[The Montana Professor 1.3, Fall 1991 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
One theme that has run through both previous issues of this journal and which is continued in this one is that the professoriate of the Academy had better become aware of certain ominous developments in the administration of educational institutions. those who have ultimate control of colleges and universities increasingly show evidence of becoming imbued with a management mentality that is based on behavioristic psychology and an absolutist philosophy. As the "profession" of administration has become better paid and more attractive to certain types, it has become clear that administrators are shifting the priorities in institutional funding away from instruction, libraries, and scholarships and toward administration and research.
From the academic year 1976-77 to 1985-86 (these are the latest data available) the increase in per FTE student expenditures in colleges and universities for instruction was 10%, for libraries 4%, for scholarships 7% in universities, -16% in colleges, but the increase in administration was 20% in universities and 25% in colleges! (Ernst Benjamin, "Don't Blame Research for Teaching Cuts," Footnotes 2.1, Fall 1991, AAUP, Washington, D.C.) The same source shows that in 1985-86 public institutions spent $3,713 to instruct the student and $2,031 to administer him!
As W. Bruce Bassett, a former Columbia University finance officer, has said, "It's the administrations that decide what is spent and where, and they have simply been spending it on themselves" (Wall Street Journal, 11 December 1987). A couple of years ago, administrative spending became so exaggerated in the California system that the administration agreed at the bargaining table to put a cap on the percentage of the total budget spent on administration rather than see the profession go to the legislature for a law limiting administrative spending to 12%!
This may be the time to make a similar move in Montana!
[The Montana Professor 1.3, Fall 1991 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]