Report: Colleges Added 500,000 Administrators Between 1987 and 2012

A new report reveals that American colleges added half a million administrators between 1987 and 2012.

According to an analysis by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, American colleges added 500,000 administrative positions between 1987 and 2012. The amount of administrative positions has increased much more rapidly than the number of faculty positions.

The Wall Street Journal highlighted the analysis in a column that was published on Sunday.

A 2014 analysis by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found that from 1987 to 2012, the higher-education sector added more than half a million administrators. Their numbers have doubled relative to academic faculty. Financed in large part with federally subsidized tuition, this rise of administrators siphons money from the core functions of academic institutions. Colleges and universities have shifted teaching duties from full-time professors to part-time nontenured adjuncts who earn paltry wages.

Columbia Law School Professor Phillip Hamburger argued in the column that the rise in administrative positions has coincided with the rise in progressive indoctrination and limitations on conservative thought.

It’s no accident that as they have hired more administrators, these institutions have veered toward indoctrination and censorious intrusions into speech, opinion and personal life. These heavy-handed policies are often incompatible with traditional educational ideals, such as academic freedom, freedom of speech, open-mindedness and dispassionate judgment. To be sure, many faculty support such policies, but the most consistent pressure for them typically comes from the administrative bureaucracy. Congress should recognize that its funding helped create this threat to education.

Breitbart News reported in May 2018 that the University of Michigan’s Diversity and Inclusion office has an $11 million payroll for the 100 administrative staffers it employs.