Activity at universities falls into 3 broad categories – teaching, research & administration. They are not equivalent. Teaching & research are core activities. Everything else serves to support these primary goals.
Some administrative work is obviously necessary. This includes student support, counselling services, IT services, the disability centre, librarians, research office support and so on.
Some administrators (or professional service staff) are amongst most mistreated in universities. They are sometimes victims of serious bullying by both academics and senior administrators. Some are also paid poorly, have limited job satisfaction and restricted career prospects.
But, professional services staff is an extremely broad category, both in terms of wages & power. The category includes some people who are paid extremely well, far better than almost all the academics. It includes some of the most powerful people in a university.
The plot is the headcount of jobs at Cambridge University, as supplied following a Freedom of Information request by the 21 Group. It shows academic versus administrative posts over time.
To be specific, it shows in red the number of (established and unestablished) academic posts and in blue the number of (established and unestablished) non-academic posts. The data have some limitations. Not included are (i) almost all research staff who have fixed-term contracts, (ii) any administrators, IT personnel, cleaners, caterers and staff employed by the Temporary Employment Service (TES), (iii) any adjunct staff employed on hourly rates of pay to do teaching, laboratory demonstration, lecturing or examining and (iv) any staff employed solely by the Colleges.
Even so, we are mainly interested in trends over time. There were once more academics than administrators. In 2013, academics and administrators reached parity. By 2024, administrative positions outnumbered academic by about 3 to 2. If trends continue, the ratio will be 2 to 1 by 2028. The numbers of administrators are not just increasing, they are accelerating (the gradient is increasing).
Cambridge University is very typical. Any trawl through jobs being advertised by UK Universities shows how very few academic positions there are, and how many administrators are still being sought. Some of the administrative jobs use language like “… run complex cross-functional projects … engage with stakeholders … foster a culture of continuous improvement … reimagining professional services”. It is not even clear what such individuals are being employed to do.
“I was lucky to be appointed a lecturer in 1995 at a Russell Group university. My smallish department then had 14 faculty & 9 administrative staff. I am retiring in weeks. My department now has 15 faculty & 33 administrative staff, now called professional services staff”. (Email Received by 21 Group)
It’s often said that the increasing regulatory framework in which universities now operate has necessitated a big expansion in professional services staff. There is some truth in this.
Less often acknowledged is that the same regulatory framework has increased the load on academics as well. Strategic committees on research, TEF and REF planning, SRDs, curriculum reviews, grant application assessments and risk assessments all require input, time or data from academics. Yet numbers of academics have been at best static (and will now likely decrease).
More administrators inevitably make more work for academics. In fact, an academic’s main jobs in universities now often seem to be to complete mandatory training courses, to answer emails & attend Teams meetings and to generate grant income that supports the cadre of administrators.
“I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates, and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field. And then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the sales people end up running the company.” (Steve Jobs)
The next few years for UK higher education are looking like the failure years for Apple, IBM or Microsoft. The core functions are being neglected. Most academics remain passionate about their research & enjoy their teaching, but the focus of activity has moved elsewhere.
Institutes with the smallest administration are often the most vital, reactive and productive. At the other extreme, administration can grow to the point where it considers itself better able to direct and manage the work than those doing it. The culture becomes one of meetings, position papers, strategy analyses, and consultancy reports. Everyone is very busy and important. This is the stage universities have now reached.
The bottom line is, the more money spent on administrative support, the less money there is for the core activity.
41 Comments
Stressed · 9 February 2025 at 11:03
It is important to stress, as you do, that some of this administrative work is absolutely vital.
But I also think that large amounts of money are being wasted on some pet projects of senior management, particularly in the proliferation of jobs created.
In my position in PSS, I see very clear differences in workload and usefulness of jobs.
Some people are absolutely overwhelmed with work, while others are at a loose end and are doing nothing very vital, whilst reimagining this or refashioning that for the future.
Judge · 9 February 2025 at 11:17
Thank you for this extremely insightful work. I think it is excellent that you are digging in to the facts and figures. This is what is needed for those of us who have not abandoned ship to turn around the university before it hits the iceberg.
The quotation from Steve Jobs is well placed here. A comparison with Microsoft circa two decades ago is extremely relevant.
Both Microsoft and Cambridge are/were organisations sitting on a natural monopoly generating huge recurring revenues and profits. E.g. in the case of Cambridge, the university’s immense brand value allows it to sell degrees to overseas students at high margin + rely on alumni + donor + industry contributions with little in return.
