Wednesday, April 17, 2013

In Other News, Water is Still Wet

The chief bureaucrat of the UNC System announces that there is no need to reduce the size of the bureaucracy he is overseeing.


UNC system President Tom Ross said on Monday that the administration would look at ways to effect more efficiencies, but added he didn’t think closing any of the campuses was a good idea. 

Regarding an idea floated by Senate Republican budget leaders earlier this year that closure of one or more of the UNC campuses had been considered, Ross said that he questioned how much money could be saved by doing so. “We’re happy to look at the idea of closing campuses if you want us to,” Ross said. “The economics of it are not smart for North Carolina." 

So, he hasn't looked at it.  But he will look at it, if we want.  But he knows without looking it is "not smart."  My own view is that if he honestly looked, he might find this.  

Phone call for Bill Niskanen.

1 comment:

W.E. Heasley said...

Starting in 1979 administrative positions at universities began to escalate. Not so incidentally, in 1979, tuition at universities began to escalate. One might label the phenomena the second coming of the post office.

Today, at many universities, the number of administration positions equal or exceed professor and instructor positions. Focusing on total compensation of each administration position [salary, benefits, retirement, etc.] the price of such administration, an administration increasing at an increasing rate, is very akin to tuition increasing at an increasing rate. Go figure.

Such a phenomena as depicted above is very much associated with dependent political constituency building exercises through taxpayer dollars. The immediate politico-bureaucrat in this discussion is Mr. Tom Ross. Mr. Ross’s non-self-interest self-interest requires he dispense the non-public good public good and maintain his/their’s underlying dependent political constituency built through taxpayer dollars.

Yes, Mr. Ross is the other people in Milton Friedman’s fourth category of spending. Mr. Tom Ross is doing quite the job of defending other people, spending other people’s money, on other people. Yes, there is the benighted, then there is the beclowned. Atta boy Tom!