In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about a recent study by the Goldwater Institute on the severe problem of administrative bloat in our colleges and universities.

Just one day after the study was released, UNC-Greensboro announced that it had created a new office for a Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. What splendid support for the study’s thesis!

The paper is based on data from 198 leading universities and apparently the worst case of bloat among them was at Wake Forest, where spending on administrators increased 600 percent between 1993 and 2007.

Root of the problem: the leaders of non-profit institutions would rather spend their time figuring out how to squeeze more funds out of taxpayers, students, and donors than doing the unpleasant work of cutting out expenses that don’t really do anything to improve education.