USC is afraid to make those hard choices of true job reduction for fear of looking inferior to other regional/national flagship institutions. Afterall, the institutional website constantly touts it’s Carnegie Classification, which is not meant to be an exclusive designation, but merely a grouping of institutions with similar goals.

that’s a pretty odd way of looking at it.

I imagine that the University creates positions for faculty and administrators because its President thinks that the positions are required to make the University run more efficiently and effectively.

Given he has already suffered a couple of rounds of budget cuts, I think the need for efficiency is probably paramount in his mind.

As for raising salaries, I think it probably has more to do with the market, don’t you think?

Already underfunded the reduction in their budgets forces hard choices that they should not have to make.

I agree with your suggestion that the number of state supported universities in needlessly high, and I think a better solution would be to close or fold local state colleges into the tech system.

The money saved should be redirected back to higher education.

Or if they are not going to be properly funded, the larger Universities should be allowed to raise tuitions to whatever level they see fit without the interference of state government.

It is an unworkable construct for government to decrease funding while simultaneously instructing the Universities that they cannot raise tuition.