Sadly these vast rents were then expropriated by a growing, unaccountable and bloated managerial class. As Cambridge is the public sector, it can also be described as corruption. Had these cash flows instead been reinvested into the “core business” (teaching, talent retention and research), the viability of the organisation itself would no longer be threatened in the way that it is: with ranking downgrades and inability to uphold core service delivery or quality.
For now the brand is there. But: we urgently need a Nadella to come in and deliver sweeping reforms before this too is eroded (ranking downgrades, reputational loss). That would eventually destroy the core revenue model and send everyone to the wall.
Engarde · 9 February 2025 at 13:11
My field is more economics than business. So the relevant model in my mind would be how an IMF bailout is structured. That is, when the government steps in to bail out the university sector (as it inevitably will do) it comes with strict conditionality – to cut executive pay, streamline the senior administration, and implement anti corruption measures.
Examples of this third requirement could include a web tool to allow any member of the public to look up the salary package of any employee (as is the case for public universities in many parts of the United States), publication of all expenses, strict compliance with labour laws (no more minimum wage violations or abuse of short term contracts), strict auditing of working hours of all staff, and annual government inspections of all records. But I am sure others could think of further useful measures for central government to enforce the accountable use of public funds.
Juvenal · 9 February 2025 at 13:53
Am I right in believing that Cambridge Schools & Departments have a 5% cut imposed upon them, but UAS (Estates, Finance, Governance & Compliance, Health & Safety, Human Resources, Legal Services ) a 1% cut ?
This is completely the wrong way round, and will lead to more academic posts going.
ECR · 10 February 2025 at 17:07
A 5% cut is significant, this means staff losses.
Who is for the chop?
Nuciferine · 9 February 2025 at 18:59
In my view it is too costly to fire people; too much risk of leading to expensive legal challenges and the university is drowning in solicitor fees already.
Instead they will just continue to do everything in their power to obstruct and block academic promotion or any form of career progression. Perhaps even cancel the promotion round again entirely.
The secret hope will be that the best and brightest continue to depart for better jobs elsewhere, leaving departments even more void of talent, teaching and research potential than they already are.
SueUs · 9 February 2025 at 19:33
The university is drowning in solicitor’s fees because of its under-performing Human Resources and Legal Services department. They need root and branch reform before they are fit for purpose.
Many in the university think laws don’t apply to them.
A good example is the guy suing the university under disability discrimination legislation,.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14282311/Cambridge-law-student-sues-university-failed-PhD.html
Court documents also stated that the University’s Disability Resource Centre had recommended that at the viva voce examiners follow a set of guidelines, produced as part of a Student Support Document (SSD), to help him. These included asking specific rather than general questions, using the active, rather than the passive, voice and allowing him pauses and breaks after questions to allow him to ‘mentally retrieve the words or information that he needed in order to answer.
The disability resource centre say put these measures in place for the viva. And then the university just don’t do it.
Amanita · 9 February 2025 at 23:34
This is a death spiral.
The brightest and best go. The has-beens and never-weres remain.
Cambridge sinks further.
And our present but not involved VC books some more first-class air travel
Eileen Nugent · 11 February 2025 at 18:00
They put people on temporary contracts where they threaten to fire them every year (sometimes more than once a year) for more than a decade and think nothing of firing them. They don’t worry about the costs of firing some people, they don’t worry about the risk of expensive legal challenges from some people. It is highly likely that the best and the brightest will not want to stay if it means they have to put up with being mentally abused with these garbage employment processes.
Sheer Disgust · 11 February 2025 at 13:10
It now looks like (as per previous thread) we have one answer to this question, insofar as the university has weaponised occupational health to begin the mass layoff of our vulnerable colleagues who suffer from disability. But as per this thread (Nuciferine’s comment above) the ultimate cost in legal fees and reputational damage will rapidly outweigh any imagined reduction in cost while leaving everyone else with a lot more work to do, for it is only when the quiet troopers disappear that it becomes clear just how much work they were carrying on their backs.
Anon · 11 February 2025 at 13:41
The people going to OH with burnout and stress are the ones who really do the work. If we get rid of them, we end up with nothing but busy bodies and pen pushers. This is exactly how organisations fail.
