Every time the topic of universities comes up, I’m reminded of how the staffing makeup of my university has changed, even just in the past 5 years. It’s gone fr

Every time the topic of universities comes up, I’m reminded of how the staffing makeup of my university has changed, even just in the past 5 years. It’s gone from the majority of staff being academic to a majority being non-academic. Whether this is a symptom or a cause is as yet unclear, but at least here in the UK, a trend towards the wastefulness I hear about in US institutions seems clear. Just this month we’ve started an academic restructure which adds an additional layer of administration staff across the university, replacing the few specifically departmental administrators with a much larger body of admin staff who have a much larger remit.