Staffing Structure of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, Peers, and Doctoral/Research-Extensive Universities

News Release from UHERO January 15, 2013

This study examines staff support at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) vis-à-vis its peer group (Peers) and all 4-year public Doctoral/Research-Extensive Universities (DREU). More specifically, we compare the averages of the ratio of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff to FTE faculty and FTE enrollment across the three groups; UHM, Peers, and DREU. We present results for the following support staff categories: executive, administrative, and managerial; other professional (support/service); technical and paraprofessional; clerical and secretarial; skilled crafts; and service/maintenance.

The data used in this study was obtained from the UH Office of Human Resources, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) database which is maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics. Both data sets span 20 years, from 1991 to 2010 (2009 for UHM).

The UHM Peer group consisted of 12 universities (Old Peers)1, while the DREU in our data set includes 102 universities. UHM has recently selected a new Peer group consisting of 9 universities (New Peers)2. Although it is more sensible to compare the historical data using the Old Peer group3, we also calculated the numbers using the New Peers for comparison. The results using the New Peer group are quite similar to those found using the Old Peer group. The institutions classified by the Carnegie Foundation as DREU are those that typically offer a wide range of baccalaureate programs, are committed to graduate education, and award 50 or more doctoral degrees per year across at least 15 disciplines.

The evidence gathered shows that the enrollment-to-faculty ratio of UHM was consistently below the averages of its Peer groups and below that of DREU institutions between 1991 and 2010. This indicates that UHM has more faculty for each student enrolled in the university than its Peers and the DREU. Yet, the total staff-to-faculty and total staff-to-enrollment ratios for UHM are also consistently and substantially below the averages of its Peer and DREU groups for the same years (see the presentation slides for figures). The gap in staff-to-faculty and staff-to-enrollment ratios between UHM and its counterparts widened dramatically after the 1995 early retirement program but has eased since.

One striking finding for UHM is that the aforementioned results still hold even when we include all UH system-wide support staff in the UHM analysis. System universities often have an independent system-wide administrative bureau to support the research and training programs of the system. Since IPEDS does not include support staff in such units, numbers presented in our analysis might be substantially underestimated for system universities with such units, making it difficult to compare across universities. At any given time, there are about 2,500 project personnel on the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai‘i’s (RCUH) payroll4. We count this as equivalent to about 2,100 FTE staff. However, even when adding this 2,100 FTE staff only to UHM, without adding any numbers to the other system universities, UHM’s total number of staff is still much lower than its counterparts, demonstrating the substantial gap in staffing between UHM and the other groups. Finally, UHM’s staff to faculty ratio is still below its peers even after removing all UHM Specialist faculty from the faculty count and adding them to the count of staff FTE.

UHM also experienced a particularly sharp decline (up to 50%) in some staff categories between 1995 and 1997, mostly due to early retirement program. The gap between UHM and its counterparts is now largest for the executive, administrative, managerial; and skilled crafts categories, while it is smallest for the technical and paraprofessional category.

FULL TEXT: UHM Staffing Report

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