I agree that universities should do more to control costs. I'll push back just a bit that trimming all "fat" would make universities better. Where I am, the "fat" proposed for trimming is support for study abroad, music education, research conferences, and other things that enrich the lives of students and (hopefully) benefit society as a whole.
That’s sad, since that seems more flesh that fat to me.
The real “fat” is the admin bloat at most universities. Most schools will continue to be in a precarious financial situation until that fat is cut, imho.
The fundamental problem is that music teachers tend to care about music, while administrators tend to care about protecting their own jobs. So any budget cuts tend to cut services, rather than reducing the overhead. This dynamic plays out everywhere with overgrown middle management.
Music teachers care about their jobs just as much as administrators. It's just that administrators make the big decisions and they care about their jobs more than the jobs of others.
As far as students are concerned, a bigger problem than administrator pay is professors who are more interested in teaching than research, and even when professors are interested in teaching, they might not be good teachers.
$250,000 per year administrators, $30 million dollar buildings and "lazy rivers". If we had a statistic for what percentage of your buildings were for academic usage, you'd find the amount is low.
"Paying for the Party" is a neat book here based on real life information from colleges.
