[eli_gottlieb]

>I haven't been in the sector long enough to have a real handle on when or why this shift happened, but from my perspective its the primary driver of the increasing administrative bloat. Schools are competing more on the intangibles, and so they need to invest more into these areas, which means more staff and more overhead.

If I had to actually guess, it probably started around the time they realized that the Millenial matriculation cohort was going to start "running down", resulting in universities having to either reduce their selectivity (which is death for a private uni) or somehow retain their selectivity by attracting more of a limited applicant pool. At the same time, there's a secular trend in cutting per-student funding for state universities.

The result is that state schools need to bring in more tuition money (forcing prices up on their end, reducing price competition against over-expensive private schools), while private schools need to retain selectivity (so they compete harder for students who can pay).