AAUP President Claims Campuses Plagued With `Administrative Bloat'

For most of this century, United States colleges and universities adhered to a dogma that the best way to compete for students, faculty, and research dollars is to expand. But this approach has led to large, complicated bureaucracies, according to Barbara Bergmann, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The net result of this, Bergmann says, is a debilitating malady called "administrative bloat." Bergmann, a professor of economics at American University, contends that since as early as 1930, U.S. college campuses have seen their administrative areas balloon to dangerous proportions, especially in science departments. Administrators at some major U.S. research institutions argue, however, that larger administrations are simply a reflection of a rise in financial and environmental accountability. In a recent article in the AAUP journal Academe (77:12-16, 1991), Bergmann writes: "On each campus that suffers from this disease, and most apparently do, millions of dollars have been swallowed up. Huge amounts have been devoted to funding administrative positions that a few years ago would have been thought unnecessary." Bergmann notes in her article that during the past decade, "administrative budgets--the expenditure for presidents, deans, and their assistants--grew 26 percent faster than instructional budgets--the expenditure for professors." Back in 1930, according to Bergmann, the median outlay for administrative overhead was 19 cents for every dollar spent on academic instruction. In 1950, that figure became 27 cents; and in the 1987-88 academic year, the administrative outlay was 45 cents for each instructional dollar. "Sitting on top of every department is a whole apparatus of deans, associate deans, and assistant deans," Bergmann says. "And on top of them there is a provost, assistant provost-- and it goes on and on." She says this adds superfluous personnel to already menacing problems of rising expenses, red tape, and paperwork. Compared to other faculty, Bergmann claims, scientists who teach and do research at universities are more adversely affected by the phenomenon of swelling administrations. "Science departments suffer more than others because of their equipment expenses," she says. "What these large administrations do is take money away from the science budgets." Bergmann says science departments also suffer from the growth in the number of administrators who become involved, for example, with purchasing, approval of purchasing, and approval of grant contracts. "What happens is science departments get increasing layers of approvals that need to be gotten for any action," she says. "Sometimes they have to get seven or 12 signatures on a document." Jude Bellamy, administrator for the department of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, disagrees with Bergmann's basic argument. "The problem is not that there are too many administrators in charge of university research," she says, "but that funding agencies and regulations have increased the need for accountability." Bellamy says adding administrators is usually a reaction to the increase in paperwork, but is not the cause of additional internal red tape. "I'm sure many faculty would say if they didn't have so much paperwork they could get more research done," she says. But she adds that "few would say, `If I had less administration I could get more research done.' " Ewart Thomas, the dean of the school of humanities and science at Stanford University, reluctantly agrees with Bergmann and says he has seen a certain amount of bloat at the administrative level in science departments over the past several years. But Thomas also fixes blame on the increasing level of scientific and financial regulations stamped on scientists by the federal government. At Stanford, Thomas says, it seems as if there are "armies of accountants" on campus in order to comply with new regulations. Thomas explains that governmental regulations can be divided into two areas: rules externally imposed in the scientific area, such as how to deal with the use of hazardous chemicals and dispose of radioactive waste, and financial con- straints that set goals and limits for designated projects. "One set of rules protects the scientists and one protects the taxpayer, but both must be dealt with," he says. Thomas acknowledges, however, that an overstaffed administration became such a concern at Stanford that between 1989 and 1990 about $22 million was cut in administrative overhead. The Accountability Debate Robert Rosenzweig, president of the Washington-based Association of American Universities, says that throughout the 1970s, a change in government policy promoted additional accountability. These new regulations made traditional academic institutional structures inadequate to account for the large volumes of federal money that began to pass through them. "Sure, administrations that oversee departments and laboratories have increased," Rosenzweig says, "but I don't see how that could be otherwise, because of the requirements placed on them." Though Rosenzweig concedes that AAUP's statistics are accurate, he says Bergmann's article was "dismally weak in context and understanding of organizational struc- ture." He asserts that in all organizations, there is a tendency to expand beyond what is absolutely necessary and then later go through a period of downsizing. Large administrations are part of the natural evolution large enterprises go through in an expanding economy, he says. "If all universities did was teach English and philosophy from student tuition," Rosenzweig says, "there still would have been an increase in administration." Bergmann contends, however, that because of both the outrageousness of administrative growth and embarrassingly large student services fees, "higher education budgets should be given much more scrutiny than they have been." AAUP proposes that a faculty budget committee be formed on every campus that would look at administrative costs and, according to Bergmann, "act as a watchdog on administrative bloat." Robert Birgeneau, dean of the school of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that Bergmann's contention of runaway administration is overstated. At MIT, he says, "we would have a rebellion on our hands if the faculty thought we were wasting money." Because of progressively tighter budgets and an increase in accountability, Birgeneau says more attention is being paid to administrative structures. He says when MIT receives any research grants, additional administrative costs are built in as part of the indirect costs. For example, he says, MIT's new Laboratory of Nuclear Science recently received $30 million from the Department of Energy, and all the financing for the project, including administrative costs, is fixed in as part of grant and not the department's overhead. Gary Krenz, administrative manager for the department of physics at the University of Michigan, says he expects that "in general, there is such a thing as administrative bloat, though it depends on the specific departmental circumstances." Because much of the research in science departments depends on external funds obtained through contracts or grant contributions, Krenz says scientists "simply have many more dollars to chase around and see where they go." Though he agrees with Bergmann's basic idea, Krenz does not believe in the "reification of the idea of administrative bloat as some type of bogeyman out there affecting things."

AAUP President Claims Campuses Plagued With `Administrative Bloat'

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of