.

Collis could be privatized, the functions performed by the Director of Outdoors Programs could be turned over to the existing Dartmouth Outing Club, and the ski team could be run by the athletic department. Broadcasting at Dartmouth is almost entirely student-run, and the Director of Forensic Debate's position could be eliminated entirely.

There are 52 sub-departments within the College's administrative structure, units on the scale of the Hood Museum, or Dartmouth Health Services, which necessarily adds to the administrative confusion.

With such a burgeoning bureaucracy, it might be reasonable to expect the administration to have a fairly well defined hierarchy. Such, however, is not the case.

Bart Bingenheimer, a dean whose role is ill-defined but who serves as a liaison to the gay community, reports not only to the Director of Health Services, but also to the Dean of the College.

The Sexual Abuse Awareness Program is under the jurisdiction of both the Women's Resource Center and the Department of Health Services.

Although every other athletic team in the College is under the jurisdiction of the Athletic Department, the ski team reports to the Office of Student Life.

Each Department must, according to College policy, maintain an organizational chart. Such a chart shows the lines of administrative command within a College. Lines of responsibility should be shown.

When the Review approached the offices of administrative deans in an effort to obtain these charts, we were largely stonewalled.

Although the office of the Dean of the College and the Office of Residential Life were quite helpful in providing these charts, nearly all of the other departments refused to release their charts.

It would logically seem that such an expansive, if convoluted and secretive, bureaucracy would be better equipped to handle students. One benefit of overstaffing might be increased services. Rationally, the more people available to do a job, the better for the student.

Logic fails at Dartmouth College once again.

A junior had to hand in a financial aid form four times, because the office lost it the first three.

A freshman was recently placed on two terms of College discipline for failing to respond to a letter, after he was assured that he need not do so.

The Registrar's office failed, after repeated requests, to send forms in to an insurance company certifying that three freshmen were, indeed, enrolled at the College. Consequently, these freshmen have had to pay hundreds of extra dollars in insurance fees.

The administrator responsible for the College's Foreign Study Programs refused an application because it was turned in five minutes after the deadline.

Such horror stories are surprisingly common at the College.

Over the years, the Dartmouth administrative bureaucracy has become bigger, more unwieldy, and less responsive to the needs of students. The new College financial reports are due out this June. If 1997 follows the recent trend, it is likely that the size of Dartmouth's bureaucracy will continue to expand greatly— as will the cost to maintain it.

What Does 58 Million Dollars Buy?

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