I cannot speak for Harvard, but I can speak for other academic institutions. The bloat is very real. The weirdest thing is that lecturers are paid _only_ in te

I cannot speak for Harvard, but I can speak for other academic institutions. The bloat is very real. The weirdest thing is that lecturers are paid _only_ in terms of teaching students, but not for any time doing any administration (which there is a lot). Meanwhile, you have buildings filled with administrative staff, whom are hidden away, hard to contact and get annoyed when a form they invented is not filled out correctly. I think generally, as long as things are working, there is no real incentive to reduce bloat. My hope is that during the recession these institutions look to reduce the operations overheads from the correct places.