Eileen Nugent · 11 February 2025 at 18:32
There is only so far HR can push its current strategy before it starts to generate cases where what it is doing constitutes degrading treatment, inhuman treatment, mental torture i.e. a violation of article 3 rights under the European Convention of Human Rights. Article 3 rights are absolute, not qualified and must be respected. HR cannot deny an individual a work-related stress risk assessment and then send them a letter referring them to the Samaritans or GP whilst it continues to mismanage the individuals work-related stress if work-related stress is the most significant source of the actual health risk.
Eileen Nugent · 11 February 2025 at 18:51
An individual can request to have work-related stressors analysed to identify significant sources of unnecessary stress and have this unnecessary stress removed to allow the individual to improve and maintain their health, improve their ability to get the job they were hired to do done and to maintain their productivity. They can also request a work-related stress management process to manage burnout and stress and to prevent a reoccurrence. An organisation cannot abuse significant numbers of staff to the point of severe ill health, dump them by abusing its occupational health processes, and then get more new staff in to do exactly the same thing to them. This has costs for society and is not an acceptable way for an organisation to behave.
Eileen Nugent · 11 February 2025 at 19:07
HR can trying dumping work-related stress risk assessments on everyone but themselves, how much workload does HR think it can generate for national regulators e.g. the health and safety executive before there is some kind of intervention and all these work-related stress risk assessments that weren’t getting done get dumped right back on HR. Unnecessarily workers – unnecessarily stress national regulators – unnecessarily stress inspectors who will then show up and inspect – unnecessarily stress yourselves.
Campesinos · 12 February 2025 at 10:21
We have reports of individuals who reported acts of self-harm to HR arising from psychological abuse by the university. In response HR would not meet, conduct an assessment, take a statement or investigate. They provide a generic statement blaming the individual for their distress, together with a phone number for the Samaritans.
You would get more empathy and support from any stranger on the street. It is as if they want to tip people over.
Kenichi · 12 February 2025 at 11:32
Since you are on topic of efficiency cost saving perhaps consider to replace HR response personnel with bespoke ChatGPT. Though suboptimal to good human interaction is 100x better than this. Responses immediate instead of 1+ week late. Timely support options including personal outreach and human support networks. Help to pursue grievance options and medical referral.
Much cheaper than cost of HR personnel not replying to email or offering support to workforce and only causing problems.
Engineer · 12 February 2025 at 16:36
That sounds like a fine idea.
But I have another “modest” proposal, which would be that we replace all of our richly-paid admin overlords working on “re-imagining” the future or “refashioning” strategy documents with AI chatbots?
For 10 quid a month we could have them running endlessly in the cloud, sending each other all day (and night!!!) new and updated revisions of bureaucratic documents, generating virtual meeting minutes, and sending each other “fist pump” emails about how great they are doing. With a swarm of say 100 or so we are guaranteed a top notch people strategy in surely no less than 1bn iterations.
Meanwhile those of us with human brains (so not the current leadership) can use these cost savings to fix the university’s problems, by providing a salary raise to staff, proper benefits, and reward for high performance.
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 19:37
The Samaritans can be asked for support, they can support an individual to raise a health and safety concern – no organisational response to a request for a work-related stress risk assessment to be put in place – with HR who gave their details as a source of support, the university or a national regulator. Is HR going to ignore the Samaritans? Is HR is going to ignore advice from the Samaritans on safeguarding? If it is going to ignore advice from the Samaritans on safeguarding then why would it give that number?
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 19:42
If HR has not undertaken a work-related stress risk assessment then what information does it have to base its analysis of the source of the distress on?
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 19:47
I left because I could get no sense out of any of them. The HR processes that are being applied are garbage processes.
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 19:53
Try and get a work-related stress risk assessment out of the organisation bearing in mind there is now a legal obligation to manage work-related stress at the level of the organisation. They can’t deliver one with the current HR processes without the whole organisation having a breakdown.
Anon · 13 February 2025 at 16:38
It looks for all the world as if they actively want to kill people.
crawled so far sideways · 13 February 2025 at 17:20
active or passive it is conscious in the sense that they are aware of the risk of staff suicide and yet make a choice to take no action. they are also quite deliberately refusing all means to have any record of either the risk to staff or their awareness of that risk. the actions they take significantly increase the risk of staff deaths as our calls for help are ignored to the point where the only call possible is a big leap of faith. if you are at risk yourself please get out of this place and tell the world the truth and live for yourself a better life free of pain.
My sun is your sun · 14 February 2025 at 13:00
Deny them satisfaction. Endure, resist & survive. Hold on.
Eileen Nugent · 11 February 2025 at 22:59
Where are the effective remedy processes?
