> It seems to me that something so simple couldn't possibly work...
Well, what kind of knowledge do you have of university internals?
Most people here on HN who want to get rid of university admin are on the outside looking in, and find it very hard to understand what all the admin do.
In my experience, when I start to explain that a university is more like a town than a school, and "admin" are in fact the people who run the town and implement the services, it becomes very hard to identify where the cuts should be. The library? IT? Health center? police? The arts complex and associated services? The sports complex and associated services? The transportation system?
And before you say these aren't the prerogative of a university, because a university is just a school, and it shouldn't offer these things, I have two responses. One, you're thinking of a "college". Two, if universities get rid of these services, often times the local town cannot replace them. So how are they to manage?
So if you're having trouble understanding why a university can't simply cut or automate all the administrators, it could be because you don't have a clear understanding of their role and why they are crucial. Universities require bureaucracies and they don't scale linearly with the size of the student population.
Well, what kind of knowledge do you have of university internals?
Most people here on HN who want to get rid of university admin are on the outside looking in, and find it very hard to understand what all the admin do.
In my experience, when I start to explain that a university is more like a town than a school, and "admin" are in fact the people who run the town and implement the services, it becomes very hard to identify where the cuts should be. The library? IT? Health center? police? The arts complex and associated services? The sports complex and associated services? The transportation system?
And before you say these aren't the prerogative of a university, because a university is just a school, and it shouldn't offer these things, I have two responses. One, you're thinking of a "college". Two, if universities get rid of these services, often times the local town cannot replace them. So how are they to manage?
So if you're having trouble understanding why a university can't simply cut or automate all the administrators, it could be because you don't have a clear understanding of their role and why they are crucial. Universities require bureaucracies and they don't scale linearly with the size of the student population.