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Bean corrects beangram

or maybe he’s correcting his December Senate speech. Or his January one? Or maybe his old claim that UO spends 38% of what our peers do on administration. Anyone know? Anyone trust his math? Believe his grammar? Amazed at his confusion between levels and changes?

1-25-13 Provost’s Message
Colleagues:
Several weeks ago I provided some statistics on our growth rate of faculty, staff and students. Since then, the Office of Institutional Research has provided some updated numbers that I want to share with you.
The following numbers include the rate of change in different employment classes from 2007 to 2012. The count is based upon the fall census, which is conducted the first week of November each year.
The five-year Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) shows that from 2007 to 2012:
  • Student FTE increased by 3.8 percent
  • Total faculty FTE increased by 3.4 percent
  • Tenure track faculty FTE increased by 2.3 percent
  • Non-tenure track faculty FTE increase by 4.2 percent
  • Librarian FTE increased by 3.5 percent
  • Classified staff FTE increased by 2.5 percent
  • Officers of Administration FTE (not including librarians) increased by 5.1 percent.
In looking at the increase in Officers of Administration, we discovered that within Schools and Colleges, OAs increased by 6.1 percent, and outside of Schools and Colleges, they increased by 4.8 percent.
We then compared the increase in the number of OAs to other public AAU institutions and discovered that the UO has only half (52.2 percent) as many OAs on a per student basis than the AAU average. (sic)
The number of OAs per student is significantly lower than comparative staffing levels for other employee groups. Faculty FTE per student ratios are at 74.5 percent of AAU peers and classified staff FTE per student ratios are at 79.2 percent of AAU peers, based upon fall 2011 data.
For a detailed list of employee FTE from 2007 to 2012, please see the chart on my website at http://provost.uoregon.edu/content/analysis-employee-fte-0
I look forward to your comments at [email protected]
Regards,
Jim
James Bean
Senior Vice President and Provost,
University of Oregon
[email protected]

9 Comments

  1. Awesome0 01/25/2013

    Assuming the stats are right….

    Should our OA’s been on par with peers in the AAU, probably depends on the mapping between OA’s and things other schools have which we either share (business school, law school) or don’t have (like medical schools, etc.).

  2. Anonymous 01/25/2013

    DENIED: You are not smarter than a fifth grader!

  3. Anonymous 01/25/2013

    Better to report the monthly growth rates Jim, then you could say

    “from 2007-12 Students FTE increased by 0.27%”

    which sounds even better, and is no more nonsensical than what you wrote.

    • Anonymous 01/26/2013

      Dog Says

      The mere fact that we describe students as FTE manifests one
      of the principal problems around here. Processing first, shaping a distant second.

  4. Anonymous 01/26/2013

    What an embarrassment. Holy shit. (I know… sorry.)

    • Anonymous 01/26/2013

      I’m back, reading this Beangram again… still can’t believe this is what we’re dealing with.

      On a related note, I’d like to see if we can get Jim to stand in the senate and say that the 5th root of the total percentage growth rate in TTFs in the last five years is 2.3 percent. Come on Jim… let’s talk this out in public.

  5. Anas clypeata 01/26/2013

    It’s hard to check his math or compare this to his previous figures (noted on this blog; click the Beangrams tag for previous head-scratchers) when he uses FTE instead of Headcount. His previous figures used Headcount, which is all I am able to find on the ir.uoregon.edu web site.

    And his previous figures mostly used 2008 as a baseline, except when another year was used for some reason (or no reason). Why pick 2007 now? Does it make the numbers look better somehow? His previous figures categorized people into different bins than these figures as well, so again, we can’t compare them.

    If he’s trying to wear us out by trotting out different sets of numbers every time he pokes his head up, well, it’s working on me. I’m worn out.

    Based on his track record, I do not believe that these figures are reflective of the reality experienced by faculty, staff, and students at the University of Oregon. Whether that’s because he’s monkeying with the baseline date, monkeying with the FTE/Headcount distinction, or just plain doing the math wrong, he’s either cherry picking the numbers so that they look good, or he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s been guilty of all of those offenses before, whether intentional or not, so there’s no reason to believe that any of it is meaningful this time.

    I do note that he didn’t mention changes in classroom space, faculty office space, research space, or child care facilities. How are we doing on those?

    • UO Matters 01/26/2013

      Johnson Hall has been entirely converted to child care. Other AAU metrics don’t look so good.

    • Anonymous 01/26/2013

      Comment of the week! Contact yourself for a UO Matters Mug.

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