Nobody doubts that college has become much more expensive than it was in my day. I have believed for some time that college costs have increased so much faster than the rate of inflation because there are now so many more administrators relative to the numbers of students and faculty. For some time I have thought it would be interesting to examine the organization chart of Brown University, my alma mater, in 1971, the year I graduated, to its organization chart today. I would bet that the number of administrative positions has grown much faster than the number of students and faculty positions, but I’ve been too lazy to run down the exact numbers.
Fortunately, Gary Smith, professor of economics at Pomona, has done the work for his college. You can find his article here. He points out that:
In 1990, Pomona had 1,487 students, 180 tenured and tenure-track professors, and 56 administrators — deans, associate deans, assistant deans and the like, not counting clerical staff, cleaners and so on. As of 2022, the most recent year for which I have data, the number of students had increased 17 percent, to 1,740, while the number of professors had fallen to 175. The number of administrators had increased to 310, an average of 7.93 new administrators per year.
So the number of administrators has grown much faster than the number of students or faculty members, at least at Pomona. The same is certainly true for many, if not most colleges.
An old college friend says that the additional expense is due to the growth of regulations with which colleges must comply. Whatever the reason, these administrators are expensive: administrative positions typically command six figure salaries, and full time assistants are required for every couple of administrators. Everyone who has ever drawn a budget knows that, as a general rule, you have to budget about two dollars for every dollar paid in salary, so every three or four administrators taken together command an annual budget of at least a million dollars. The additional millions of dollars for new administrators must be counted in any college’s budget, over and above the cost of teaching and research.
I suggest you read Professor Smith’s proposed solution. I cannot improve upon his explanation of it.