This growth has had, in the IP's opinion, two quite negative effects on the academy. The first, of course, is a burdensome financial drain on college and university budgets. In the public universities and colleges, where budgets have been tight for the last decade or more, the result has been a draining of support from the academic side of the house to the administrative side. For example, the IP's own department struggles on with a support budget that is about the same in absolute dollars as it was in 1970. Factoring in inflation, we are expected to get along on less than half the real spending power than we had in 1970.
Students also see the effects of the financial drain caused by administrative bloat.
Thirty years ago the majority of people in academic administrative posts held solid academic credentials. They had come up through the professorial ranks, and had established reasonable records as teachers or scholars. College and university administration was not viewed as a career apart from the academic life itself. Except for a small number of technical specialists, most administrators had risen through the faculty ranks. Invariably university presidents and vice presidents held serious academic credentials.