Administrative Bloat: "The Coming Assault"

Over at National Review's "Phi Beta Cons" there is this short post (excerpt only) discussing Benjamin Ginsberg's The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University:

"The raw numbers contained therein tell the story. “Forty years ago . . . the efforts of 446,830 professors were supported by 268,952 administrators and staffers. Over the past four decades, though, as the number of full-time professors increased slightly more than 50 percent . . . the number of administrators and administrative staffers employed by those schools increased by an astonishing 85 percent and 240 percent, respectively.”

"Although administration has burgeoned at both public and private institutions, the lion’s share of the growth has taken place in the latter."

Here is a critical review of the book (and its wider context) by NAS president Peter Wood (disclosure: I am an officer of the NAS).

HT: Glenn Ricketts