[emptyfile]

That seems reasonable for an expensive US university, especially when compared to the post above.

I live in eastern europe and I was trying to remember what kind of administrative staff I encountered in my 6 years of university.

Apart from the people who handle the paperwork for admissions and cleaning ladies I honestly can't think any.

[vkou]

Your librarians are administrative staff. Your research assistants are administrative staff. The people who do inventory are administrative staff. The people who do purchases are administrative staff. The people who work in the cafeteria are administrative staff. The people who install, maintain, and fix the computers used by all of the people in the list above are administrative staff. The people who fix a broken door are administrative staff. The people who are managing student housing are administrative staff. On-site campus security that busts freshmen parties are administrative staff.

Pretty much everyone who is drawing a salary, and is not a lecturing professor is administrative staff. If your university consists of a dozen lecture halls, and a storage closet, you don't need any administrative staff. The more facilities and services you have, the more administrative staff you will have. Stanford probably has a lot more facilities then your university did.

If you just want to lecture to people, education can be incredibly cheap. If you want to lecture to people, and have them use expensive lab equipment, and have them live on campus, and have hundreds of people, with teams of assistants doing research... It's going to be expensive.