Western’s faculty union wants to know why Western appears to have almost three times as many administrators per student as other public universities of similar size and reputation.  The faculty union claims that if Western has enough money to support a large administration, then there is also money to support higher faculty raises.  

However, the administration is choosing not to spend money on faculty, Western sociology professor and faculty union communications director Kyle Crowder said.

“It’s like saying you can’t buy light bulbs because you spent all your money on beer,” Crowder said.  “It’s not that you can’t afford light bulbs, it’s that you made a choice.”

Crowder said he discovered Western’s high number of administrators when he researched Western’s administration on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a government agency whose job is to collect statistics about colleges and universities.  

Crowder compared the number of administrators at Western to the number of administrators working at Western’s 25 peer institutions.  Peer institutions are universities so similar to Western that Western’s board of trustees approved them for comparing Western statistically. 

Crowder said he was surprised to find that Western had an unusually high number of administrators compared to its peers.  Western had approximately 60 students per administrator, whereas Western’s peers averaged approximately 158 students per administrator.

Western’s apparently high number of administrators is due to an error in how Western categorizes and reports its administrative employees, Western executive assistant to the president Buff Schoenfeld said.   

“We took a look at the data and thought this can’t possibly be right,” Schoenfeld said.  “We can’t possibly be the worst institution in our peer set in administration because we have traditionally been under-administered.”

Schoenfeld said Western appears to have too many administrators because it has been reporting some employees in this category that peer institutions do not.  Although Western reported 217 employees in the executive/administrative/managerial (or “administrator”) category to IPEDS, Western actually has only approximately 90 employees in this category, meaning that Western has approximately 144 students per administrator.  

Western reported employees with titles such as “administrative services manager” and “program manager” to IPEDS.  Schoenfeld said these employees should not have been included in the executive/administrative/managerial category.

Some Western employees may have the word “manager” in their title, but they are not managers, Schoenfeld said.

Crowder said he is skeptical of Schoenfeld’s explanation for Western’s high administrator average.

“Whether [the numbers] reflect administrative bloating at Western, an inability to accurately respond to the IPEDS survey, or a combination of the two, the big disparities we see in the number of administrators here and at peer institutions raise serious questions about the competence of this administration,” Crowder said.

Sabrina Ratchford, a survey research director for IPEDS, said she is not aware of any institutions that are not completing IPEDS’ reporting directions correctly in the executive/administrative/managerial category.   These directions specify that administrative services managers and associate managers, such as program managers, should be reported.

“Based on [Western’s] job descriptions for administrative services manager and program manager [positions], these two groups of managers should be included in the IPEDS executive/administrative/managerial category,” Ratchford said, indicating that Western had been reporting the information correctly in the past.

Ratchford cautioned that every institution is different and must evaluate their employees based on multiple factors, including skills, education, and training.  Schoenfeld emphasized that Western’s peers may be categorizing employees differently than Western.

Based on calls made to other institutions, Western may report employees differently than its peers, Schoenfeld said.

Maryland’s Towson University is one of Western’s peer institutions.  Towson averages 113 administrators per student.  Richard Morrocco, a human resources manager at Towson, said the college does not report administrative managers and program managers in the executive/administrative/managerial category to IPEDS, supporting Schoenfeld’s statement in this instance. 

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