00100	.require "let.pub" source;
00200	∂AIL Provost William F. Miller↓Stanford University↓Stanford CA 94305∞
00300	Dear Bill:
00400	
00500	Thanks for taking the time to answer my letter sent to the %2Daily%1.
00600	I am afraid I went overboard in the last couple sentences, and as a
00700	result you missed the point I was trying to make; at least your note
00800	didn't address this point.
00900	
01000		In your speech at the Senate meeting and in your note you
01100	stressed that the Administration was making equal sacrifices with
01200	what the faculty was being asked to make and exemplified this by
01300	telling about the cuts in your own office.  Equality of sacrifice
01400	is a reasonable criterion in the %2community%1 model of the university,
01500	but it is irrelevant in the %2purpose%1 model.  In the latter case,
01600	the criterion is what ratio of administrative and service expenditures
01700	to direct academic expenditures best serves the purpose of the university -
01800	the creation and propogation of knowledge.
01900	
02000		This issue, which was addressed by Pittendrigh's motion, might
02100	be tackled in several ways:
02200	
02300		1. An analytic study designed to show that each administrative
02400	and service personnel increase has contributed as much as an equivalent
02500	academic increase.  To be convincing this would have to go into some
02600	detail.
02700	It might also be shown that certain increases were unavoidable
02800	even though they were not cost-effective.
02900	
03000		2. A comparison with (say) five other schools in (say) ten
03100	areas of expenditure showing that they had all suffered comparable
03200	increases in costs and had comparable costs in terms of the functions
03300	performed.
03400	
03500		3. A comparison with Stanford in (say) 1960 in (say) ten
03600	areas of expenditure explaining the increases in each area.
03700	
03800	Probably a combination of these approaches would be most convincing.
03900	
04000	You are right that I haven't studied many documents; I did
04100	study the budget document distributed last year quite carefully and
04200	concluded that there was no way to answer my questions as to whether
04300	money was being effectively spent on the basi of it.  The list of
04400	administrative and service budget increases and the casual way
04500	in which they were explained led me to the conclusion that there
04600	was still no effectivee damper on administrative personnel incrses.
04700	Don Knuth remarked that increases in number of faculty have to
04800	be justified much more carefully than administrative personnel
04900	increases.
05000	
05100	The area in which I have the most personal knowledge is computing.
05200	I have long since given up hope that Stanford will buy a PDP-10
05300	for interactive computing, even though I still think it more
05400	cost-effective than the IBM alternatives.  I have also given up
05500	criticizing the the 360/67 operation, although all the weaknesses
05600	I previously criticized are still present.  However, the administrative
05700	computing monster, against which I railed in vain in 1971, has gotten
05800	%2three times as big%1 as it was, and the main thing that has permitted
05900	this is the formation of SCIP, which has permitted it to hide its
06000	costs.