Higher Education Administrative Costs Are Skyrocketing

It’s no secret that college has gotten expensive. Between the 2008-2009 school year and the 2013-2014 school year, tuition and fees jumped 27 percent. Where’s the extra money going? It’s not going to instruction, according to Farhad Mirzadeh, research associate with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Colleges have seen huge increases in the number of people on their staffs: from 2000 to 2012, the public and private education workforce increased by 28 percent. The rise in administrative staff (Mirzadeh notes that colleges have hired 87 administrative and professional workers every day from 1987 to 2012) means that colleges have to spend more money on salaries, benefits and pensions. And growing numbers of administrative staff are not the only thing that schools are spending money on: colleges are spending gobs of money renovating their campuses and building luxury dorms.

Mirzadeh says the rise in administrative spending has led colleges to cut instruction costs by hiring increasing numbers of adjunct (part-time) faculty to teach various classes — today, half of the higher education faculty consists of adjunct professors. Mirzadeh contends this trend is bad for education, because adjunct faculty tend to work other jobs and have less time for students or course preparation.

With tuition costs continuing to rise, Mirzadeh says that students and families will likely begin questioning the value of a college education.

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