I haven't seen any reports, but my impression is that many universities have cut loose many permanent professors, hiring masses of part time, super low wage adjuncts. At the same time gold-plated administration and facilities costs have increased much faster than inflation along with textbooks and tuitions. It's a massive devaluing of the actual education with super-inflation on the trappings of education.
Literally describes my last uni to a T, it was a new state uni. I left before finishing my degree because all the good professors left after their first year, leaving some very blatantly unqualified professors behind. Most (but not all) of the replacements are adjuncts. Also, I got a job in my field, which made it easier to leave.
My favorite example to give to explain their hiring problem is the professor of a webapp development class, a computer science professor, who was completely dumbfounded by ES6 syntax and closures and taught straight from the W3 Schools website. Literally came into class, plugged in his laptop, opened W3 Schools and started reading. I ended up tutoring a lot of people for that class, and typically had to dispute all my test grades by proving that my (handwritten -- he was that type) code worked.
That is to say, he was simply not qualified to teach that class. Not even close. We didn't even get anywhere near finishing all the material, we never even wrote a single webapp in that class. We didn't even get close to that point.
However, the building is gorgeous. And also sunk so far in the first year that they had to bolster their drainage considerably. This is Florida, by the way. Rain is a way of life here, and they didn't plan for it. After the recent hurricane, the building was damaged, but they can't do a whole lot to fix it because the architect owns a copyright on the building. It's a damn shame that if the damaged parts fail, it will be a huge disaster because directly under them is the glass-filled roof over the student commons.
Feel free to guess the school if you like, it should be easy. But I have nothing more to add.
E: Wait, I do have one more thing to add. I worked in a lab with grad students, ostensibly as a tech but since I was already experienced with the stuff we were doing (mostly development), I was instead tasked with real R&D. Except all of my work just ended up on a table to be used as a marketing tool during the ten tours that stopped to gawk at us every day. None of it ever went anywhere. And now that lab is going unused. So basically all that money just went completely wasted.
He didn't even teach from the MDN website? W3 Schools is terrible, at least MDN has much better documentation...
On a more serious note though: I recently graduated from a private university in upstate NY (probably wasn't worth the tuition, but as an 18 year old I wasn't very informed past "the culture of this school seems great!", and it admittedly worked out), and they have similar issues.
I worked with a few students who helped with setting up websites and the like for some of the higher-level administration, and it's an absolute sham how much money goes into administrative positions, sports, and shiny new dorms instead of academic programs and necessary infrastructure (anybody else's class enrollment done via a 1980s mainframe that crashes every enrollment period for hours?). Because their tech infrastructure was so bad, I actually once got to see some of their salary information... and let me just say, you've got to go a long way down the list of top salaries before you get to somebody who's set foot in a classroom in the past 10 years. And who doesn't have an MBA.
Admittedly anecdotal, but I wonder if some state schools have visible budgets where we could look into this stuff.
In both cases, professors aren't the highest paid, but they do show up in the top 5. Not that this is exhaustive or necessarily representative, but it shows that for at least these two schools, it's not terrible. The gap between the highest paid and the highest paid professor is substantial though.
What's more disconcerting, is looking at the highest paid in public schools vs the highest paid teachers. Again, this data is only for Washington state [3]. Sorting by highest total compensation, the highest paid teacher shows up at 234th highest paid. Next highest paid teachers are at 1,804, then 2,235, 2,294 and sporadically thereafter.
Given the average salary data [4], it's pretty clear that Washington state public schools are overrun by administrators. I suspect that exchanging most administration for teachers that have the same existing teacher pay would go a long way to bringing the student/teacher ratio to more appropriate levels, reducing teacher stress and increasing student outcomes. Or maybe we could get more teachers and raise their pay.
I believe reducing the student/teacher ratio will allow teachers to handle a lot of the stuff administration already does, which, if true, would demonstrate how administrator's aren't just not needed, but are actively detrimental to a good school.
>permanent professors are tenured or tenure track and are very hard to 'cut loose'
Hahahaa. Hahahaaa. Ha.
Tenure-track professors are simply denied tenure in the end of their glorious $50K/year 6-year stay.
Hard to fire a tenured professor? You aren't thinking big, my friend. Shut down the entire department. Who[1] needs[2] physics[3], after all[4]?
That's not to mention the obvious solution - eliminate tenure altogether[5].
Think that's hard to implement? Time is on your side then (if your side is the side that wants to ruin academia for good). Simply let the academics retire (or die out), and never open tenure-track positions[6]. When someone leaves the department, replace them with an adjunct.
For every linked reference, I could also provide personal anecdata. And as far as problems in academia go, I didn't even scratch the tip of the iceberg.
There is a category of full-time professor that is not tenured. At least there once was such a category ... one migh even opine that most professors should be in that category.
