OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AUGUST 2011
During my nearly five decades in academia, the character of the university has changed, and not entirely for the better. As recently as the 1970s, America’s universities were heavily influenced, if not completely driven, by faculty ideas and concerns. Today, institutions of higher education are mainly controlled by administrators and staffers who make the rules and increasingly set the priorities of academic life.
A recent study showed that between 1997 and 2007, the number of administrative and support personnel per hundred students increased dramatically at most schools—103 percent at Williams College; 111 percent at Johns Hopkins; 325 percent at Wake Forest University; and 351 percent at Yeshiva University, to cite some noteworthy examples. My book, The Fall of the Faculty, exposes this troubling reality.
The ...
