[impossiblefork]

The thing though, is that they actually are unnecessary.

We don't have these guys here in Sweden, and our university education costs less per head than highschool education. The Russians don't have these guys, and they even have the Indepedent University of Moscow, which is basically a bunch of mathematicians that let anybody who passes three of their courses take the rest and get a degree.

This whole thing where both they and we and some other people let anybody who does well enough on the exams in is also very important, because it means that you aren't forced to jump through hoops to get accepted, and this signals something to people-- that university education isn't about hoop jumping or about satisfying political criteria, and this signals something about the attitude of the state to its citizens which is really important at least to me.

[kelnos]

Sure, but this is the US we're talking about, and the regulatory environment is of course different in the US than in Sweden or Russia.

You can argue that the US's regulations are dumb and shouldn't exist, but that doesn't change the fact that they do exist, and that universities need to retain staff that can ensure compliance.

I don't know if the huge amount of admin jobs at US universities today is actually necessary, but it's plausible that universities in one country might need more admin staff than universities in another.