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posted by martyb on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the giving-them-a-lecture dept.

Meaningless tasks and faux-business strategies prioritised by British universities have skewed their real roles of teachinig and research. Looking at decades of university growth, most expansion has been by university administration, not faculty. On the other side of the pond, one US study found that between 1975 and 2008 while the number of faculty had grown about 10% the number of administrators had grown 221% during the same period. In the UK, the large majority of universities have more administrators than they do faculty members. We are on the way to realizing an “all-administrative university” if nothing is done. André Spicer at The Guardian comments that since universities are broke, we should cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:49AM (#558346)

    Ah, good old Oxford.

    There's a picture in the Clarendon Lab, taken sometime in the early-mid 70s, of all the staff and researchers in the Clarendon.
    In that picture, there are two 'admin' staff.
    When I was there, you couldn't throw a stick down any of the corridors without hitting one, Heads of Departments had their PAs, the PA had an assistant, heads of groups had their PAs etc. etc.

    This disease is not confined to places like Oxfnord(sic) though, as the article points out it's endemic, you know a University is in seriously deep trouble when an engineering department has more secretaries than technicians...as was the case in a London one I worked in (I bailed, as I saw the writing on the wall).