A Case of Bureaucratic Accretion

Abstract

It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow. C. Northcote Parkinson The dramatic expansion of the higher education enterprise in the United States over the past half-century is a well-documented phenomenon [7, 17]. It has also been observed that administrative structures have grown with this expansion [25, 27]. However, whether the administration of higher education organizations has grown in proportion with the increased demands on the enterprise is unclear. Although popular perceptions of administrative growth in public research universities have reflected widespread concern over the nature of that growth [20, 26, 34], there has been little empirical research that directly documents administrative growth, its context, and its consequences [25]. To shed light on this issue, we examine a twenty-five-year period of sustained financial and systemic growth in the University of California through an analysis of budget data and relevant archival documents.(1) Using classical Weberian concepts of bureaucratization as well as more recent literature on adaptation and economies of scale, we analyze the data from a number of perspectives. Primary among them is the proposition that adaptation to environmental complexity has demanded an increase and differentiation of university functions and hence the need for a more complex administrative component. We also consider some unexplored functions of complexity, primarily that under a broad university mission the process of adaptation to complexity may have served as de facto university policy-making. In addition to applying these concepts to the case of the University of California, we examine challenges that have emerged in the transition from an era of rising resources to a subsequent period of retrenchment. The Case, the Concepts, and the Methods The University of California The University of California provides an ideal case study opportunity for examination of administrative growth. Founded in 1868, the University of California was created as a public land-grant university and is administered under the authority of an independent board of regents. At present, the university consists of nine campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. Eight campuses provide undergraduate, graduate, and professional education; a ninth, San Francisco, focuses on the health sciences. Throughout the state the university has established teaching hospitals and clinics, as well as over one hundred fifty university institutes, centers, and research laboratories, including contract laboratories for the Department of Energy.(2) National Science Foundation data reflect that five University of California campuses (Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Davis) ranked in the top twenty-two universities nationally in 1992 for R&D expenditures.(3) Annually, the university awards over twenty-seven thousand bachelor's degrees, and over eleven thousand advanced degrees. Since its founding the university has awarded over a million degrees. Current enrollment is over one hundred fifty thousand students. In the twenty-five-year period under examination for this study, a defining characteristic of the University of California (hereafter also referred to as UC) has been growth. The nine campuses, systemwide administration, and auxiliary enterprises taken together had total fund expenditures just over $3,700,000,000 (1993 HEPI) in 1966-67.(4) For 1991-92 these UC entities accounted for expenditures of just over $9,800,000,000.(5) This is an increase of 164 percent in constant dollars(6) [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Student FTEs rose from 79,293 for 1966-67 to 156,371 for 1991-92, an increase of just over 97 percent.(7) The number of employees also shows marked growth. The permanently budgeted system staff in 1966-67 of 33,305 can be compared to the permanently budgeted system staff in 1991-92 of 68,024. …