The University System of Georgia has added more than 5,000 employees since the start of the Great Recession, pumping up its payroll while the rest of state government eliminated 10,000 jobs.
The hiring spree unfolded during the past five years even as the state was cutting nearly $300 million from University System funding. When staff gets larger at the same time state funding gets smaller, the system turns to students to pay for its hiring. The result: Some schools increased staff by 30 to 45 percent while students endured even larger increases in tuition and fees.
Colleges say they needed to hire faculty and staff to keep pace with increasing enrollment.
And the University System has extraordinary flexibility when it comes to revenue. Like other state agencies, it receives state money. Unlike other agencies, though, the State Board of Regents can raise tuition and fees to secure additional money.
"The fact is tuition has gone up to fill holes in the state budget," said Kennesaw State University President Dan Papp. "That's the reality of it. Other agencies can't raise other revenue, and we can. Tuition helps pay salaries."
Cody Skinner, a sophomore computer science major at Kennesaw State, said the school doesn't seem to be offering more, despite a 37.5 percent increase in faculty and staff since 2008. Tuition and fees have jumped 76 percent since then, but he still has trouble getting the classes he needs.
"You'd think with all the increases in tuition they'd be able to hire enough professors to catch up," Skinner said. "I don't know who they're hiring or what they're doing with our money."
State Rep. Bill Hembree, R-Winston, acknowledged enrollment increases but said the system should have made a greater effort at belt-tightening common in governments -- from school districts to cities and counties — across the country.
"You can't say just because they are the University System, they are immune," said Hembree, former chairman of the House Higher Education Committee.
Indeed, while Georgia was growing its college payroll to more than 45,000 statewide, campuses in other states turned to layoffs. Florida State University laid off 60 people in 2010 and the University of Massachusetts Medical School laid off the same number a year later. The University of California system has laid off 4,400 employees since the start of the recession.
Universities: We're growing
John Millsaps, spokesman for the University System, said the staffing increases were a response to a 17.7 percent increase in enrollment systemwide.
"Appropriate faculty and staff were hired to support these students," he said. "Services like tutoring and academic advising are needed to help achieve higher graduation rates, a top priority of the regents."
Since the recession, colleges have increased class sizes and reduced the number of course sections offered. They've furloughed faculty and staff and required some professors to teach more classes. Colleges also reduced the hours at libraries and at advising and tutoring centers.
At the same time, however, colleges still built expensive buildings, hired high-priced administrators, launched dozens of new academic programs and added football teams. During Erroll Davis' five years as chancellor, the system added eight teacher preparation programs, including some at colleges where nearby campuses already offered the degree.
Beheruz Sethna, president of the University of West Georgia, said staffing on his campus had to increase 15 percent so the school could continue providing a top-flight education.
"The philosophy is that we need to protect students in the classroom and maintain academic quality," he said. "It is no surprise that as enrollment has increased, we have worked hard to ensure adequate faculty and staff to maintain quality."
Sethna said it would fairer to look at how many faculty colleges have per student as opposed to how many staff. However, University System officials said they don't have current student-faculty figures. Their data include administrators, support staff and faculty.
A list of new hires over the past five years at West Georgia, however, shows that about two-thirds are in non-teaching roles, ranging from jobs in the school's tennis and housing programs to custodial and administrative workers.
West Georgia senior Javaris Hall said he doesn't notice additional faculty and staff. He has, however, noticed that he's paying more and that a lot of students postponed graduation because they can't get into all the required classes.
"From what I can tell, they could do a better job spending our money," Hall said.
A call for accountability
When a college increases enrollment, it also increases its number of paying customers. The extra tuition revenue helps, but in-state tuition doesn't cover the full cost of an education.
A decade ago, the state paid about three-quarters of that cost. The state's support has fallen to about half since then, with students and their families paying much of the rest.
The ability to raise tuition and fees enabled the University System to continue hiring and put the system in the position of growing while other state agencies have cut back. K-12 schools in Georgia, for example, have seen a decline in staff as districts have reduced spending. The technical college system also raised tuition and increased its payroll by 6.8 percent, about half the growth rate in the University System.
Lawmakers hardly question spending in the technical college system, but they remain frustrated with the University System and have long called for more accountability. The Legislature has little control over how the University System spends state money. The Board of Regents allocates lump sums to individual colleges, which decide how to spend it.
Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, chairman of the House Higher Education budget subcommittee, said there is little justification for a big jump in payroll systemwide when the rest of the state was cutting back.
"They acted like there was no austerity, or that they didn't have to participate," Ehrhart said, referring to the University System's behavior during the worst of the downturn, in 2009-2010.
Students, meanwhile, are lobbying to have a student serve on the State Board of Regents, the governor-appointed board that sets tuition and policy for the University System. Students have held rallies and disrupted regents meetings to show their frustration over tuition and fee increases, saying they're paying more but getting less.
More hiring to come
At Kennesaw State officials say the school was long underfunded and the extra staffing has helped it catch up to other, similar schools.
Staffing went from 11.5 employees per student in 2007-2008 to 9.86 during the recently completed year. For similar schools in the system, the average is 9.17.
Papp, the president, said, "We're getting closer to the average, but we're still behind."
In recent years the university decreased its dependency on full-time professors to hire more part-time staff, which enables the school to avoid paying benefits, Papp said.
The college could spend $90,000, including salary and benefits, for a full-time professor. For that same money the college can hire nine visiting professors to teach three courses each. In accounting lingo, those nine count for three full-time employees. So many of those added to the payroll were part-timers.
Ehrhart, a longtime Kennesaw booster, defended the school's hiring. He said things are improving under Chancellor Hank Huckaby, a former state budget director and state lawmaker who took over the system last year.
"That attitude has changed," he said. "He is making concrete steps in the right direction."
Millsaps, the University System spokesman, said the system is making several moves -- such as consolidating schools -- to make the system more efficient. Among the schools being merged are Macon State and Middle Georgia, two colleges that have lost enrollment since 2007.
Even as they lost students, both schools increased faculty and staff.
Nancy Stroud, vice president for fiscal affairs at Macon State, attributed nearly the entire increase to the opening of a new systemwide payroll center at the college and the school's transition to a residential campus. Middle Georgia said a July 2007 merger with Georgia Aviation Technical College caused most of the staffing increases at the Cochran school.
It may be a while before the campus mergers and other cost-efficient steps become evident to taxpayers and students, who have largely footed the bill for the increased staffing on campus.
That doesn't mean hiring will stop.
Papp warned Kennesaw State will continue to hire, although at a slower rate.
Fast-growing Georgia State University is planning to use some of the extra funding it will get from the state this year to hire 42 academic advisers and 36 faculty.
The University of Georgia will spend about $4.2 million to hire an additional 25 faculty to begin in fall 2013. The money comes from a tuition increase and additional state funding.
While these colleges were among the first to announce future hiring plans, they won't be the last.
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