The Idiocy of University Administrator Welfare

By the start of 2008, universities in the US were employing more administrators than full-time faculty (http://www.splicetoday.com/on-campus/faculty-fallout; http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/12/jobs). Typically, this is justified by administrators because they have so much more to do running the university. However, when I first started teaching, I incorrectly assumed that the purpose of a university was to teach students how to think. Then, I discovered it was to support a winning football team (http://aspatula.blogspot.com/2008/05/idiocy-of-funding-college-football.html). Now, I realize the entire purpose of a university is to provide welfare benefits for administrators who couldn’t get a job in the real world. I know of a university where the provost (essentially, the vice-president of a university) gets paid at the national average while the full-time faculty are paid below the state average. Parents who are spending increasingly large sums of money to educate their kids in universities should ask why more and more of their tuition money is going to pay more and more administrators higher and higher salaries. Maybe they would get a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing they are enriching administrators who have nothing to do with their kids’ education.