UPDATE, 09/01/2015: A commenter made me aware of data rows in the raw data we had overlooked before. In our analysis, we evaluated all non-scientific staff, e.g., also technical support or library staff. As I’m actually quite fond of the libraries and the technical support we have, I looked at the trends for the ‘pure’ permanent administration staff and found and increase of 17% from 2005 to 2012, while permanent scientist positions increased only by 0.04%. Taking only these two groups of employees, the ratio between scientists and administrators shrinks to 0.57 in 2005 and 0.64 in 2012, i.e., the average administrator has to support less than two permanently employed scientists. In my opinion, this would have been the better data to use, but my co-author is not quite as convinced. Either way, even focusing on ‘pure’ admin staff conveys essentially the same message as the full overall data, albeit perhaps less dramatically. This is precisely why I am an open science advocate: making your data open allows you to discover more and improve your science!
Noam Chomsky, writing about the Death of American Universities, recently reminded us that reforming universities using a corporate business model leads to several easy to understand consequences. The increase of the precariat of faculty without benefits or tenure, a growing layer of administration and bureaucracy, or the increase in student debt. In part, this well-known corporate strategy serves to increase labor servility. The student debt problem is particularly obvious in countries with tuition fees, especially in the US where a convincing argument has been made that the tuition system is nearing its breaking point. The decrease in tenured positions is also quite well documented (see e.g., an old post). So far, and perhaps as may have been expected, Chomsky was dead on with his assessment. But how about the administrations?