EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION/ANALYSIS
After years of College Fix investigations uncovering administrative bloat often tied to universities’ diversity, equity, and inclusion agendas, reports suggest that academia’s overstaffing is beginning to deflate.
Still, it’s too early to tell if DEI also is shrinking.
New data shows the “number of noninstructional employees at U.S. universities and colleges — the many people on campuses who don’t actually teach — fell last year more than it has at any time in at least the last decade,” according to a new Hechinger Report analysis.
Those numbers come from a College and University Professional Association for Human Resources survey of 1,000 colleges and universities. And the group “said it might be too early to draw conclusions about trends,” according to Hechinger.
However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is also projecting “limited employment growth” for higher education staff, according to the report.
And a number of universities also have announced staffing cuts, including the University of Utah, University of Minnesota, University of Maryland, University of Nebraska, Johns Hopkins University, Emerson College, Harvard University, and University of Southern California.
A conservative higher education leader took these reports as a good sign.
“It’s encouraging that there are any cuts at all,” National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood told Hechinger:
“Colleges began to see themselves as providing this very broad suite of services, all of which were personnel-intensive,” Wood said — athletics, housing, dining, security, transportation, mental health counseling, disability support, antidiscrimination efforts, information technology, data collection, fundraising, sustainability.
Some of these functions were expanded as students showed up who were not prepared for college-level work and needed more help. Some were in response to real or perceived demands from consumers for amenities that required additional staff, or were driven by intensifying competition and the race to rise up the college rankings. Institutions also contend that their ever-growing workforces were required to comply with government red tape, though that has proven not to be as big a factor as they’ve said.
The administrative workforce “just grew and grew” — often, Wood said, at the expense of academic functions.
At Yale University, for example, the ratio of administrators to undergraduates is nearly one to one, a recent report by the Buckley Institute found.
Similar analyses from The College Fix have linked the bloat to universities’ emphasis on identity politics, or DEI.
For example, a 2025 analysis of the University of Michigan identified more than 1,100 full- or part-time DEI-related jobs. These positions include a DEI staffer for its botanical gardens.
Another Fix analysis from 2023 found that Northwestern University employs one administrator for every two undergraduates, including several DEI staff in its sports program.
But the new reports do not mention how many of the cuts are to DEI positions, and some universities have a history of clinging to their progressive agenda-preaching administrators despite massive budget deficits.
At other universities, undercover investigators with Accuracy in Media have caught staffers saying that DEI still exists under a different name, despite university or legislative actions to cut the ideological programs.
All this means the reports of administrative bloat deflating should be viewed with cautious optimism.
Fiscal responsibility is, in and of itself, a good thing. But to truly get back on track, universities should be aiming their cuts at, as NAS’s Wood said, the staff and programs that sucked resources away from academia’s purpose: the pursuit of knowledge and truth.
MORE: Don’t say ‘America’: Michigan State has 140+ employees working on 222 DEI action items
