By Audrey Roche and Dennis Frisch

    While perusing the latest copy of the CPFA News (California Part-Time Faculty Association) we came across a spreadsheet showing part-time average salaries, full-time average salaries, and educational administrator’s average salaries (educational administrator as defined in “California Community Colleges Management Information System Data Element Dictionary”).   We noted that the spreadsheet also contained the head count of full-time faculty and the head count of educational administrators.  This we found interesting and after some quick calculations we were shocked by the results.

    First we entered all of the California community college’s head count for full-time faculty and educational administrators.  Then we sorted in descending order districts with the worst faculty-to-administrator ratio, after which we identified the 20 worst districts and the 20 best districts.  What we found was very enlightening.  Santa Monica College ranked 16th from the bottom of the worst districts (in a base of 72 districts) with a score of 6.53 faculty per each administrator.  Los Angeles Community College ranked 8th from the top of the best districts with 12.88 faculty to each administrator.  This was exactly the opposite of what we expected.

    We then decided to do a little further investigation and compared schools that were +/- 10 percent of our size.  In the spreadsheet  below on “Comparable size Districts best to worst”, Santa Monica College  ranked  number 15 for  the  worst ratio of full-time faculty to administrators out of 15 districts of comparable size.

Food For Thought: SMC’S Full-time Faculty Per Each Administrator

    Perhaps this explains why during Fall, 2001 SMC sought to hire 20 new faculty members, and why now we are asking for a waiver from the State so that we do not have to hire more than a few new faculty for the 2002-03 year.

    We became so intrigued by this analysis that we decided to see what it would take to move Santa Monica College up to an equal footing with Los Angeles.  The results were surprising.  According to our calculation SMC could do one of the following:

1.   The District could  reduce the number of administrators from 45 to 23.  Thus 294 full-time/23 administrators would give us a faculty to administrator ratio of 12.78 (close to LACCD’s 12.88).

2.  The District could hire 286 new full-time faculty, raising the number from  294 to 580.  This would result in a faculty to administrator    ratio of 12.89 (again close to LACCD’s 12.88).

    Then we attempted to match SMC with the statewide average of 9.13 faculty per administrator.  The results are as follows:

1.        Reduce the number of administrators to 32 (45-15=32) to arrive at a 294 full-time faculty to 32  administrator ratio of  9.19.

2.        Increase the number of faculty by 117 (294+117=411) to arrive at a 411 full-time faculty to 45 administrator ratio of 9.13.

3.        Reassign 13 administrators to the classroom (45-13=32) to arrive at a 294 full-time faculty to 32 administrator ratio of 9.19.

    As we enter a period where budgets are getting tighter and tighter, the information gathered in the CPFA article gives us food for serious thought!