Does Columbia Need 5,000 Administrators?
The answer to the school’s problems isn’t more administrative bloat.
Columbia’s Morningside campus has over 5,000 administrators, according to data released by Columbia’s Office of Planning and Institutional Research last fall. That’s enough for every Columbia College student to have their own personal administrator, and it’s roughly three times the number of full-time faculty. From 2012 to 2023, the number of full-time administrators increased by 54 percent, while the number of students and full-time faculty increased by only 24 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
It’s not just Columbia. The number of full-time college administrators at American universities increased by a whopping 164 percent from 1976 to 2018, far outpacing the 78 percent rise in student enrollment and 92 percent increase in faculty during the same period.
But is all this extra administrative muscle really necessary for Columbia or any other university to function?
The answer is almost certainly no. Cutting Columbia’s administrative bloat is the first step towards solving many institutional problems—it would allow Columbia to reduce tuition, strengthen the school’s bottom line, and provide space for students to get involved on their own.
Scholars of Bullshit
There is a legitimate need for more administrative support today than several decades ago. Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century when more students started enrolling in higher education, universities began offering more admin-run programs and amenities to compete for enrollment numbers. Growing student bodies also meant that universities needed larger administrative apparatuses to comply with government regulations like Title IX, administer veteran’s programs, and (until recently) organize affirmative action initiatives.
But quantity doesn’t always mean quality.
In their 2021 paper, “What’s that smell? Bullshit jobs in higher education,” a team led by Michael Delucchi, an independent researcher and former University of Hawaiʻi sociology professor, argued that the spike in universities’ administrative staff reflects the tendency for institutions to suffer from escalating bureaucratic bloat as they grow.
As institutions expand, they tend to create and fill positions that require little productive work, according to Delucchi’s team. These positions are what former London School of Economics anthropologist and author David Graeber coined “bullshit jobs.” In his 2018 book of the same title, Graeber argues that people with bullshit jobs spend most of their time on busywork that adds little value to their institution but maintains the illusion of productivity.
Such tasks include creating useless chores for underlings, providing unnecessary assistance to decision makers, and repeatedly fixing problems for which a permanent solution exists. These are precisely the kinds of tasks that many corporate lawyers, consultants (no surprise there), and yes, college administrators, often find themselves occupied with, according to Graeber.
To be clear, not all administrative positions are bullshit. While jobs related to public affairs, human resources, inclusivity, and student life are all important for a university to flourish, they’re also departments where the kind of frivolous positions Graeber singles out are likely to be found.
For example, does Undergraduate Student Life really need four associate directors of multicultural affairs? Does the General Studies student life department need its own assistant director of multicultural affairs and social justice? And does University Student Life’s “Project Coordinator for Student Life, Inclusion & Belonging” position add unique value? It’s certainly debatable whether we need multiple “student life” bureaucracies, and multiple administrators dedicated to multiculturalism and inclusion within each one.
But so what if there’s some administrative bloat? Given the University’s considerable financial resources (Columbia’s endowment was valued at $13.6 billion in 2023), perhaps it can justify paying for sprawling undergraduate and graduate student life departments, numerous DEI specialists, and task forces of all kinds.
The problem is that paying for it comes at the expense of the undergraduate tuition rate.
Shrinking Purse Strings and Misguided Solutions
Over the last decade, full-time yearly tuition has risen by more than $20,000 for Columbia College and Columbia Engineering students and almost $15,000 for General Studies students taking 12 points per semester. That’s an average annual increase of roughly four percent, outpacing the average US inflation rate of 2.7 percent for the same period. Adjusting for inflation, Columbia College and Columbia Engineering tuition for the 2024-2025 academic year is about $3,400 more than tuition for 2014-15 academic year, measured in 2024 dollars. Compared to the 2004-2005 academic year, tuition costs nearly $18,000 more today, measured in 2024 dollars. That’s already a pretty sharp increase, but it might get even worse.
