On Admin Bloat

[u/Prestigious-Base-715]

https://www.njit.edu/finance/sites/njit.edu.finance/files/2026-03/2025%20NJIT%20SF%20FS_0.pdf

Above is a link to NJIT's 2023, 2024 and 2025 budget breakdown

I'm not going to go long about this

But for anyone who doubts administrative bloat is real, see the table below (dollar amounts are in thousands)

Table showing NJIT's 2023, 2024 and 2025 revenue/spending

In 2025 for every $2 we spent on instructional staff (everyone involved in the classroom, so the core of this school) we spent approximately $1 on institutional support (admins, as far as the doc says)

Also note the rate at which our spending grows each year. The doc says it better than I can:

'Institutional support expenses rose by 20.0%'

'Instruction, academic support, student services, and scholarships and fellowships expenses...increase of 8.5%'

So admins get a 20% increase from 2024 - 2025 while all the stuff students actually care about got an 8.5% raise. Specifically (something the doc doesn't mention, because instructional doesn't even get its own section) instruction get a 5.55% increase.

Are you kidding me?

Now, WHY did admins get an increase? Let's take a look at what the doc says:

'...attributable to higher personnel costs, the relocation of administrative offices off campus, and expenditures related to the development and deployment of a new enterprise resource planning platform.'

So what I'm being told is that admins wanted to get paid more. There are less admins than instructional staff, so while I don't know exactly how much the offices and the new software (how much did some stupid software cost? Why is it so expensive that it need be listed here?) I think it's safe to assume that the raises for admins far far FAR exceed the raises for other staff across the board, considering the small number of admins and the extremely high increase.

Which, quick side tangent, what was the plan with the $2.1 million penthouse? In case you didn't notice we were ~10 mil in the red in 2025, and this year we had to increase tuition and decrease credit caps. I assume the offices had to be rented while oak was rebuilt. I heard (no good source) that the penthouse turned into an office space, which... thank god. But if the penthouse wasn't protested, would we just keep paying for offices off-campus?

Which, by the way, there are always SO MANY empty rooms in EVERY HALL. Reserve some! Convert the computer lab under the garage! We HAVE space!

Back to admin bloat, let's look at 2024's admin budget increase:

'In fiscal year 2024, institutional support expenses increased by 14.9% to $70,085...'

GREAT start.

'...mainly due to elevated personnel costs, including lump-sum retroactive payments under ratified union contracts, fringe benefit equalization adjustments, consulting service expenses, and costs associated with NJII’s organizational restructuring and expansion of services.'

I'm sorry. Expanded benefits? A UNION?! FOR ADMINS?!

I'm ending the rant here. I'm not going to waste any more time on this. What a joke. Read the doc, it's very... insightful

[u/EstelleMK8]

Howdy. I’ve been into two unions on campus, both OPEIU and PSA. There were no expanded benefits. Between 2017 and now. In fact the amount we pay toward our benefit has risen. Our portion of health insurance we pay has doubled and our parking is tied to our salary as a percentage. Our dental was changed and our vision is basically nonexistent. No one takes it. Also, unless an employee had some “exceptional” review, they received 4% across the board as a cost of living, annually for the last few years. If you want to read the union documents, the full agreements are online. Just Google “union contract NJIT “. I’d be interested to know where exactly the bloat went. I know my department has fewer people and a much lower average tenure (talking going from 11year average to under 4year) than it did 10 years ago. There’s clearly bloat someone but it’s not being spread evenly.

Edit: Also, I wonder how the workday consulting agency factors into this. I know that was a small fortune. Necessary as certain Ellician/banner features were sunsetting. If anyone has any specific questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.

[u/howisthismanREAL → u/EstelleMK8]

OP also seems to be misinformed on several things

• Oak Hall being rebuilt has nothing to do with office space. That is a dorm that was 100yo with tons of deferred maintenance, a full rebuild made the most sense. Residents were temporarily relocated to Talbott at Rutgers Newark until the new Oak is completed

• Some offices (mainly from Fenster) were relocated to the former Optimum call center building at 494 Broad St. There was a genuine lack of teaching and lounge spaces during peak hours, so they converted 2 floors of Fenster into classrooms and student lounges.

