Many masters, few functionaries as professional ranks transform

These findings would, I suspect, match with what many academics sense has indeed been happening, and to that extent I am not so sure I get how they are really 'myth-busting'. Just as in other fields, it's not raw numbers in an organisation that count in deciding who is running things, it is access to the levers of power. Such an 'astonishing growth' in middle and senior administrative positions would then be entirely consistent with the 'mythical' corresponding sense of disempowerment from front-line academics, as would the simultaneous loss of front-line administrative support.

The problem is in the way the statistics are counted which gives academic positions to individuals who are, at best, quasi academic. Suppose, for example, you hire a Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor of Canine Control but also give that person a Professorship in Zoology. The person does not appear as an administrative hire since they are moving into a professorial position with administrative responsibilities attached. It is highly likely that the professorship is something the individual would not get based on their academic record (this is confirmed by the lower average citations of these individuals) but they get it none-the-less. I have seen this as the main mode of operation across many universities. Individuals with poor academic records end up with tenured positions (hence the protection) but they are their primarily in administrative roles. Once they leave the DPVC of Canine Control they may go back to Zoology (who probably don't want them) but it is more likely they will take up another role -- such as Assistant to the DVC-T&L charged with spearheading the Teaching and Learning of Quadripedal Species initiative. The real issue is not that these individuals exist and are a budgetary burden but that they waste the time of others for no good reasons. I personally have been in meetings with such individuals and asked them very specifically what their role is and what success would look like if they achieved it. I have yet to get a convincing answer. No sane non-bankrupt corporation would operate this way and the ultimate reason you have these individuals is not because the universities have compelling, coherent and well thought out strategies, but because they are generally making it up as they go along. BTW a lot of this discussion can be seen in a recent book -- Devinney & Dowling, The Strategies of Australia's Universities (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789811533969) -- that is rather than less than positive about what the purpose and goals of these institutions are.

As a rank-and-file academic doing teaching and research in a Russel Group university, I am astonished and frustrated by the number of administrative and academic "coordinators" that create unefficient workload while not contributing to the core activities they are supposed to support. Over the years I have been lucky enough to establish my own network of shop floor colleagues (both professional services and academics) trying to shield from external interferences. Complex organisations such as universities should coordinate themselves by professional standards and not by managerial control.

Why is anyone surprised? The more you measure and assess, the more people are required to process the information that those who measure and assess require. It is a totally circular self-fertilising process. It started with Blair and his corporatist management approach, which loaded the NHS with hangers-on. (Whose highly-measured purchasing departments have done a really god job lately, haven't they?) It has origins in consultants spawned from the highly succesful (?) Arthur Andersen et al. Their activities glue up every system they touch but can prove irrefutably how much they saved by doing it, while charging ridiculous fees. Has no-one seen the staff officers song from Oh What a Lovely War?

The research has missed a fundamental point as to why there are relatively fewer lower level admin staff. What is a greater issue for academic staff is the way that more and more administrative work is shifted onto them, rather like 'manager self service' systems in other organisations. So we are the ones that fill in endless spreadsheets with student grades; we are the ones who create, type and then format examination papers; who are the ones who complete student records. It's a false economy. The cost appears to move from the administration saving relatively low-cost members of staff. However hidden costs are then shifted onto academics, who are in no position to complain. Colleagues in business consulting call this 'squeezing the balloon', the cost appears to disappear from one part of the organisation but pops out somewhere else. In this case, it creates an additional burden for academic staff, additional stress and is actually highly wasteful as they then become very expensive (but uncomplaining) administrators.

Agree entirely with Dr Nuts: rank and file administrators, who used to actually do the administrative work, have been dismissed, and their work has been taken on by academic staff - more work but no more hours to do it. Even worse, they have been replaced by senior managers, who don't actually do any of the administrative work.