Administering Colleges: 1960s and Today

Administrative bloat is not the sole domain of government.

By Richard K. Vedder. 

"In clearing out an office with six decades of materials—grade books, journal articles, papers given at scholarly meetings, books, etc.—I discovered evidence showing how much colleges have changed over time, and one reason they have become so expensive. Administrative staff have exploded in size relative to the growth in the number of students, or faculty. From some limited evidence from other schools (I taught as a visiting professor at three other institutions and lectured at many more), I suspect my Ohio University (OU) experience is very similar to what has happened elsewhere.

Enrollment expanded somewhat since the mid-1960s at OU, as did research activity, perhaps justifying a 50 percent increase or even doubling in administrative staff. In 1965, Ohio University had one person whose job was to raise money from private donations, and he also served as the school’s lobbyist at the state capital. Today, I count over 70 persons in OU’s “Advancement” operation, with still others in other areas involved in lobbying or as private contractors. Perusal of OU’s historic archrival, Miami of Ohio’s website, suggests a similarly sized operation.

In 1965, no OU administrator had a “chief of staff” because administrators rarely had more than one or two assistants. Now they are everywhere. OU did not even have a provost in 1965 (one “academic vice president”), but today’s provost has not only a chief of staff, but eight “associate” or “vice” provosts, plus an “executive assistant,” a “director of operations,” and other positions unheard of two generations ago.

In 1965, OU’s College of Business had four persons in the central office—a dean, associate dean (for academic matters and budgets), an assistant dean (student affairs), and one secretary/administrative assistant. Today, it has perhaps double or maybe triple the number of students, but has 56 (!!) staff with the word “director” as part of their job description, some teaching as well.

My OU experience is duplicated across the land. When I checked a few years ago, there were about 2,000 working in the central office of the University of California, as opposed to at one of the 10 or so campuses where students actually learn. No doubt each of those teaching campuses had its own smaller administrative army as well.

Probably the two most harmful areas where excessive administration has proved not only costly but damaging to a vibrant, diverse learning community are student affairs and what morphed, from literally nothing, to “affirmative action” then to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These administrators have proven not only costly but often destructive. I once disrupted a disciplinary proceeding against a student who, on his personal website, defended traditional male-female marriages and condemned formal gay unions. A hyper woke administrator wanted to discipline the student who had the audacity to hold such views contrary to the Woke campus consensus (I raised such a big stink, including threatening to seek the intervention of FIRE, that the university backed down). And I attended another disciplinary hearing against a conservative professor led by a gung-ho DEI administrator that made the Spanish Inquisition look tame by comparison, devoid of even a semblance of fairness and due process.

Borrowing from Proust, enough remembrances of times past. What can be done now to reduce costs and misdirection arising from administrative overreach?

In a competitive corporate environment, markets correct for costly mistakes and bloated costs. Profits fall, corporate raiders come, and to survive, companies must make uncomfortable but productive changes. But government subsidies and private philanthropy usually shield universities from having to change their costly ways. However, growing public discontent with academia may be leading to reductions in both private and taxpayer support, and those lower subsidies and falling tuition revenues likely will lead to more university closings and, with that, belated collegiate realization that serious cost reductions are necessary, including slashing massive athletic subsidies, increasing teaching loads, offering new types of degrees (three year bachelor’s?), and, most importantly, slashing administrative personnel that neither teach nor do research.

The forthcoming collegiate closings drama reminds me of 19th century’s Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest” interpretation of Charles Darwin’s theories of biology, and also 20th century’s Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction,” demonstrating how the real threat of failure forces needed innovation among businesses trying to survive pressures in competitive marketplaces.

As I have elaborated at book length elsewhere (Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education), as the threat of actual closure intensifies, colleges will be forced to do the heretofore unthinkable, reducing non-essential staff (primarily administrators, but also nonproductive professors, perhaps weakening tenure protection). They might also have to use their buildings intensively 12 months annually, like the private sector does, with professors teaching more and writing fewer articles that no one reads for the Journal of Last Resort. Maybe colleges will sell their non-academic businesses like dormitories, food, and semi-professional sport operations, putting proceeds into endowments dedicated to lowering the excessive sticker price of attending college. Make universities genuine learning communities again.

University enrollments are lower today than in 2010, and school closings are likely to rise meaningfully. The timing and extent of this phenomenon are uncertain, but the probability of it happening is rising. Two external factors are important as well: the decline in American fertility in this century is leading to smaller numbers of prime-age domestic students, and new AI technology already seems to be reducing the demand for some types of college graduates, as machines, specifically computers, are now replacing college-trained human brainpower. The demand for plumbers and home health care workers is growing relative to that for economists and mathematicians. AI cannot fix a leaky toilet.

All this adds to the pressure for colleges to do more with less. Among other things, it means declaring war on collegiate administrative bloat."