Columbia recently suffered a massive loss in donation revenue that could prompt even steeper tuition raises in the near future. Major donors like Robert Kraft, Leon Cooperman, and The Russell Berrie Foundation suspended contributions over concerns of rising campus antisemitism. The Russell Berrie Foundation has given Columbia a staggering $86 million over the last three decades, while Cooperman says he has given about $50 million over the years. Columbia may eventually repair its reputation, but it won’t happen overnight.
In the face of these losses, the school should cut back on unnecessary or “nice to have” positions. Instead, concerns about antisemitism seem to have motivated University leadership to do the exact opposite. In July, University President Minoche Shafik announced that the school would be introducing “a vigorous program of antisemitism and antidiscrimination training” for students, staff, and faculty—no doubt this will involve new administrative hiring, such as a new program manager for the Task Force on Antisemitism (salary range: $68,000-$72,500).
The idea that more mandatory anti-discrimination training can solve Columbia’s antisemitism problem is hard to defend. Existing research suggests that they’re largely ineffective at reducing bias, and could even be counterproductive. As well intentioned as they may be, positions dedicated to these programs will probably involve lots of busywork but have little impact—in other words, they’d be “bullshit jobs.”
A Better Way: Get Out of The Way
Last semester’s many controversies happened in spite of Columbia’s army of administrators and support staff. In this past summer’s text messaging scandal, a few of the administrators themselves were to blame. Rather than spending even more money creating even more bullshit jobs, Columbia should quit micromanaging and let their students lead.
University-run initiatives like Dialogue Across Difference are a big step in the right direction, except that they’re subject to strict oversight by administrators that fail to inspire widespread participation from students. What Columbia needs are student-led initiatives that are independent and organic.
At the end of last Semester, Harvey Pennington, GS/JTS ’27, founded the Columbia chapter of Bridge USA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to viewpoint diversity, responsible discourse, and a solution-oriented political culture. When I asked Harvey what he hoped to accomplish with Bridge USA, his response was straightforward: “I want to engage students in civil discourse.”
“I think one of the main failures on campus that I noticed [last spring] was just the complete lack of dialogue between students,” he told Sundial. “I think it's particularly important that the students' voices are heard.”
At Harvard, Shira Hoffer, an undergraduate, founded The Hotline for Israel/Palestine in the wake of October 7. The volunteer-staffed hotline is a resource for anyone to ask questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict anonymously and get nuanced, non-partisan answers in return. The hotline receives questions from people all over the country with a wide range of perspectives.
Learning how to have difficult conversations without intervention from people in authority is a crucial part of the college experience. Columbia’s leadership should step back and let students step up—initiatives that originate from students, like Pennington’s and Hoffer’s, are likely to have a far greater impact than those organized by bureaucrats.
The Bottom Line
Full-time administrators on the Morningside campus make between $62,400 and $119,400 a year. With over 5,000 of them, their salaries alone cost the University well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
A mere 10 percent reduction could be enough to make up for much, if not all, of the donation losses. If the administrative staff was cut by 20 percent, the ratio of administrators to students and full-time faculty would return to 1970s levels and the University would be well-positioned to stabilize or even reduce tuition.
Despite the massive increase in Columbia’s administrative apparatus over the last decade-plus, university leadership is poised to expand it even further to deal with recent turmoil. But more trainings, more oversight, and more babying won't help. Columbia’s leadership would do well to remember that administrators exist to support students and faculty, not the other way around.
Mr. Smith is a staff writer. He is a senior at the School of General Studies majoring in political science.
Speaking as a former Columbia administrator, there's plenty of fat to cut! cut! cut! but it's also important to recognize that all administrators are not equally competent or responsible. In my experience, there tend to be a small proportion of 20- and 30-something workhorses that really hold different offices and programs together while then there are a ton of useless middle managers and their pet flunkies wasting time and money and office space. I'd think over half of those administrative jobs could be cut without students or faculty noticing much, but cutting the wrong ones could cause a bunch of problems.