Why Has College Tuition Risen so Much? Ask the Administrators, Whose Ranks Have Grown 84% Since 1989
Via Instapundit comes this Investors Business Daily report on the metastization of college and university administrators over the past 20 or so years.
An IBD analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that from 1989-2009 the number of administrative personnel at four- and two-year institutions grew 84%, from about 543,000 to over 1 million.
By contrast, the number of faculty increased 75%, from 824,000 to 1.4 million, while student enrollment grew 51%, from 13.5 million to 20.4 million.
The disparity was worse at public universities and colleges, where personnel in administration rose 71%, faculty 58% and student enrollment 40%. Private schools also saw administration and faculty growing faster than student enrollment, although faculties slightly outpaced administration increases.
Administrative personnel are employees who are not engaged in instruction and research. The jobs range from university president and provost to accountants, social workers, computer analysts and music directors.
One observer notes that the rise in administrative types is fueled at least partly by where the money for college comes from: "In order to comply with the government's requirements, colleges need to employ a staff that is responsible for providing the multiple state and federal agencies with compliance reports and data."
This report tracks with a more-specific study spearheaded by researcher Jay Greene, whose team looked specifically at research universities and found
Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America's leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent. Arizona State University, for example, increased the number of administrators per 100 students by 94 percent during this period while actually reducing the number of employees engaged in instruction, research and service by 2 percent. Nearly half of all full-time employees at Arizona State University are administrators.
Back in 2009, on the heels of a report that showed fewer than 50 percent of incoming freshmen gradjiate after six years, Reason.tv made the case against make higher education an entitlement:
