Massachusetts universities and colleges that say they’re trying to hold down costs have increased their number of administrators three times faster than their number of students, according to federal data analyzed by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
The pace with which administrators have been added at Massachusetts higher-education institutions has also outstripped the increase in the number of research and teaching faculty and other instructional employees, by a margin of two-to-one.
Over the last 25 years, the universities’ enrollments have collectively grown by 26 percent, while their ranks of full-time administrators have risen 75 percent. This has happened not only at private universities, but also at some public ones.
It’s a large part of why tuition is going up, said Andrew Gillen, research director at the nonpartisan Washington think tank Education Sector, which collected the federal data and supplied it to the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
During the same 25-year period, tuition at four-year universities nationwide has increased an inflation-adjusted 85 percent, federal figures show.