We believe that the university has deviated from its mission and its core values in, at least, the following ways.

1. Faculty voice in decision-making at Emory has been severely diluted, with key decisions, such as strategic investments and executive searches now done with minimal faculty input. 

2. The Emory Board of Trustees has no academics on it, who would be well-positioned to guide the institution towards the fulfillment of its academic mission.

3. The University budget ($2.3B, including academic activities within the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, in FY ending Aug 2023) is dwarfed by the budget of Emory Healthcare  ($6.3B in the same FY), with business processes and business culture optimized for non-academic goals. Clinical revenue units and grant dollars obtained are prioritized over the quality of research, training, and clinical care. 

4. In assessment of faculty performance, generated research dollars and revenue units often outweigh the impact of scholarship, research, discovery, teaching, and mentorship. 

5. Emory has seen a rapid administrative expansion. Direct comparisons are hard to produce due to ambiguous assignment of job roles and different institutional profiles. Nonetheless, according to a recent report based on IPEDS data, Emory has a student-to-instructional faculty ratio of 10.74:1 (higher than about 30 out of 50 institutions compared, including large public ones), and its student-to-non-faculty ratio is 1.52:1 (lower than about 40 out of 50 surveyed institutions). Longitudinally, the number of Emory employees in non-instructional management roles grew from 654 in 2015 to 1048 in 2022, and the number of non-instructional business and financial operations employees grew from 531 to 887 over these years. Over the same time, the number of reported full time instructional staff employees decreased from 2076 to 1616. The numbers are consistent with our impression that many non-academic, administrative positions have been created at all levels at Emory over the last decade.

6. The University has lacked consistent leadership: we have gone through three Presidents and four Provosts (recruiting the fifth now) in just over a decade, and all but one of the Deans at Emory have been hired in the last few years. Incoming administrators typically impose new administrative structures, often incompatible with Emory processes and culture, and expand the administrative footprint, which does not contract when they depart. Rather than the administration supporting the faculty mission, the faculty are forced to support the changing administrative priorities. 

7. While the exact figures are hard to obtain due to a lack of transparency from the administration regarding budgets, the size and the number of various programs suggest that, compared to our peers, Emory has invested a disproportionately high amount of resources into non-academic, outside-of-the-classroom experiences, which have no faculty oversight. Yet, student experience surveys show that Emory students are most satisfied with their relationships with faculty. The longitudinal data are also troubling: according to IPEDS, Emory’s instructional expenses rose by 22.5% between 2015 and 2022. Over the same time, non-instructional, non-research expenses (academic, instructional, and student support services combined) rose by 33.6% (these data raise some questions as the reported instructional expenses fluctuate by ~10% year over year, while non-instructional expenses show stable growth).