Some wireless data information from a major university campus

[Exterous]

Student body: 35,231
Faculty\Staff: 21,573

That can't be right. No institution can be that top heavy.

Feel free to start looking up numbers yourself if you don't believe the ratios are in line with your expectations. Public Universities post their information for anyone to view

Quick example:

University of Michigan 2014 numbers:
Faculty and staff: 25,500
Enrolled: 43,000
http://www.ro.umich.edu/report/14enrollmentsummary.pdf

http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/factsfigures/facstaffsumm_umaa_fall14.pdf
(I think thats actually a bit low for staff:student as I think the sudent # includes Flint and Dearborn but the staff is only the Ann Arbor location. Not 100% sure though)

Two things to keep in mind:
1) A lot of Universities employ their students as well. For example MSU has a large number of Student Temp positions available at their helpdesks. These jobs come with incredibly flexible hours but tend to be extremely low hours per week. I know one section has 30 hours a week for student temps spread across 7 temps because thats how infrequently the students want to work. Thats 7 staff positions counted for something thats not even a single full time position. Same thing for GSIs and TAs. There is an OSU physics class that has 1 Prof but something like 12 GSIs as the labs are very personal instruction intensive. Those 12 GSIs really only do about 4 hours of work a week for that class (if that) but thats still 12 staff positions

2) A lot of faculty are extremely part time. UofM has a number of law professors that only teach a single class a year (semester?) because they are still practicing lawyers. They are very well known and respected in their fields so UofM gets the prestige associated with offering classes with those professors, the students get the advantage of having experienced professors and the professors make pretty good money for not a lot of time. You'll need a lot of faculty to round out a full time student schedule though

 

[Exterous]

Something interesting that I just remember and that goes along with the above - Universities run into some interesting situations given the positions they are in. I was on a tour of a science building at Purdue (pretty sure it was Purdue) and they had their own dedicated blacksmiths and glass blower. Apparently it saved them time and money to pay for people to do those tasks as opposed to buying the equipment. (Apparently some of the beakers used for research labs are very expensive and students tend to break a lot of the smaller ones in teaching labs)

Indiana University runs their own printing shop complete with large format poster printers and 3D printing capabilities as this was much cheaper for the students and University than going to Kinkos, fedex etc. Mostly student run and with the charges being based on whats needed to pay for the students, printers and supplies (sans 3D printer supplies).

They all (or at least the large ones) tend to have their own electricians, architects, HVAC techs, drywallers, plumbers, locksmiths, grounds keepers etc so your staff ratio is going to be off if you compare them to places like high school

 

[Hugo Drax]

Student body: 35,231
Faculty\Staff: 21,573

That can't be right. No institution can be that top heavy.

Why do you think college is so expensive. The actual teachers from what i hear are TAs while the high paid professors are in the office doing reaserch papers.

 

[Sephire]

(Majority of the rest were 'unknown')

ahhh...the good ol' days of torrenting through a proxy.

and VPN's

 

[Ichinisan]

Student body: 35,231
Faculty\Staff: 21,573

That can't be right. No institution can be that top heavy.

Just means the faculty has more devices. Classroom equipment, office equipment, and personal devices.

 

[Ichinisan]

(Majority of the rest were 'unknown')

ahhh...the good ol' days of torrenting through a proxy.

and VPN's

Proxy and VPN would not hide your device MAC from their AP or DHCP server. The university operates the very first hop that you are directly connected to. Tunneling to another network and encrypting that traffic is operating on a different layer. It doesn't prevent them from seeing your device's MAC ID, it just prevents them from analyzing the traffic.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Considering he has Michigan for his location, I'm guessing he is talking about University of Michigan. Wikipedia says it has 43k students.

Wow that's insane. That's practically the population of my city in one area.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Student body: 35,231
Faculty\Staff: 21,573

That can't be right. No institution can be that top heavy.

Funny. Those were the numbers that stood out most to me as well.

I'm not so sure it's incorrect, though, when you consider all clerical workers, police and security, custodial staff, food services, grounds and building maintenance, plus hundreds of people working in sports programs who have nothing to do with academics.

 

[KMFJD]

Wow that's insane. That's practically the population of my city in one area.

I think you could put Timmins and North Bay in their football stadium and still have seats left over...