A University System With More Administrators Than Teachers

Michael Barone looks at the education bubble and finds something interesting in one of our California university systems:

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he has said. “Education may still be the only thing people still believe in in the United States.”

But the combination of rising costs and dubious quality may be undermining that belief.

For what have institutions of higher learning accomplished with their vast increases in revenues? The answer in all too many cases is administrative bloat.

Take the California State University system, the second tier in that state’s public higher education. Between 1975 and 2008 the number of faculty rose by 3 percent, to 12,019 positions. During those same years the number of administrators rose 221 percent, to 12,183. That’s right: There are more administrators than teachers at Cal State now.

These people get paid to “liaise” and “facilitate” and produce reports on diversity. How that benefits Cal State students or California taxpayers is unclear.

I'm pretty familiar with the Cal State system, having two kids in it right now. One a graduate getting her teaching credential, and one a junior. Overall I think my daughter's experience at Sonoma State was excellent, and I'm hoping my son's two years at Sacramento State will be equally valuable (his first two years were in community college, something I highly recommend).

However, we pay a lot for their college experience and I doubt all these extra administrators are contributing anything valuable to that experience. I'll guarantee you could dump 75% of them and not materially impact the learning environment on campus. If anything, it would probably improve without all the politically correct nonsense that tends to come from a bunch of administrators trying to justify their existence.