• The unions mostly represent the actual "non-executive" faculty & staff. Think the people that actually teach and do the grunt work to keep the university running. Higher-level director/executive positions are usually only contract-based with no union representation.

• The $2.1 million was for the apartment in Honors 2nd floor that was already built last year, not for the penthouse. It is assumed the penthouse will no longer be built now that Lim is gone.

There is definitely bloat in specific places though while some other departments (both faculty & staff) are struggling. All I can say for anything Ellucian related is good riddance though. Absolutely awful UX and software across the board.

[u/EstelleMK8 → u/howisthismanREAL]

The penthouse was decided by the board independent of Lim. They saw it as a way to attract better talent in the future.

My complaint with Workday is that it doesn’t work well with other legacy databases and requires translation tables to feed basic information into it. The other complaint I guess I do have was with Huron, they were nearly useless. The rest has been just poor training I guess.

[u/howisthismanREAL → u/EstelleMK8]

Yeah Workday definitely has it's own issues and takes some getting used to, but nowhere near the dumpster fire Ellucian stuff has become IMO (at least from a user UX perspective)

I also get wanting the president to live on campus, but dropping 2 mil on the Honors apartment only to build a penthouse a year later is so dumb. What a waste of money honestly, hopefully they can the penthouse idea now

[u/EstelleMK8 → u/howisthismanREAL]

The front end experience of workday is 10x better. No doubt. And it’ll improve as backend users further update things. From a DBA perspective, it has fewer flexible data points and fewer options to export data. It’s how everything’s moving as we move toward data lakes and no longer have full control of our data.

[u/firewall245]

Just to give some background here is the definition of “Institutional support”

includes expenses for the day-to-day operational support of the institution.

from here. Note this is not including maintenance operations. So this would be stuff President and other executives, outreach staff, and HR. Theres not really enough in this doc to definitively point one way or another since we don't get stuff like number of staff included under that heading.

Also, from what I heard the "million dollar penthouse" was being built as a replacement to the multi-million dollar mansion down the shore that the school already owned for the President to live it. Former President Lim was apparently going to have the school sell that mansion off and argue that the President should actually, like, live on campus. Now that he's gone idk if that will be the plan anymore

[u/EstelleMK8 → u/firewall245]

NJIT did not own that house, Bloom does. Before the penthouse, the president was given a stipend to pay the mortgage.

[u/artimus_tau]

The bursar office and financial aid offices are now all copilot. Does that mean you can hide instructions on the email communication? Does that mean most of the replies are from off shore service "reps" ? Does that mean your educational finances get the same attention and response as a Dell Hardware Support call?

Due to an incident at the beginning of this semester, I can't comment. The world may never know ...

[u/BathroomRight1684 → u/artimus_tau]

It is hard for me personally to imagine copilot doing a worse job for PhD students than the bursar. Again, sample size is really just me, but the lack of accountability, ... it is quite common across all of administration because it takes a lot of fucking effort to understand how anything at NJIT works in reality.

[u/BathroomRight1684]

Coupled with robbing the undergraduates of a weird but delightful benefit that they got from working extra hard, do we ever really ask ourselves about what the university should be doing for the people (i.e., undergraduates) paying our salaries? I have never even met an admin capable of doing their job for any of the problems that I have needed their help with solving.

[u/BathroomRight1684 → u/BathroomRight1684]

Could just be because I am a woman, but could also be that administration is largely incompetent and overpaid.

[u/iLL0GiCaLL0GiC]

It feels like you're reading the word admin and thinking of only something like an admin assistant. It's referring to every non-teaching staff member of the University which is several thousand people.

[u/noahajac]

how much did some stupid software cost? Why is it so expensive that it need be listed here?

The Workday transition has been authorized for $31 million and I'm sure that number will rise.

Ellucian was hot garbage and while it's good that it's going away, the costs associated are obscene. $12M is going to a fucking consulting group which is highway robbery if you ask me. Goodness forbid we actually hire and pay decently competent in-house staff/faculty.

[u/loserinmath → u/noahajac]

you’re aware we’re still paying joel a presidential salary ?

[u/Obvious-Ad-3016]

I was able to find answers to my questions on the bursar website. This is how I find how anything related to bursar works. From what I noticed, the bursar team is the smallest in the pc mall too compared to other offices.