Where to look for the “extra administrators”

In the current round of cuts to academic programs, faculty have argued that colleges and universities should reduce administrative positions at least as aggressively as faculty ones.  And they are not wrong, given that the number and cost of administrative positions has risen more rapidly than academic ones for at least a generation.

Making this point is simple. Playing out its implications is harder. Faculty productivity is easier to measure and faculty positions are simpler to compare across the curriculum than are administrative positions.  It is simpler, for instance, to compare a computer science position with a history position than it is to compare an admissions position with one in facilities. And administrative roles have a self-perpetuating logic that faculty ones do not.  One can imagine a college without a classics department.  It is harder, at this moment, to imagine a college without a human resources department.

Since institutions need to reduce administrative costs, where should they look?   Based on my work with more than a dozen colleges and universities on administrative prioritization, here are my suggestions. (Note: I am not suggesting that these areas are necessarily bloated, simply that their costs and staffing have grown rapidly in the past decades, and therefore deserve a closer look, particularly if revenue or enrollment is shrinking.)

Highly regulated areas: Federal, state, professional, and accreditation regulations have all increased rapidly.  So has the difficulty of complying with those regulations.  Since regulation moves unevenly (one year it is Title IX, in another it is student employment outcomes or cybersecurity or an accreditation revamp), regulatory positions grow in an unplanned fashion and are dispersed across the institution. Considering them as a whole often shows places where positions could be consolidated, or management combined.

Revenue-generating areas: Advancement, enrollment management, and retention positions have grown as institutions either seek growth or seek to avoid shrinking. Reducing expenditures in these areas always sounds imprudent. (“You’ve got to spend money to make money.”) And as innovations in these fields come along, new positions tend to be added. But all of these areas do have access to data showing both the activities and the roles that are productive.  A willingness to measure ROI and stop doing what doesn’t work is essential here.

Gap/overlap areas: Priorities that fall between functional areas, or where more than one functional area has responsibility, tend to generate both additional work and additional expenditure.  Let me name just two: It takes more work to hire a faculty member than to hire any other employee because the hiring of faculty resides both in HR and in academic affairs, and is shaped by policies in both areas. Student support staffing and expenses have grown in part because student support resides in student affairs, academic affairs, enrollment, institutional effectiveness, and athletics.  Areas of gaps and overlap tend to be places where work is duplicated, or where similar programs compete for resources. Reorganization and commitment to certain approaches to student support can yield reduced cost and better outcomes.

Areas with weak/broken systems: Where there are weak, unclear, or broken systems, institutions compensate by hiring. (The reverse is true too–in areas where staff are less skillful, institutions compensate by adding systems.) The result is duplication of efforts between the system and staff.  So, for instance, course scheduling, advising, and student registration cross several software platforms, rely on policies dispersed across several functional areas, involve people from several offices, and are done more or less well depending on who is working with students. There is a particular variation of the weak/broken systems area worth noting: when work is partially outsourced, overall cost/staffing–the amount spent with the vendor plus the amount spent inside the institution–is higher than if it were all in-house or outsourced.  (It may also be much better than if it were all in-house or outsourced.) Short-term work to define and fix systems, policies, and processes can lead to reduced administrative costs.

Areas where well-resourced institutions or professional organizations set the agenda: Though it is simpler to be an NCAA DIII school than to be an NCAA DI school, DI priorities eventually expand the obligations of schools lower in the chain.  (Here, think regulations on practice time, compliance, and staffing which complicate things for very small institutions.) Accreditation policies and practices similarly align with the resources and structures of large institutions better than those of small institutions. And professional organizations set staffing benchmarks based on “leading” institutions and professional specialization.  So functional areas that are shaped by such organizations are likely to have grown in response to these external standards rather than internal needs or assets. Evaluating these areas based first on institutional needs, skills, and resources, and being willing to select different agenda-setters are pathways to better quality and reduced cost. 

Areas that used to be part of faculty work: Faculty roles have narrowed in the past fifty years as research and publication have become more important, and as specialized expertise has arisen in other areas.  So, for instance, the narrowing of faculty roles in academic administration has left a gap for new academic administrators in assessment, teaching and learning, student support, and governance work. Faculty play a smaller role in admissions than they once did.  The same is true for academic and career advising at many institutions.  These changes in faculty roles may have been wise and healthy for the core purpose of a college–student learning. But they are also places where administration has grown as a result. Reconsideration of faculty work may yield reduced administrative costs.

Senior staff: The increasing complication of educational institutions, the professionalization of education leadership, and the changes/problems listed above, have expanded the size of senior staffs. The difficulty of finding good senior leaders (and in the face of the vexing work, the difficulty of keeping them) has increased the compensation of senior administrators. This is particularly true for small colleges and universities, where the size and cost of a senior staff is proportionally closer to that at larger universities than is enrollment or revenue. A key measure of an effective administrative prioritization process, then, is whether the cost of the senior staff has shrunken.

A final word: as I’ve written elsewhere, efforts to reduce cost can lead institutions to become more efficient but less coherent.  Incoherence is particularly a problem in administrative areas. So even more than in academic program review, administrative review must start by building a shared mission and shared operating values before the redesign begins.  To fail to do so will either result in unwise, ineffective cuts or an institution that is perhaps cheaper to operate, but almost certainly less effective. But to establish a clear purpose, clear goals, and clear values will result in a less costly and more effective institution.