Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes a column for USA Today, in addition to being a law professor who blogs as Instapundit. Today's USAT column is about the obscene growth in university administrative positions. This growth is very real, I've seen it on campuses with which I was affiliated, prior to retirement.
The question nobody seems to ask: why an explosive growth in administrators is occurring? I'm certain there are many reasons, a major one is the changing composition of the student stream.
The days when university students overwhelmingly were bright, well-prepared, motivated mainstream-culture youngsters of uncomplicated gender identification are long gone. The numbers of such students will continue to decline into the foreseeable future, something administrators know too well since the students of the next 18 years have already been born, their demographics are known.
Add to the mix the federal and state pressures to serve a diverse student body reflective of the larger population. Nobody will admit quotas exist, but of course they do in practice if not in theory, and everybody acts accordingly.
Recruiting black and Hispanic university students is difficult, finding sufficient numbers whose secondary education has prepared them for college is effectively impossible. Yet at public universities, failure to fill the seats with students equals budget cuts, layoffs, unemployment, and closed campuses.
A common pattern over the last couple of decades: at the beginning of each fall term there are plenty of minority students on campus, by Thanksgiving many are gone, by Easter most of the rest have departed. Mere recruitment isn't enough.
A fair number of new administrators are involved with things like "retention" which translates as an attempt to answer the question: How can we keep the minority kids we recruit from dropping out, help them pass courses, and eventually graduate them? Other administrators may be involved in programs designed to upgrade new students' skills so they can do university-level work.
Still others are involved in matching up students with various sources of funding, whether merit or need based, as well as loans. Or running employee assistance programs to help faculty and staff with addiction issues and other troubles.
Reynolds is correct, our universities do have too many administrators. Unfortunately, the problems which drive the process are only getting worse. Those problems are twofold: changing demographics and a worsening regulatory environment.
