Skyrocketing tuition rates and trillion-dollar student loan debt have put college and university spending in the spotlight. Policymakers, parents, and students are asking why tuition at public four-year colleges and universities has soared nearly 160 percent since 1990.
Several factors have been blamed for the increases—from broad economic trends outside higher education’s control to what many see as an all-out competition among colleges for prestige and high rankings. Others point to declining faculty workloads, generous salaries and perks for top university employees, and wasteful spending.
Administrative bloat is another concern across higher education, as nonfaculty staffing has grown considerably. But this growth stems largely from an increase in professional support jobs rather than high-level executives and administrators.
Whatever role these factors play, higher education’s workforce must be considered in any analysis of rising costs. That workforce—from tenured professors to part-time adjuncts, and from executives and professionals to support staff—is changing rapidly.
This report looks at long-term employment changes on campuses during the past two decades. It examines fluctuations in faculty staffing patterns, growth in administrative positions, and the effects of economic recessions on long-standing employment trends. It goes beyond other studies to explore the effects of these staffing changes on total compensation, institutional spending patterns, and ultimately on tuition rates.
Our research shows that between 2000 and 2012, the public and private nonprofit higher education workforce grew by 28 percent, more than 50 percent faster than in the previous decade.
Other key findings:
- Growth in administrative jobs was widespread, but what drove the increase was the creation of new professional positions, not executive or managerial ones.
- Colleges and universities have invested in professional jobs that provide non-instructional student services, not just business support.
- Part-time faculty/graduate assistants typically account for at least half of the instructional staff in most higher education sectors.
- Faculty salaries were not the leading cause of rising tuition during the past decade. The increased cost of employee benefits, the addition of nonfaculty positions, and declines in state and institutional subsidies—all of these factors, and others, played a role.