Criticism of administrative growth in higher education can sometimes overlook an important reality: universities today are required to perform considerably more institutional functions than teaching and research alone. Over the past several decades, colleges and universities have assumed an expanding range of responsibilities associated with federal and state law, accreditation, research regulation, financial oversight, reporting, student privacy, disability access, institutional risk management, and other compliance obligations.

Much of this work is legitimate, and some of it is indispensable.

Recognizing the necessity of the work, however, does not mean that every new institutional responsibility requires the creation of another administrative position. The distinction between necessary functions and unnecessary administrative hierarchy is important.

Consider only a few of the obligations faced by modern universities.

Institutions receiving federal financial assistance must comply with Title IX and maintain appropriate mechanisms for addressing sex discrimination. Covered institutions must designate personnel responsible for coordinating compliance and maintain procedures for responding to complaints and grievances.

Universities must also comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, in the maintenance and disclosure of student education records. This includes obligations related to access, amendment, disclosure, annual notification, and institutional handling of protected student information.

Institutions participating in federal student-aid programs operate under an extensive framework of Title IV requirements involving eligibility, recordkeeping, audits, financial controls, student counseling, reporting, satisfactory academic progress, and the resolution of conflicting information.

The Clery Act imposes additional responsibilities related to campus safety. Institutions receiving federal student aid must collect and disclose specified crime statistics and prepare annual security reports containing required policies and information regarding campus safety.

Universities engaged in federally supported human-subject research face another substantial regulatory structure. The Common Rule requires institutional oversight, review by institutional review boards where applicable, informed-consent protections, appropriate documentation, and assurances of compliance.

Additional responsibilities arise from disability-access requirements, research-misconduct regulations, export controls, occupational and laboratory safety, grant accounting, conflicts of interest, cybersecurity, records retention, accreditation, animal research, and numerous other regulatory and institutional obligations.

It would therefore be inaccurate to suggest that universities have simply invented the entirety of their administrative workload. A substantial portion of that work originates in legitimate external requirements.

The more important question is how universities choose to organize and staff that work.

A New Responsibility Does Not Necessarily Require a New Administrator

When a new compliance obligation emerges, institutions often respond by creating organizational structures around it. A responsibility may become an office. The office may acquire a director. As responsibilities expand, additional titles can follow: associate director, assistant director, coordinator, manager, and other supervisory positions.

In some areas, senior administrators with institutional authority, specialized expertise, and decision-making responsibility are clearly necessary. However, the importance of a function does not, by itself, establish that the individuals performing most of the work must occupy managerial positions.

A substantial portion of compliance and administrative activity is operational in nature.

Records must be reviewed. Reports must be prepared. Cases must be tracked. Training records must be maintained. Forms must be processed. Data must be entered, verified, and reported. Deadlines must be monitored. Grant documentation must be assembled. Policies must be revised when laws or regulations change. Students, faculty, and staff require knowledgeable personnel who can answer questions and guide them through institutional procedures.

These responsibilities require competent and well-trained employees. They do not necessarily require additional layers of administration.

This suggests a different approach to institutional staffing:

Before creating another administrative position, universities should first determine whether the underlying work could be performed effectively by skilled professional personnel.

A compliance specialist may provide more direct institutional value than another senior administrative position devoted to compliance oversight.

A grants coordinator may be more useful to faculty than an additional managerial position overseeing research development.

A data analyst may address institutional reporting requirements more efficiently than creating another directorship.

A trained IRB specialist may improve the efficiency of human-subject research review without adding another supervisory layer to the research administration structure.

Similarly, records specialists, accessibility professionals, cybersecurity personnel, regulatory specialists, and other technical staff can perform highly sophisticated work without occupying positions whose primary function is management.

These should not be regarded as lesser roles. On the contrary, modern universities increasingly require highly skilled professional personnel with substantial subject-matter expertise.

The relevant distinction is between expertise and hierarchy.

Administrative Layering Carries Secondary Costs

The cost of a managerial position extends beyond salary and benefits.

New administrative structures frequently create reporting relationships, meetings, committees, strategic plans, assessments, documentation requirements, and recurring requests for information from other parts of the institution. An administrative unit established in response to an external requirement can therefore begin generating additional internal requirements of its own.

Faculty and staff may then spend increasing amounts of time supplying information, completing reports, attending meetings, or responding to administrative requests generated by the structure created to manage the original requirement.

In such cases, the institution has not merely added personnel to perform necessary work. It may also have created additional work for others.

This is one mechanism through which administrative growth can become self-reinforcing.

The original compliance obligation may have originated outside the institution, but the degree of organizational complexity constructed around that obligation often remains an institutional choice.

There is also a significant opportunity cost.

University budgets are finite. Resources allocated to additional upper- or middle-management positions cannot simultaneously be used to hire laboratory personnel, academic advisors, research technicians, grant specialists, information-technology professionals, instructional staff, or other employees who perform operational functions central to the institution.

This issue becomes particularly significant when faculty are simultaneously expected to teach more students, obtain additional external funding, increase research productivity, participate in assessment activities, and satisfy expanding reporting requirements while academic departments face difficulty replacing departing faculty and staff.

The question, therefore, is not merely whether an administrative position performs useful work. Many undoubtedly do.

The more consequential question is whether the same institutional resources could be deployed more effectively.

Compliance Should Become More Efficient, Not More Hierarchical

The appropriate response to regulatory complexity is not to minimize compliance. Universities cannot disregard FERPA, Title IX, research protections, federal financial-aid requirements, campus-safety reporting, or other legal and regulatory obligations.

Nor should they. Many of these protections serve important purposes.

The appropriate objective should instead be the development of lean, technically competent, and accountable compliance systems.

Institutions should periodically examine administrative functions and ask several basic questions:

What work is legally required?

What work is required by accreditation agencies or funding organizations?

What work reflects institutional preference rather than external obligation?

Which functions genuinely require executive authority or managerial judgment?

Which functions require technical expertise but not managerial authority?

Which activities can be simplified, consolidated, automated, or eliminated?

Such an examination could produce a substantially different staffing model.

A relatively limited number of administrators could retain responsibility for oversight, institutional accountability, and decisions requiring authority, while a stronger professional staff performs the operational work. Functions that do not require duplication across colleges or divisions could be organized through shared services. Technology could be used to reduce repetitive reporting and administrative processing. Existing procedures could be reviewed for efficiency before new offices or managerial positions are established.

Most importantly, the appearance of a new mandate should not automatically produce a new administrative title.

Hire People to Perform the Work

There is an important distinction between criticizing administrative expansion and arguing that universities do not require administration.

They clearly do.

Universities need people who understand regulations, protect students, administer grants, safeguard research participants, manage financial-aid programs, maintain records, protect institutional data, support accreditation, and reduce legal and financial risk.

The concern arises when additional institutional responsibilities are routinely addressed through additional layers of management rather than by expanding the institution's capacity to perform the underlying work.

Universities would benefit from adopting a simple presumption:

When new work emerges, the first response should be to add the personnel needed to perform that work, not automatically to add another layer of personnel to administer those performing it.

Such an approach would not eliminate compliance costs. It would not eliminate administrators, nor should it. It would also not resolve every financial challenge facing higher education.

It could, however, help institutions distinguish between two developments that are often treated as though they were the same:

the unavoidable growth of institutional responsibilities and the avoidable growth of institutional hierarchy.

For the long-term financial and organizational health of higher education, maintaining that distinction is increasingly important.