I think that it may have something to do with that doubling of administrators. Bureaucracy at work... Is it a business or a school? There needs to be a balance. One depends upon the other, so any increases or decreases should correlate.

Keep in mind the massive increases we've seen in executive compensation in the private sector ... that same bug has infected academic administration. Justifying one's position requires having subordinates, who in turn seek to position themselves as executives and so it goes. What we now see is a bureaucracy whose real product is an ever expanding collection of policies, processes, and procedures requiring, you guessed it, increasing amounts of managerial attention. The arguments for compensation are the same we hear on Wall Street; namely, you have to pay for talent, albeit the product produced by that "talent" is of rather questionable value. What we're increasingly seeing is a version of the horrendous bureaucracy presented in the movie Brazil where those who might be tasked with making changes have a vested interest in continuing with more of the same.

From an administrative perspective, the Ivory Halls vs. Oak Paneled Office argument is getting a bit stale. Colleges add IT departments because students and faculty demand the best equipment and tools to support education. Students and the public demand access so financial aid offices are added. The government then demands accountability for all the money being spent so more accountants and comptrollers are added along with the resulting new policies and procedures. Faculty community members, and students sue the schools so a risk management office is added. Departments demand more scholarships for their students or seek grants for new equipment so development offices are added. Faculty don't have time for advising so dedicated advisors are hired. This is how the administration grows.
From my own experience, the myth of the feudal administrator greedily building an empire is just that, a myth. The beaurocracy grows in response to demand for services.
I do have one question for the author though. You listed the growth of adjuncts and the growth of tenured faculty separately. If you're going to imply that there has been a great disproportionate growth in administration vs. academics there needs to be a statistic that accurately compares the two. As much as I personally don't like the shift towards adjuncts, they are the reality of the academic side of the shop now and should be considered as part of that percentage.

jesor: So how about the equivalent of adjuncts on the administrative side? Hourly (minimal wage) workers to process all those financial aid forms, or man the IT help desk? Train them in the basic responses, so you can save the "techies" for the more difficult questions.
I'm tenure-track at a small, rural liberal-arts college. Raises? Not for a few years now. I am asked to do more,for the same money - and I do because I am committed to my students. Why not ask administrivia to do more with less? Do I work 9-5 and no weekends? NO. So.....lets spread the pain and the work and have everyone at the college/university do more with and for less.

Low-performing programs should be looked at but in a strategic way. Some low-enrollment programs may be important to the college's mission. Some may be rising stars or bright ideas that need a little nurturing. Some may have lost their relevancy to the college and students, and are indeed dead ducks. Looking at enrollment or graduation rates alone don't always tell the story.

Sadly, this actually isn't the culture war either side should be fighting. This is simply a battle over resources; neither side is willing to contend with the actual issue--namely, the form and function of higher education in the digital age. What's the new departmental IT brood doing today in my department? Counting the laptops in our laptop cart and checking the serial numbers to see if the laptops are, indeed, the ones we ordered. The vision of a collaborative relationship between educators, broadly defined, gets poked in the eye and handed a white cane.

Perhaps I'm lucky. Perhaps because I'm at a small college and have excellent relations with the faculty, we're not having a "culture war." They understand that we don't have nearly enough folks to do all the work in our IT shop. They understand that IT budgets have been cut back as a conservative approach with an uncertain economy. But for those elsewhere, here are ten questions:

1. Is the hardware you are using what you need? How often is it refreshed?
2. Is the software you are using what you need? How often is it updated?
3. Does your institution provide an LMS?
4. Is your network responsive enough so that you don't notice bottlenecks?
5. Is internet availability sufficient that you can use it without complaining about 'slowness.'
6. Do you have a printer reasonably available?
7. Do you have a telephone on your desk?
8. Does your institution manage a wide variety of software applications so that your students can register, get financial aid, etc, and consequently attend your courses?
9. Do you have a variety of IT resources available to you such as email, a departmental or individual web site, etc?
10. And finally, when you do have a problem, is there someone reasonably available to help you resolve it by fixing whatever is wrong?

These all cost MONEY! And lots of it! Especially the personnel side. If you think that IT folks aren't feeling the pain - just like the faculty - then you have your head stuck in the clouds. IT is doing more with less every year and some with plenty less for the last couple of years. Like I said, I haven't experienced any problems here because IT and the faculty work hand in hand to support the institution's mission and our students. Occasional problem? Of course. But talking to each other and working collaboratively gets a heck of a lot more accomplished than whining and baseless jealousy.

I missed the part where IT administrators and staff became considered either qualified or entitled to participate in curricular decisions. This has nothing to do with the first-rate qualifications and work of many IT pros I know and have known at many institutions; but it is not their contractual responsibility, nor professional qualification, to say something along the lines of "you should cut the French major so we can hire a database analyst" (or something). Misguided budgetary priorities are the purvue of the institution's *overall* administration, after all :)

Beyond that, the purpose of a charitable institution (which most publicly owned or not-for-profit private colleges are, being 501(3)(c)s in the latter case) is to do the primary charitable purpose for which the institution purportedly exists. Disaster relief could be viewed as a "cost center" for the Red Cross, except that it is a primary purpose of why the institution exists; management based on the idea of diverting funds from primary purposes to secondary ones is inherently contrary to the charitable mission, as the BBB has repeatedly affirmed. The typical college's IPEDS report shows only 30% of budget being spent on the academic program--although many institutions demonstrate that it is possible to do far better.

All this is not to say that academic budgets should not reallocate funds from less successful or quality programs to the better ones; only that to phrase the debate in terms of a zero-sum struggle among "cost centers" which places the primary academic mission on a co-equal level of competition with support and service offices is inherently wrong. Everything *else* at a college should be run for the purpose of maximizing the funding and success of the academic program, not the other way around.

Much of the cost increase has also come from increased reporting requirements and services (e.g., to LD students) mandated by the government.