Money doesn’t always equal more staff in NY Uni’s
by Benjamin on August 13, 2009
Where the financial world was six months ago, university finances seem to lie every day of the year: On the brink of bancrupcy. Universities appear to be relying more and more on adjunct teaching, avoiding tenure contracts and cutting back on costs to maximize profits. But are staff-student ratios really so bad? Are the finances of the NY private universities in free-fall. And are the two related? I’ve done a quick survey of 30 private NY universities which suggest the schools can’t rely on just the interest payments from their endowments, but few, if any of them, are as poor as they’d like us to think – and that might not matter too much for the staff to graduate student ratios anyway…
Cornell: Lots of money but poor staff to student ratio... All Quill and Daggers?
A good 7 universities in the state have more than a Billion dollars in their endowment (topped by Columbia at $5.7bn), and another 6 have more than half a billion. Of course the endowment is only as good as its return, and while many a cunning money manager can get 10% and more from a university fund, lets make the crude assumption that the universities withdraw an average 5% per year (5.4% in 1999 apparently). While the top 4 (Rockefeller U., NYU, Cornel & Columbia) withdraw more than $100m each, the bottom 4 (Nazareth C., Manhattan C., St. Bonaventure & Marist C.) cannot even make $10m together, while the New School collects $12.5m, placing 19 out of 30.
New School of little money and good staff ratios...
What really matters is how much money the school can withdraw per student thougg: Lets assume that we are only interested in graduate students, as undergrads tend to pay their way: Then the picture takes a serious twist. Hamilton College (10th in endowments) come out top with an average return of $212,842 per staff and graduate student ! Colgate is second with $96,000 followed by Union C., Skidmore C., and Rockefeller U. all earning more than $50,000 per year per staff & graduate student. Rockefeller is the only top endowment school to remain in the top, with Columbia is pushed into 14th ($14,450), Cornell is sitting pretty at 8th ($25,856) and NYU is relegated to the bottom half of the table, in 17th place with only $4,855 per student and graduate student. The New School finds itself languishing around 22nd with just above $2,000.
Does money and average earnings translate into more staff members per graduate student then? For the top three ratios: Yes. The highest Academic-Staff-to-Graduate-Student ratio are found at Skidmore C. with 4.22 staff members for every graduate student, and Skidmore is 5th on the withdrawals per staff & graduate student. 2nd and 3rd are Rockefeller U. (2.45) and St. Lawrence U. (1.42) who were 4th and 6th in withdrawing money per staff-student, but then the picture gets a bit weird (possibly because the 1-3 in the withdrawal category had incomplete data on staff-student ratios). Cornell, with all its money and pay-outs is third from the bottom of the list, with a paltry 0.22 staff members per graduate student. Columbia is 19th (0.23), and NYU is found on 10th (0.36) just one spot below The New School with 0.51 staff per graduate student… So the extreme earners - I’d say $100,000 per annum per staff & student is extreme - have the highest staff-student ratio’s. But Cornell, Columbia and Renselar Poly Tech, earning between $14k-$25k thus ranking high in money have plummeted to the bottom six of the staff-student ratio table? In return, the bottom earners, and lowest endowment holders, Marist C. have joined Long Island U., The New School, St. Bonaventure and Yeshiva in climbing right up the ranking to high staff-student ratios… Money isn’t everything in the New York University system it seems – But I’m sure it helps.
Summary tables of my survey outcomes and a link to the full data-set is below if you click and
[All data harvested from Wikipedia, so it may be slightly out of date here and there, universities not listed mean that data was missing, and the excel file is here if you want to have a look - the results are given below]
Staff to Grad Student ratio
1 4.220 Skidmore College
2 2.451 Rockefeller
3 1.429 St. Lawrence U.
4 1.348 Yeshiva
5 1.000 St. Bonaventure
6 0.948 Marist College
7 0.858 Bard
8 0.535 Long Island U.
9 0.515 NS
10 0.356 NYU
11 0.348 Rochester IT
12 0.315 Rochester U.
13 0.286 St. Johns
14 0.277 Pace
15 0.276 Adelphi
16 0.255 Hofstra
17 0.249 Syracuse
18 0.233 Renselar PolyTech
19 0.225 Columbia
20 0.225 Nazareth College
21 0.224 Cornell
22 0.153 Fordham
23 0.112 Ithaca College
Withdrawal of 5% from Endowment equals $ per Staff & Grad student
1 $212,842 Hamilton College
2 $96,000 Colgate
3 $71,770 Union College
4 $56,818 Rockefeller
5 $56,762 Skidmore College
6 $35,604 St. Lawrence U.
7 $27,835 Bard
8 $25,856 Cornell
9 $17,295 Rochester U.
10 $15,455 Vassar
11 $15,116 Renselar PolyTech
12 $14,450 Columbia
13 $7,666 Rochester IT
14 $7,308 Yeshiva
15 $6,846 Syracuse
16 $6,000 Manhattan College
17 $4,855 NYU
18 $2,780 St. Johns
19 $2,503 Fordham
20 $2,364 Nazareth College
21 $2,300 St. Bonaventure
22 $2,034 NS
23 $1,775 Ithaca College
24 $1,391 Pace
25 $1,390 Hofstra
26 $1,187 Adelphi
27 $631 Marist College
28 $384 Long Island U.
Endowment
1 $5,570,000,000 Columbia
2 $4,500,000,000 Cornell
3 $2,500,000,000 NYU
4 $2,000,000,000 Rockefeller
5 $1,770,000,000 Rochester U.
6 $1,200,000,000 Yeshiva
7 $1,005,400,000 Syracuse
8 $793,000,000 Renselar PolyTech
9 $779,000,000 Hamilton College
10 $765,000,000 Vassar
11 $598,200,000 Cooper Union
12 $576,000,000 Colgate
13 $544,000,000 Rochester IT
14 $437,200,000 Fordham
15 $363,800,000 St. Johns
16 $300,000,000 Union College
17 $296,300,000 Skidmore College
18 $270,000,000 Bard
19 $250,000,000 NS
20 $238,000,000 Ithaca College
21 $230,000,000 St. Lawrence U.
22 $172,000,000 Hofstra
23 $159,000,000 Barnard College
24 $158,800,000 Pace
25 $105,000,000 Adelphi
26 $88,000,000 Long Island U.
27 $61,500,000 Nazareth College
28 $48,000,000 Manhattan College
29 $46,000,000 St. Bonaventure
30 $21,000,000 Marist College
Tags: academia, Dollars per Graduate Student, Endowments, Funding, New York, Private University, Staff-Student Ratio, University
