I have spent most of my career as a university administrator. I have held senior positions, held a wide range of positions, and held the titles increasingly cited by critics of higher education as evidence of “administrative bloat.” I understand why these titles and the organizational structure behind them can alienate teachers. They reinforce an unhealthy sense of “us versus them” on campus.
But after many years in these positions, I’ve come to believe that title inflation isn’t the core issue it’s often thought to be. This is visible. How frustrating. And it’s easy to get blamed. However, focusing solely on titles can mistake the symptoms for the disease and, in the process, overlook the real causes of administrative overload.
Here’s why Austin Sala recently Inside higher education The article asked “How many vice-chancellors does a university need?” resonated with me, although I think it ultimately misjudged the challenge. Zarate is right to be uncomfortable with what he calls the “vice-presidentialization” of higher education. Titles are important. Hierarchy is important. The vice president’s surge also deserves close attention.
But the proliferation of administrative titles is not what is hollowing out institutional capacity or widening the gap between faculty and administrators. This happens when leadership repeatedly avoids the more challenging work of setting priorities and enforcing constraints.
Criticisms of administrative growth in higher education are not new, nor are they entirely unfounded. There is no denying that the administrative functions of colleges and universities have expanded over time. But the ideas behind many of these characters are sound and, in many cases, necessary. Retention is important. Financial aid is important. Student support, compliance and data are all important. Investments in these capabilities can improve student success. The question starts with what happens after these characters are created.
Over time, administrators were assigned jobs that were only loosely or not at all related to the responsibilities their titles suggested. Priorities proliferate. New initiatives are emerging. New reporting requirements come from accrediting agencies, legislators, donors and boards of directors. A crisis, whether real or perceived, requires immediate attention. Little was taken away. Each new priority builds on existing work, often without clear duration, ownership, or trade-offs. The vice president effectively becomes the executive’s executive assistant.
To understand an organization’s true priorities, don’t start with a strategic plan. Instead, look at how administrators actually spend their time. You’ll often find that people hired to do one important job are actually working on five or six other jobs. Much of this work is not just minor but important. It’s completely outside the scope of the character. This is not the failure of individual administrators. This is a failure of organizational discipline.
I know many people in these positions. I am one of them. They did not shy away from teachers or students. They enjoy spending time in the classroom. They don’t ignore phone calls and emails out of apathy. Most of them have the right reasons: student and state demands for higher education. If they spend less time in the office, it’s because they’re being pulled into meetings, work groups, and crisis responses, dealing with issues far removed from their core responsibilities. Many people work nights and weekends, skip holidays, and still fall behind, not because they lack commitment but because the system is virtually guaranteed to be overloaded.
This is where Salat’s criticism falls short. This is not to say that managers take their titles too seriously. The problem is that institutions take on too many priorities without making corresponding choices about what not to do. While many of these initiatives may be “good,” too many of them go beyond the core scope of educating students. The result is not only administrative pressure but also reduced institutional focus on teaching itself.
Our colleges and universities face greater and more diverse pressures than ever before. They are being squeezed from all sides: shrinking populations, rising costs, declining public investment, rising accountability demands and increasingly diverse student needs, making it impossible for them to continue operating as if they have unlimited capacity. Too often, however, institutional “strategy” still amounts to adding priorities rather than choosing among them. What is needed in this moment is an institutional redesign, a thoughtful rethinking of structures, roles, and work so that colleges and universities can focus on what matters most to today’s students.
Real strategy is not what institutions do, but what they deliberately decide not to do. At a time when today’s students need clearer pathways, stronger support and better outcomes, institutions cannot allow work to continue to spread unchecked and try to meet the needs of everyone. When leaders avoid making these choices, the stress doesn’t go away. They push it downward and outward until adding people and titles becomes the default response.
Eventually, something has to give. When a vice president reaches the limits of what one person can reasonably manage, agencies rarely narrow the role or clarify the boundaries. Instead, they added another layer: vice presidents, assistant vice presidents. Titles proliferate not because managers crave status, but because organizations use people and titles to address unresolved leadership failings.
Ironically, this is exactly what Zarat fears is deepening the divisions. When administrators are starved of energy, their presence diminishes, their responsiveness diminishes, and their connection to academic life diminishes. Teachers view this as apathy or bureaucratic arrogance. In fact, this is a structural dislocation. The distance is real, but it is generated by overload, not hierarchy.
That’s why the solution can’t simply be fewer vice presidents or lower titles. It must start with principals, boards of trustees, and faculty leaders willing to enact true leadership discipline. This means distinguishing between core academic work and aspirational initiatives. This means abandoning plans and committees is as easy as starting them. This means acknowledging a basic truth that higher education often avoids: that increasing priorities while decreasing others is not strategic ambition—This is organizational debt.
The best management is often invisible, not because it lacks value, but because when it is done well, teaching and learning can take center stage. Centering students and their education should mean less token fights over titles and more honest conversations about priorities, capabilities, and trade-offs.
Zarate is right to warn against introducing corporate hierarchy into higher education. However, to seriously address administrative bloat, we must look beyond organizational structure. The real question is not how many vice-chancellors a university needs. This is the number of priorities an institution is willing to give up in order to effectively fulfill its academic mission. This is a test of leadership and discipline. We need to do a better job of ensuring that our institutions are designed around educating students rather than running ever-expanding commercial enterprises.
