The Brown University student who faced discipline for asking thousands of administrators how they spend their workday took his fight against bureaucratic excess in education Thursday to Congress.
Alex Shieh, who just finished his junior year at Brown, blasted the university for employing 3,805 full-time non-instructional staff, or about one administrator for every two undergraduate students, despite a projected budget deficit and soaring tuition costs.
“At this very moment, the American people are tightening their belts, and Brown is raising tuition to beyond $90,000. Even while charging students the price of a luxury car, Brown is on track to run a $46 million deficit this year,” Mr. Shieh said in testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust.
“Where’s all the money going?” he asked. “I’ll tell you where it’s going: It’s going into an empire of administrative bloat and bureaucracy.”
He called for the panel to subpoena Brown President Christina Paxson to testify and produce documents on “administrative growth, financial aid coordination, and retaliation.”
Mr. Shieh was the star witness at the hearing on “The Elite Universities Cartel,” the latest salvo in the House GOP’s ongoing battle with the Ivy League on issues including antisemitism, free speech and viewpoint discrimination.
This time, House Republicans focused on the “anticompetitive practices of the Ivy League institutions that keep class sizes small and may inflate the cost of higher education.”
“Ivy League schools should be competing to offer the best product at the best price possible; instead, they collude to raise prices and spend their inflated cartel earnings on administrative bloat,” subcommittee Chairman Scott Fitzgerald, Wisconsin Republican, said in his opening remarks.
The hearing dovetailed with university budgets and endowments under scrutiny as the Trump administration pulls or pauses federal research funding to Ivy League universities over their handling of campus antisemitism.
Mr. Shieh drew national attention after he sent emails in March to Brown’s 3,805 administrators asking them “what tasks you performed in the past week” as part of a Department of Government Efficiency-style investigation for the Brown Spectator, the conservative student newspaper.
He said he received back 20 responses, including one that said, “F—- you.”
Brown launched a “preliminary review” into charges that included “emotional/psychological harm” and “misrepresentation,” even though Mr. Shieh identified himself as a Brown Spectator reporter.
Mr. Shieh said his Social Security number was leaked and his Bloat@Brown website was hacked. The charges were ultimately dropped under pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom, as well as DOGE chief Elon Musk and Rep. Troy Nehls, Texas Republican.
Brown and other universities were accused by students of price-fixing in a 2022 lawsuit. Brown settled for $19.5 million as part of the $284 million settlement reached in 2024, but the university has denied any wrongdoing.
Brown spokesperson Brian E. Clark defended the university’s handling of the Spectator emails, saying the review centered not on free speech, but on “whether improper use of non-public Brown data or non-public data systems violated law or policy.”
He also disputed the claim that Brown has one administrator for every two students, pointing out that the university also has about 4,000 graduate students in addition to its 7,226 undergraduates.
“Our staffing numbers should be understood in the context of the fact that Brown is a major research university that supports both undergraduate and graduate education and research. We’re not an undergraduate college,” Mr. Clark said in a statement.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.