(Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) The growing number of college administrators has in part caused the cost of college to skyrocket. At the public University of Michigan, 142 diversity, equity and inclusion administrators cost students and taxpayers $18.1 million annually, according to the Daily Caller.
University of Michigan economics professor emeritus Mark Perry compiled this analysis in a series of tweets. Perry found that salaries and benefits for the 2022-2023 school year added up to over $18 million, with the top paid DEI administrator, the vice provost for equity and inclusion, earning a base salary of $380,000.
There are 17 administrators in the DEI department who earn over $200,000, and 95 who make over $100,000.
In-state tuition is around $17,000 per year. The cost of these administrators could pay for the tuition of 1,065 students, or about 3% of their undergraduate student body of 32,600 students.
The number of DEI administrators at the University of Michigan has exploded in recent years, with 82 administrators in the 2018-2019 school year costing $10.6 million, the Daily Caller reported. In the 2021-2022 school year, those numbers rose to $15.6 million for 126 people.
“Those misguided and expensive DEI resources could be better spent by reducing tuition, instead of feeding new layers of costly administrative bloat that end up getting passed along to students in the form of higher tuition and fees,” Perry told the Daily Caller.
While DEI departments have been fixtures in universities for years, their seemingly unending growth in both size and cost only compounds the problem of college affordability.
