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I read the article, but I'm not convinced that there really is "bloat". Higher education is bigger and more complex than it once was, and the people best able

• jjoonathan 13y ago
  They may "bring in" more than their salaries (I suspect they don't, which is a separate issue -- the incompetent bumbling cited in the article seems to be the rule rather than the exception) but even if they do "bring in" more than they cost, it doesn't mean they aren't bloat. Competition for students is a zero-sum game. Luring students to one university takes them away from another. The value of a strategic school administrator to society (the extent to which they better inform students of their options minus the extent to which they convince students to act against their interests) is tiny compared to their value to the particular school which employs them (some number of student tuitions). The difference between the two values can reasonably be called 'bloat'. This is a known flaw of free markets that we usually write off as a cost of doing business. If you present the invisible hand with a prisoner's dilemma, it falls for it every goddamn time. The 'bloat' is then the difference between the cooperative solution and the nash equilibrium. In this case, the cost is egregious enough (it is very high and it is imposed upon a very vulnerable population) that we might want to pay attention. I doubt we will, leaving disruption as the only hope for the education market.