...is the title of an article by Nigel Thrift in the The Chronical of Higher Education this week, which seeks to address the view that universities are 'bloated bureaucracies', and that there are large savings to be made by trimming the administrative budget. He argues that "only a relatively small amount of university administration is what might truly be called administration for administration's sake, so to speak", and that majority is either student facing or basic infrastructure such as the library, which would impact service delivery if it were cut.
He goes on to look at the various cost-saving models often propsed, such as shared services, outsourcing, and collaboration, and concludes that "the real advances will come through a set of similar universities getting together – as already happens with some functions like high-end computing – and producing corporate administrative arrangements that make genuine sense – and save money", which will include some private involvement, but will be mostly university controlled and driven.