It's the Bureaucracy, Stupid

The third of five serialized posts summarizing my book Lawless.

As I wrote in the first post of this series, my introduction to Lawless, the crisis in higher-ed is different than the decades-old complaint about the liberal takeover of the academy. Instead, university officials placate, facilitate, and even foment illiberal mobs, with everyone else keeping their heads down to avoid the cancellation crossfire. And that’s a story of growing bureaucracies.

In the 25 years ending in 2012, the number of professional university employees who don't teach grew at about twice the rate of students, while tuition at public colleges more than tripled. Those trends have only accelerated, though useful statistics are hard to come by as surveyors change methodologies and the government fails to collect or disclose uniform data.

What all this really means is that students are paying more and more to fund an expanding cohort of well-compensated bureaucrats, without getting anything in return. And this isn’t just a budget issue. Administrators are more radical than professors, and not steeped in norms of academic freedom, all of which detracts from the educational environment.