We have the most bloated management in the Patriot League

Lafalum · Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 843

There was a disscussion of pay on the Holy Cross board and there was a link to HC tax return. (form 990) For fun I pulled the tax returns of all the Patriot League schools ( except Army, Navy, Fordham and Georgetown).
Line 14 is the expense line for the cost of management and here is the breakdown found in the 2006 tax return filed in 2007 which is the latest available.
Lafayette 33.3mio
Holy Cross 19.6 mio
Lehigh 28.9 mio
Bucknell 14 mio
Colgate 14.7 mio
American 17.2 mio
The above number does NOT include fundraising expense where we rank near the bottom!! We are so out of line it is scandalous!! Even if you say there are accounting differences it does not come close to explaining the differences.
This weekend the BOT met and I understand from a member of the Board that the scholarship issue never came up in the general meeting because the majority of the meeting was taken up with dissatisfaction with the budget because of the nearly 250 mio plus decline in portfolio assets ( peak to present). I've got an idea where some of the money can be recouped!!

2008pards · Joined: 13 Aug 2008 Posts: 166

Lafalum

I hate to ask you to do anything more but for kicks and giggles, can you add a calc for the $ per student cost of the beauracracy (sp?)? I think that'll give an even better indication of how much is being overspent not in the education of students but in enlarging and growing the admin side.

The next thing to do is to see how much is being spent in Athletic dollars per participant. Then remove football from the equation and see how much is being spent on the other sports again, per student. I'd bet those figures would not make the admininstration very proud.

How about the dollars being spent on support staff/trainers? Wasn't there an issue raised last year that the College had cut back the number of trainers for the athletic teams? Instead of hiring that extra professor, how about hiring 2 or more qualified trainers for the same amount?

The really discouraging news is this. While, the market will eventually right itself and the "lost" Endowment dollars (paper losses) will be recouped, the athletic department dollars that are either not spent or not provided to deserving and qualified applicants never materialize or pay dividends. The "smaller or lesser" sports are made to suffer from these decisions both short and long term and as fans, supporters and patrons, all of us will as well.

For a school like LC having most of the sports teams finish in the bottom two of the PL most years is an indictment of either the AD or Adminstration or both. What can be done to improve this situation and are there enough concerned persons to make righting this error in judgment a priority?

Lafalum · Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 843

As you said just for giggles I am using just the undergraduate numbers( adding graduate students at Lehigh , Bucknell, Colgate and AU makes it worse. Here are the costs per student.
Lafayette 13875
Lehigh 5951
Bucknell 4516
Colgate 5444
Holy Cross 7259
American 2866

As I said there may be accounting differences but either we have grossly different accounting practices or this difference is what it is!! I then took total expenses (lets assume there are some allocated expenses like IT etc still the cost per student is 4- 5000 dollars higher for us. The bottom line is like my weight either I'm too short for my weight or I should go on a diet!!!

TheTruth · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

Lafalum: Can you define "management"? I'm assuming it is the cost of the administrators. That discrepancy is hard to believe considering we are the smallest school. Our costs are over twice that of Bucknell, Colgate and American. I know we are top heavy but this is ridiculous.

How does the rest of our budget compare to the other schools?

Lafalum · Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 843

Looking at the difference between Colgate and Lafayette there are accounting differences .There is interest of 6.7 mio in the case of Lafayette carried in management while about 4 mio is assigned to programs according to Colgate. But there are other differences
Salaries and comp for management is about 11+ mio for Lafayette and 8.5 mio for Colgate. There is an occupancy charge of 2.5 mio for Lafayette which I am mystified about. Travel for administration to conferences and meetings is nearly 850,000 dollars vs 400,000 for Colgate. Though these charges are larger for faculty at Colgate. These are NOT expenses for fundraising. There is another 3 mio that Colgate doesn't enumerate for supplies postage etc. which we do. Still doesn't make up the difference.
The travel and convention costs frosts me considering the cuts in the athletic budget.

TheTruth · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

That reduces some of our numbers but still puts us way ahead of everyone else. I wonder if anyone is discussing this as a way to reduce the budget?

Lafalum · Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 843

You know we want to act and provide all the services of a larger institution wthout being a larger institution. That would require an endowment three times the sizes of Lafayette's. Aspiring to have 23 Div 1 sports, diversity deans, a large library, concerts by name performers, a first class music department, 8:1 student to faculty ratio, up date scientific facilities, and an IT infrastructure to support it all comes at a price but in the end is not posible with a 600 mio dollar endowment and 2400 students with a discount rate ( amount given out in aid) of 40 pct.
THE PLAN IS FLAWED.....we need to be bigger. There is no way our endowment will get anywhere near 1 Billion dollars in the next 8-10 years and a 400 mio dollar campaign is a pipe dream!!
In the meantime, we could start by doing some creative distruction in the management area. BMW's bought by the school have to go. We should rethink purchases of gas stations for 1 mio dollars, we should stop employing unemployed spouse's of deans.
I've said more than I wanted to but...

Franks Tanks · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 532

Lafalum · Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 843

Franks you make some important points. One half of our student body is in sciences and engineering. It is very expensive to maintain an up to date program when technology recycles every five years. Bucknell is larger (about 3100-3200 students plus graduate students) The aid number is less as well. Colgate is larger (about 2700 with a graduate program as well). Their aid haircut is about 19 pct. That 20 pct frees up 28 mio dollars to their bottom line compared to us.
F and M is Div 3 and wouldn't compare the two schools.... especially our scientific offerings. Our faculty often would like to compare us with Williams but their endowment is at least 1 Billion dollars larger than ours.
We need to expand by adding 400-500 paying liberal arts majors. They are less expensive to educate (only takes 4 walls and a professor). Stay away from Music majors, the amount of one on one instruction makes it very expensive. Lastly reduce the administrative burden.

I believe this all has to be done to preserve the central culture of Lafayette....a high quality diverse education with the opportunity for Div 1 experiences for alumni and students. If we don't we will suffer. This being an athletic board you know which activity will be attacked first.

TheTruth · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

It goes back to the original plan the BOT developed 7-8 years ago to expand the school to 2500-2700 students. In the interest of improving our US NEWS & World Report ranking, even though we all know it's a BS survey, we want our faculty to student ratio at 9:1. Should be interesting. Glad the BOT discussion focused on the endowment and budget.