Why institutions and governments invest in infrustructure instead of hiring researcher permanently?

Question

I have observed two recurring trends in Academia, both in Europe and in North America. I don't have statistics in hand but I can present quite a few examples of budgets in which the investment for new infrastructure is 1000 fold what is invested in hiring permanent research staff. For example the French government has invested 4.6 billion euros in buildings and 680 million in researcher for a large research hub outside Paris. New infrastructure, most often new buildings, are filled with temporary staff, more than half of researchers are on temporary contracts. Some European countries even have limitations on the number of times a contract can be renewed, so researchers end up moving from one lab to another, which is also an inefficient use of (public) money.

A building is only paid once, while 20-30 years of salary definitely adds up, but considering the cost of a new building we could easily hire hundreds of researcher. I would rather have more permanent staff in an old building than being in a new building with 80% of temporary researchers.

So why this agenda and why is money not invested more in people? Is it just imposed by politicians? Why don't large recent centers ask for more permanent positions to be funded?

PS: I am not even sure what tags would be appropriate for this question.

Answer 1

You can have a reception when you open a building, cut the red ribbon, invite the queen...you can't do the same with new positions (as far as I know).

This is another example, but with philanthropy, it is often the case that the benefactor will want to put money towards a physical object that will stay in place with a name plate. I think equipment goes under the same category. Does the same go for politicians or whoever secures the funding for the building?

Funding research is like a big black hole. You invest and you get only a few percent back on your investment. To policy makers and philanthropists it must feel like investing in a building and getting an elevator shaft.

Just to give an example, recently a natural history museum was opened in my institution. A huge amount of funding went into the project, all donations, but the institution created basically zero new research positions for the facility.

I think the problem is well summarized in the Yes Minister episode "The Compassionate Society".

Answer 2

Even though collaboration over distance has become more and more easy due to technology, it is that researchers like to meet. Really, they do. And especially, they like to meet at nice places. I am pretty sure that places like Princeton would not have attracted all these great minds over a long period of time if it has been an unpleasant and crammed place.

Similarly, researchers still like to have offices.

Besides this, there is also politics: It is much simpler to allocate a fixed amount of money for one greater expense than to allocate a yearly budget. This is what I observe in my country. We see a lot of programs where a fixed amount of money is given for a specific purpose which has to be spent in a limited amount of time ("Hochschulpakt", "Exzellenzinitiative", "1000-Professoren-Programm", "Digitalisierungsoffensive") and this is often used to fund temporary positions. but it is really rare that the government actually raises the base funding of and institute to hire more permanent researchers.

Finally, the number do not really add up. You can build a decent building for, say, 10,000,000 (Dollars, Euros,…), but considering that a researcher costs (very) roughly 100,000 a year, the building only pays 100 year of research, so can have enough money to pay about 3 or 4 young guys for the rest of their careers.

Answer 3

You are assuming that current buildings are enough to keep up with the rising number of students and staff. It simply isn't true. One just needs to look at how many babies were born in 2000, and a few other known factors, to know approximately how many students there will be in 2018. (This task sadly appears to be out of reach for many politicians when they decide on the budget for higher education and research.) Simply put, it's more than last year, which was more than the previous year, which was more than the year before, and so on. Meanwhile, buildings have a mostly fixed capacity. You can do the math.

You mention Paris in your question. I work in a Parisian university. There isn't enough room. Period. There is an immense pressure on available rooms to conduct teaching, organize seminars or conferences, etc. It disorganizes everything. Some tasks that should be trivial become impossible. Even opening up new classes (a decision that should be purely academic!) is potentially in jeopardy because it's not clear that there will be enough room to accommodate it.

All this, despite the fact that we are in a brand new campus (2012) built from the ground up... because there wasn't enough room in the previous one! And this breaks down another one of the implicit statements in your question: the old campus isn't just demolished or left unused to rot. It's now used by another university (it used to be shared by the two). The "old building" is, in fact, also full...

Another example: where I got my doctorate, some doctoral students had to wait weeks or months for an office to be free. Until then, they had to work at home or in the library. I also had to give classes to 40 students in a room fit for 30. Not because of bad administration or lack of foresight; simply due to lack of space. Students stole chairs from nearby rooms or sat on the floor. I hope you realize that this does not foster a healthy learning environment. After a few weeks, many cut their losses and stopped coming to class, "fortunately".

You might complain that not enough permanent faculty/researchers are hired, and I would be the first to agree. One just needs to look at the trends in student vs faculty numbers to reach a conclusion. (Sadly, another task out of reach for politicians.) Or the rising amount of researchers working precarious contracts. But infrastructure is vital too. If you hire 50 researchers and you have 3 empty offices to put them in, something will explode.