Ohio State spends millions on 131 diversity administrators

Ohio State University has 131 diversity administrators, 30 of whom make more than $100,000 per year, according to the university’s human resources data.

Professor Mark Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, posted the information on Twitter. Campus Reform confirmed his calculations. Under Perry’s assumption that the hourly employees work a full-time schedule for 50 weeks per year, Ohio State pays $10,097,051 to diversity staffers annually. Thirty-two are hourly employees, but the average pay for the 99 salaried employees is $89,168 annually. In addition to the 131 diversity officers at the academic and administrative offices of the university, an additional ten diversity staffers are employed by the university health system’s Center for Cancer Equity.

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The average diversity staffer salary could pay in-state tuition and room and board for 3.5 students each year. In total, Perry found that total annual payroll cost of diversity administrators, including benefits, could pay in-state tuition for 1,120 students.

The diversity staffers outnumber the staff in the Department of Economics, which is comprised of 105 people. The diversity staffers also outnumber the 54 faculty members in the University’s Knowlton School of Architecture.

Perry told Campus Reform that the diversity bureaucrats, which he shortens to “diversicrats,” have negligible impact on student learning while absorbing tens of thousands of dollars each year. He said, “It’s hard to know exactly what the diversicrats do all day, and it’s hard to imagine they create $13 million in value for students and Ohio taxpayers. For example, if the diversicrats all disappeared tomorrow, would the average OSU student or faculty member even notice any difference in their educational, career or campus experience? I’d say probably not.”

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There is, however, one group of people that Perry says may benefit from the elimination of “diversicrats”: the faculty. He continued, “Because the diversicrats create a lot of mischief like mandatory diversity statements for new faculty and staff and for promotions, etc., I think many faculty would be thankful that the diversicrats were gone.”

Campus Reform reached out to Ohio State University for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. 

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AngelaLMorabito