100% this! My son is touring colleges now in US and UK. It is totally clear that the US academic faculty have totally lost the war to the administrative class!

100% this! My son is touring colleges now in US and UK. It is totally clear that the US academic faculty have totally lost the war to the administrative class! In the Oxbridge system, for example, academic faculty are responsible for admissions within their major. This means that majors are non-fungible - you apply to a major and are stuck to it for the duration of your degree. But this also means the professors can protect their turf, e.g., they are not subject the vagaries of "market demand" for majors by the students. They have a certain number of seats to fill, and they conduct the work to get the best class for this. This is why Oxford still graduates 100 classics majors a year (more than the entire ivy league combined.) And they get to staff their department accordingly. In the US system, we have the insane "holistic admissions" process run by a giant admissions bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is doing everything in its power to eliminate any trackable metrics so they can preserve their secret sauce and source of power (see 80% of universities are now test optional admissions.) The admissions bureaucracy is also in cahoots with other major bureaucracies - sports, diversity, development ($$), etc. The fencing coach has WAY more power to drive admissions decisions than does the professor of classics. US academics were lulled into complacency by the dulcet tones of managers saying "let me take this boring administrative task off your plate." But in doing so, they have become the working class of the university system.