[Ajay-p]

The universities have become bloated and mismanaged with great resistance to change. Tenured professors and administrators are very opposed to anything that reduces their jobs or makes them redundant. A lot of universities are carrying dead weight, professors who have no classes to teach because students are not required to take them, or worse, classes whom if not for a student requirement would not exist. Administrators whose jobs are duplicative if not unnecessary. Streamlining higher education is a very noble goal and one that is grossly overdue.

[tptacek]

I'm dubious of any analysis that treats "tenured professors" and "administrators" as a unified bloc.

[Ajay-p]

Why not? Both can and in some cases do represent unnecessary bloat, which is an increased cost often passed on to the students, and can be extremely difficult to reduce.

[Nevermark]

Anything can be bloat. Thats not an argument for treating completely different functional roles, tracks, types of people in a university as interchangeable.

You don’t fix engines, or any sophisticated system, by treating its various parts as functionally the same.

Unless that information isn’t available, but universities are openly observable systems.