Admins Aren't the Reason College Costs Keep Soaring

Occasionally, I like to write about rising college costs, and what they mean for the students who are borrowing huge sums to finance their education. Whenever I do, I can count on at least one faculty member -- and often more than one -- to explain earnestly that he quite agrees: the problem isn't the faculty, you see, but the incredible proliferation of administrators. In this telling, administration is like a gut bacteria that has somehow gotten out of control, reproducing itself merely for the sake of reproducing itself, and in the process doing considerable damage to the body that hosts it.

Tim Burke, a Swarthmore professor who is also a top-notch (if insufficiently prolific) blogger, has penned a long post that is a very useful corrective to this complaint. It isn't that the professors are wrong, exactly -- administration has grown fantastically over the last 50 years. And empire building is undoubtedly some of the reason for this, because all organizations accumulate unnecessary mid-managerial retinues unless the leadership makes a regular effort to scrape off the supernumerary barnacles.