re: "I remain skeptical of many commentaries based on 'administrative bloat.'”
Some of that is driven by mindless union rhetoric, but a lot of it is an actual problem. There is usually no incentive for higher ed admins to cut back on the expansion of staff.
As the bureaucratic apparatus expands, it tends to become inefficient and overly complex.
Large, complex organizations tend to reward dysfunctional personality types in management.* As management fills with sociopaths, narcissists and power seekers, it increasingly fails to be open, transparent, and innovative, much less authentically moral. Thus the widespread infection of "woke" creepy crawlies [providing] false morals**.
Eventually the rot, incompetence and mental dysfunction becomes very pervasive, and competence and merit-based promotion diminishes. Thus, a serious, corrupt plagiarizer teaches another plagiarizer (both appear to have used bad data in many publicized works) that eventually gets paid $900,000 at Harvard to teach after being fired from being President.
Scratching and biting in the scramble up the admin career ladder gets vicious, backstabbing among the "leftist" elements becomes as vicious as it was in the Spanish Civil War. Somehow Asian people become "white" so the that black and hispanic competition can hold them back. There is no end to the bizarro sh1t that goes on behind the scenes.
Purpose – Organisations sometimes select and promote the wrong individuals for managerial positions. These individuals may be incompetent, they may be manipulators and bullies. They are not the best people for the job and yet not only are they selected for positions of authority and responsibility, they are sometimes promoted repeatedly until their kind populate the highest levels of the organisational hierarchy.
The purpose of this paper is to address this phenomenon by attempting to explain why it occurs and why organisational members tolerate such destructive practices.
It concludes by proposing a cultural strategy to protect the organisation and its stakeholders from the ambitious machinations of the organisational sociopath.
I agree about transparency becoming more of a problem, even within campuses. Higher education has a long tradition of institutional opacity.
Re, "the widespread infection of "woke"" - don't forget that in many cases administrations and faculty support this as a response to perceived student demand.
I just blogged about the article, making different comments:
https://bryanalexander.org/future-of-education/losing-faith-in-the-value-of-college-an-important-wall-street-journal-article/
Your call for more precise data is good.
re: "I remain skeptical of many commentaries based on 'administrative bloat.'”
Some of that is driven by mindless union rhetoric, but a lot of it is an actual problem. There is usually no incentive for higher ed admins to cut back on the expansion of staff.
As the bureaucratic apparatus expands, it tends to become inefficient and overly complex.
Large, complex organizations tend to reward dysfunctional personality types in management.* As management fills with sociopaths, narcissists and power seekers, it increasingly fails to be open, transparent, and innovative, much less authentically moral. Thus the widespread infection of "woke" creepy crawlies [providing] false morals**.
Eventually the rot, incompetence and mental dysfunction becomes very pervasive, and competence and merit-based promotion diminishes. Thus, a serious, corrupt plagiarizer teaches another plagiarizer (both appear to have used bad data in many publicized works) that eventually gets paid $900,000 at Harvard to teach after being fired from being President.
Scratching and biting in the scramble up the admin career ladder gets vicious, backstabbing among the "leftist" elements becomes as vicious as it was in the Spanish Civil War. Somehow Asian people become "white" so the that black and hispanic competition can hold them back. There is no end to the bizarro sh1t that goes on behind the scenes.
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* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242338489_Organisational_sociopaths_Rarely_challenged_often_promoted_Why
excerpt:
Abstract
Purpose – Organisations sometimes select and promote the wrong individuals for managerial positions. These individuals may be incompetent, they may be manipulators and bullies. They are not the best people for the job and yet not only are they selected for positions of authority and responsibility, they are sometimes promoted repeatedly until their kind populate the highest levels of the organisational hierarchy.
The purpose of this paper is to address this phenomenon by attempting to explain why it occurs and why organisational members tolerate such destructive practices.
It concludes by proposing a cultural strategy to protect the organisation and its stakeholders from the ambitious machinations of the organisational sociopath.
...
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**
https://www.newsweek.com/dei-college-director-fired-not-being-right-kind-black-person-1813481
I agree about transparency becoming more of a problem, even within campuses. Higher education has a long tradition of institutional opacity.
Re, "the widespread infection of "woke"" - don't forget that in many cases administrations and faculty support this as a response to perceived student demand.