Mark Shapiro documents Parkinson’s Law in action:

For example, based on data in the California State University Statistical Abstract, the number of full-time faculty in the whole CSU system rose from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, an increase of only 3.5 percent. In the same time period the total number of administrators rose 221 percent, from 3,800 to 12,183. In 1975, there were three full time faculty members per administrator, but now there are actually slightly more administrators than full-time faculty. If this trend continues, there could be two administrators per full-time faculty in another generation.

Interesting is the breakdown of “managerial and professional” which has bloated extremely, compared to clerical, service/maintenance, and technical jobs, which have actually declined significantly over the same period.

You know, if we could get these professional administrators to actually help in the lab and the classroom, I wouldn’t mind having two of them working under me. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way!

(via Instapundit)