The number of administrators per student decreased at American universities over the last ten years, according to a new study by the State Higher Education Executive Officers. The findings provide a pushback against the notion, shared by some policy experts, that administrative bloat on college campuses has worsened.
Paul Lingenfelter, President of SHEEO, welcomed the news.
“I think the most important finding is that enrollment has grown dramatically over the past ten years and that staffing has not grown as fast, which means essentially that higher education is becoming more productive in terms of staff resources per student,” he said.
Lingenfelter also noted staffing areas that did experience growth were non-administrative, another positive finding.
“It’s very clear that staffing per student is going down, and it’s going down fastest in the categories that you would hope would go down, which is sort of fixed positions like administration,” he said.
The two staffing categories that registered positive growth were graduate assistants and ‘other professionals,’ which include student services and IT personnel. Faculty experienced a 4% decline. Administrators fell by 20% during the first half of the decade, but remained steady after 2005.
Not everyone was encouraged by these results. Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, said that ‘other professionals’—the category with the most growth—includes employees who fall outside of the core mission of the university.
“Student services may provide useful things to students, but they don’t teach or do research,” he said. Instead, I think they are part of the mission-creep at universities where they provide a host of services, including entertainment, counseling, etc., that weren’t primarily the responsibility of universities in the past.”
Lingenfelter said that although increased IT personnel and research assistants are vital components of modern-day research universities, “instruction is the core.”
But Greene warned against interpreting the study as a vindication of hiring practices at universities.
“If we think that universities are like the Love Boat, then I guess we would want to hire more people like Julie the Cruise Director,” he said. “If we think that universities are in the truth business, then I think we would want to focus hiring on the core missions of teaching and research.”
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