On one hand, some might comment that his reaction was only seen as window dressing to cover his behind after the article went out.

On the other hand, I applaud this man for not sticking his head in the sand and taking a firm stance on the issue. His sternly worded message and the demand for accountability deserves credit.

Bravo for his strong stand, the bloat in higher education administrative budgets has been out of line with neccessity. He may find however, that the carving knife approach ( eliminating surplus bodies) to be better than the 10 pct from everyone aaproach. Do we really need the numerous "dean of" whatever that seem to populate higher education today!!

I don't know anything about the UNC particulars, but the Chronicle recently ran an article contending that much of the increase in administrative hires can be traced to the transformation of universities from an IT standpoint. Those positions are all new. People want to jump on administrators for increasing costs, but students and their parents expect a level of services and functionality in universities that can't be supplied by faculty. That's a big part of the current arms race in higher ed along with the shiny new residence halls and free laptops.

There is one point, made in part by"authors" regarding IT. Universities do a lot more on all fronts, and all that extra is considered "administration." The staff at admission and recruiting is much larger than it was when I was in school in the 70s, but then I entered undergrad and grad without the visits, orientations, etc. that parents now expect. Student services has grown tremendously. Rules and regulations (and possible lawsuits) mean that universities have to have entire departments (e.g. Equity and Diversity) that were absent 30 years ago. Issues such as external relations, fundraising, faculty affairs, involvement in globalization, etc. push the increase as well. I am not judging whether this is OK or not, but explaining that the growth is not always due to fat cat provosts raising their own salary.
Not too many years ago a president at a major private university was making about $450k. This is to preside over an institution with a budget of several hundred million dollars: underpaid by private industry standards. Of course the football coach was making way more....
Still, I do applaud Mr. Bowles for wanting accountability, which should be the name of the game, after all.

Mr. Bowles' reaction seems to be "leader bravado" without assessing the situation. The first question is why had this happended? What was the situation like before the increase and now? What was the impetus for the increase? Have institutional choices driven the increase? For example, when an institution chooses to build state-of-the-art labs and residential facilities these are not staffed by faculty positions. I hope these leaders have the maturity to look beyond the surface, and avoid wasting energy trying to solve a problem without addressing the root.