Anonymous wrote:Excluding Duke Health Care, the number of employees is excessive. Have met President Price-great leader and not a dogmatic liberal imo and to his credit a big Blue Devil sports fan. However again imo the deans, faculty and alumni magazine are very left of center. Gave money for several decades but the liberal political agenda was too much. When mentioned this to a senior development official the person said we have received that complaint a lot recently. Another problem is many grads can’t get their kids accepted-nothing unique to Duke but parents stop donating. With a top 10 endowment and perhaps one of the wealthiest alumni network Duke will be fine but cost-cutting is necessary. Let’s Go Duke.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an alum who donated and volunteered for decades, agree way too much faculty and staff. News mentions Duke at 48,000 employees is second largest private employer and sure a large part of that base is medical and hospital employees. The growth in development staff, DEI, non-teaching faculty is staggering and has to be cut back and this is not unique to Duke as other elite universities are facing similar fiscal problems. Also when a school like Duke and the Ivies rejects active donating grads’ kids don’t expect checks to continue. Time for these schools to operate more like a business.

48,000 employees for a school with 11,000 students is absolutely insane.

No sympathy.

Most of those are health system employees who have nothing to do with the number of students. It’s insane to me that you don’t understand that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wral.com/news/local/duke-prepares-layoffs-employees-call-transparency/

My brother is a professor there and he said that morale is quite low at the moment.

That's terrible! Entrenched higher ed employees and government workers should never have to worry about layoffs! That privilege is reserved strictly for the average American working class slob! Don't they know that?

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wral.com/news/local/duke-prepares-layoffs-employees-call-transparency/

My brother is a professor there and he said that morale is quite low at the moment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the chances that all three of Jerry Seinfeld's kids were qualified for Duke?

Nepotism at it's finest.

Jon Stewart’s kid goes to Duke, too. On his LinkedIn, his work experience includes an internship at the Daily Show.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an alum who donated and volunteered for decades, agree way too much faculty and staff. News mentions Duke at 48,000 employees is second largest private employer and sure a large part of that base is medical and hospital employees. The growth in development staff, DEI, non-teaching faculty is staggering and has to be cut back and this is not unique to Duke as other elite universities are facing similar fiscal problems. Also when a school like Duke and the Ivies rejects active donating grads’ kids don’t expect checks to continue. Time for these schools to operate more like a business.

Agree with much of this. Staff is definitely bloated. And the development people I have met have often been very underwhelming. Perhaps they trot out the better people for the bigger hitters but I feel like I have met some of them as well and they have not been great. And several have been flat out rude to friends who wanted to be actively involved but couldn't right big checks.

Duke is better about admitting legacies than many peer schools but could still do more. Price over-reacted to the NYT hit job article about Duke not having enough financial aid kids - Duke was marginally worse based on very statistically suspect metrics then made to look evil. Price should have ignored it. Instead he rolled out a bunch of programs to recruit more FA kids. It is largely a zero sum game so this means fewer legacies and/or full pay kids. I am all for diversity, but Duke is going a bit too far.

Meanwhile, there are a bunch of underqualified rich non-legacies who get in because Duke wants to be seen as "cool." Great to have Seinfeld at Duke in People Magazine. And Springsteen's kid. And so on. I get that they probably donated a lot and this helps pay the bills. But again, there are limited seats.

It's rare to see someone complain that a university doesn't admit enough legacies.

Anonymous wrote:The new food court was sort of necessary to compete with other schools. It kind of makes up for the dump that is the Bryan Center.

Anonymous wrote:The alumni giving rate numbers speak for themselves. Duke used to be in high 30s to low 40 percent 30 years ago. Now it is barely in the low 20s. There are lots of grads from my era who will never write checks for a school with any political balance. There is no tolerance among the liberal lefties for people of opposing political beliefs.

6'3, 215 is a BMI of 26.9. Slightly overweight (assuming average body composition) but nowhere near obese.

Anonymous wrote:The sense I get of Duke, as a professor at a competitor university and a mom to a college-aged kid, is that students love the idea of Duke, but they don't like each other. That probably accounts for the low alumni giving rate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an alum who donated and volunteered for decades, agree way too much faculty and staff. News mentions Duke at 48,000 employees is second largest private employer and sure a large part of that base is medical and hospital employees. The growth in development staff, DEI, non-teaching faculty is staggering and has to be cut back and this is not unique to Duke as other elite universities are facing similar fiscal problems. Also when a school like Duke and the Ivies rejects active donating grads’ kids don’t expect checks to continue. Time for these schools to operate more like a business.

48,000 employees for a school with 11,000 students is absolutely insane.

No sympathy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an alum who donated and volunteered for decades, agree way too much faculty and staff. News mentions Duke at 48,000 employees is second largest private employer and sure a large part of that base is medical and hospital employees. The growth in development staff, DEI, non-teaching faculty is staggering and has to be cut back and this is not unique to Duke as other elite universities are facing similar fiscal problems. Also when a school like Duke and the Ivies rejects active donating grads’ kids don’t expect checks to continue. Time for these schools to operate more like a business.

48,000 employees for a school with 11,000 students is absolutely insane.

No sympathy.

Anonymous wrote:As an alum who donated and volunteered for decades, agree way too much faculty and staff. News mentions Duke at 48,000 employees is second largest private employer and sure a large part of that base is medical and hospital employees. The growth in development staff, DEI, non-teaching faculty is staggering and has to be cut back and this is not unique to Duke as other elite universities are facing similar fiscal problems. Also when a school like Duke and the Ivies rejects active donating grads’ kids don’t expect checks to continue. Time for these schools to operate more like a business.