[cpaone]

Administrators are setting the priorities of expenditures. In so-called "fiscal emergency," administrators have opted to cut academic programs and freeze hiring in teaching while at the same time increasing expenditures on bureaucracy. The article cites abundant examples.

[aidenn0]

Still, according to the article's own numbers, if we reset the administrative fraction of the budget to 1947 levels, we would only shave 6% off of costs; this hardly explains much of the huge increase in inflation-adjusted tuition since then.

[wisty]

Administrators can be frightfully bad at capital allocation. They don't have much incentive to spend wisely, and they are often disconnected from what really matters to a university. Also, the more admins you have, the louder their voice will be, and the more misdirected intellectual firepower they will have making reports about how their decisions are the best.

IIRC, the real cost is often building, and IT. There's also money getting wasted by academics, because they have to follow too many rules. If you give academics a budget, and tell them to spend it wisely, they will probably do so. Give them a list of rules, and they will follow the rules, even if it means they waste a lot of money.