How Does the Smallest School in the Illinois Public University System Have So Many "Administrators"? Ask Wayne Watson and the Chicago State Board

To emphasize the excessive administrative presence on the Chicago State campus, I compared our administrative complement with three other schools: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois Chicago and Northern Illinois. These three schools all enrolled more than 20,000 students in fall 2014. These three schools all employed at least 296 administrators in fiscal 2014. Chicago State’s fall 2014 enrollment was 25.3 percent of Northern Illinois’s, 18.6 percent of University of Illinois Chicago’s, and 11.5 percent of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s. Chicago State’s fiscal 2014 administrative component was 125 percent of Northern Illinois’s, 80.6 percent of University of Illinois Chicago’s, and 75.5 percent of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s. Here is a graph that provides a visual comparison of the enrollment and administrative personnel at the four schools:

Altogether, there are 12 public universities in Illinois: the three schools of the University of Illinois system, two schools in the Southern Illinois system, Northern Illinois, Illinois State, Eastern Illinois, Governors State, Western Illinois, Northeastern Illinois, and Chicago State. Although Chicago State has the lowest enrollment of any of the 12 schools, its 370 administrators ranks it third in the state, behind only UIUC’s 490 and UIC’s 459. As far as student-administrator ratios, Chicago State is far and away the highest, with 14 students for every administrator, with Governors State and its 53 to 1 student/administrator ratio a distant second. For those who are wondering, between 2011 and 2014, Chicago State has cut its unit “A” faculty ranks by 13.7 percent.