Despite regent report, lawmaker ‘very concerned that there's an administrative problem’

According to a national assessment of public universities over what increasingly is criticized as “administrative bloat,” Iowa essentially is tied with Hawaii for spending the least on administrators, according to a new state Board of Regents report.

Administrative costs per full-time student across Iowa’s three public four-year universities accounted for 5.8 percent of the total “core” expenditures in the 2022 budget year — second only to Hawaii’s 5.6 percent, and well below adjacent states like South Dakota, at 13 percent; Minnesota, with 12 percent; and Missouri at 10 percent.

When looking at how much public universities spent on administration per $1 spent on instruction, Iowa reported 12 cents — tying again with Hawaii for the least, according to the staff report presented last week to regents.

“I was going to ask if this has been presented to the Iowa lawmakers,” Regent Robert Cramer asked after the presentation — learning it hadn’t, yet but would be.

By the time the Iowa House convened the next day to consider a sweeping bill to restructure the regents, amend their powers and impose new restrictions across the universities they oversee, lawmakers said they had seen the report.

"I am aware of the presentation that happened yesterday,“ Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, said while managing debate of House File 2558 before it eventually passed with only Republican support. ”It's all a matter of how you define administrative.”

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“Is there something that you dispute with the information that they presented with regard to the administrative definition?” asked House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights.

“Yes,” Collins said. “I'm very concerned that there's an administrative problem we have throughout the colleges."

Administrative hurdles

The bill, if it becomes law, would require among other things that Iowa’s public universities adopt policies barring the creation of any new vice president, assistant vice president or associate vice president posts without regent approval.

Rep. Sue Cahill, D-Marshalltown, argued against that by pointing to a decrease in the frequency with which regents meet.

“How many candidates are we going to lose if suddenly we decide we need a vice CFO for a special project and we know who we’d love to hire, but we can't even present them to the board — that new position — for an additional three or four months?” Cahill asked. “That will prevent us from finding the best candidates, which is concerning to me.”

Board lobbyists are registered as “undecided” on the bill.

“The regents have been appointed by the governor. They operate with the second lowest administrative costs in the nation,” Cahill said. “And I feel this is completely putting politics over the students, the faculty and the state that gets the benefits.”

‘Stack up very well’

The board’s report — based on national models and information from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — showed public universities nationally on average spend 23 cents on administration per $1 spent on instruction, nearly twice Iowa’s 12 cents.

“We still stack up very well compared to other regional states,” Jason Pontius, associate chief academic officer for the board, told regents.

He defined “core expenses” as day-to-day operations and most things excluding auxiliary enterprises like the hospital or athletics, for example.

“Your typical university is a large and complex organization,” Pontius said. “Most of them are the size of medium-sized cities, and all of them take a certain amount of administration just to make them run and have things run on time.”

Acknowledging the “constant drumbeat” against administrative bloat in recent years, Pontius said, “our universities take a great deal of pride in keeping lean administrative units and have been tracking for years the percent of our total budgets we spend on administration.”

A separate report provided to the board last week showed how the percentage of executive, administrative or managerial staff positions has compared with the total workforce over the last decade across the regent universities. The percent of the University of Iowa’s total workforce was 2.3 in 2013 and 2.1 in 2023; the percent at Iowa State University was 6.4 in 2013 and 4.7 last year; and the percent at the University of Northern Iowa was 5.1 a decade ago but 6.2 last year.

DEI criticism

In the House, Collins homed in on another focus of legislative criticism --- the regents’ diversity, equity and inclusion programming.

“There's been a lot of talk tonight about bloat, administrative boat — evidently, we're doing a great job,” Collins said. “But I just want to read to you four different FTEs and their salaries that were discussed last year at the Education Appropriations subcommittee that really started a lot of this conversation and the concerns among many people in this building.”

At that time, the UI associate vice president for DEI was earning $255,000 a year; ISU’s vice president for DEI was earning $247,000; and UNI’s chief diversity officer and director of DEI were earning more than a combined $200,000.

“That is $750,000 for just four full time employees,” Collins said. “It is very frustrating when I have to tell my constituents that that's going on. As I shared in subcommittee and committee, the reason for this proposal is that Americans and ultimately Iowans are losing trust in our higher education system."

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

Tom Barton of The Gazette Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.