An organisation paying individuals to increase the magnitude and timescale of the mental abuse.
Increasing the number of NDAs – Not Doing Anythings.
Dangling careers that entail a lifetime of the same garbage employment processes in front of individuals.
It’s time for the national regulators, it’s time for DSAs – doing something agreements, time to fix the employment processes. Time to take all that unnecessary stress and put it into concerns, time to propagate these concerns right up through the organisation and out to the national regulators if need be until national regulators propagate all the unnecessary stress right back through the organisation and put it on the desk of the individuals who should have done something about it in the first place only now the message will be amplified – fix the employment processes.
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 01:51
Being forced to raise a formal grievance to have a sensible solution to any serious problem encountered e.g. non-payment of wages, is the mental activity associated with that formal grievance in the employment contract, is that mental activity being directed by the organisational towards teaching, is that mental activity being directed by the organisation towards research, can that mental activity be counted in a workload survey, no – it is just mental abuse.
Juvenal · 12 February 2025 at 08:04
The whole purpose of an effective HR policy is to de-escalate problems, resolve them informally and avoid matters becoming pitched fights or heading to an Employment Tribunal.
A formal grievance should never be raised unless all informal channels have been fully explored.
Many people’s experience of HR in Cambridge is that it does the reverse — it actively escalates problems to the most serious level.
There are HR Business Partners who enjoy the chaos that this causes in people’s lives.
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 20:16
The only reason these HR processes survived for so long is that the processes allowed the organisation to effectively stress people out of the organisation without progressing serious issues. Now they are being forced to estimate the stress costs of work, particularly unnecessary stress costs, with this new legal obligation that whole approach can break down on an already serious cases of work-related stress. When the processes break down, they really break down.
TigerWhoCametoET · 12 February 2025 at 20:57
It is no wonder they have their heads buried in the sand, hoping we will just stay quiet or disappear. For the university to account for the stress and abuse and hurt felt by young scholars and junior members of staff, would leave them with a reckoning they know they can never face.
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 21:39
Why wait for an organisation to do the stress accounts when it is possible to download the stress management standards from the health and safety executive and get started with the stress accounting. Frontline workers do all the other health and safety risk assessments, why should the organisation make an exception for that particular one. Could get the work-related stress risk assessment done and submitted to HR. Put all that work-related stress officially on the organisational stress accounting system. Legal obligations that fall under health and safety law are not optional. Could put those work-related stress risk assessments in the HR inbox and create organisational records for the health and safety executive to examine should they ever need to do a work-related stress inspection.
Eileen Nugent · 12 February 2025 at 21:55
Going to have to face it, that legal obligation to regulate work-related stress is there now and it’s not going away. All sources of work-related stress will need to be objectively justified – employment contract abuse, obstructing concerns raising, obstructing a reasonable adjustments process, bullying/harassment – sources of unnecessary work-related stress that cannot objectively be justified. Complex experiment not yet working – stress inherent in a role that cannot be removed.
Judge · 13 February 2025 at 14:16
This is a classic management failure in the public sector. NHS = key case study. It goes:
1. Frontline staff (doctors, teachers, researchers) –> sustained decline in real income + increased workload (understaffing, sickness, talent exit)
2. Management response = divert growing resources to HR / administration (“fix” the problem)
3. Result is frontline salaries depressed further –> staffing failures accelerate
4. Problems extend to stress + safety failures + lawsuits
5. Increasing costs sucked in to solving secondary problems (healthcare + legal) arising from (3) as management continues to bloat itself at the expense of core service delivery
6. Eventual systemic collapse and insolvency / bailout.
Juvenal · 13 February 2025 at 16:25
Cambridge University seems to be already at stage (5)
There are a number of lawsuits in the pipeline and the problems are getting worse
Postponement or near-abandonment of MyHR suggests very serious problems despite the bloat of HR/management
Anon · 13 February 2025 at 19:28
An advanced stage of metastasis.
Cambridge Zéro+ · 13 February 2025 at 19:58
It was well underway five years ago, it saddens me to say. I do believe, very firmly, that this situation can be remedied: as i believe in the bright future that awaits Cambridge University in the years to come, as a world-leading institution.
Further, if any participants in this forum have noticed the posting on the “Opportunities” thread then this also would appear an interesting matter for discussion and debate at the current crux in time.
21percent.org · 13 February 2025 at 20:16
You are referring to the posting by Bernard Woolley? If not, which.
SirBernardWoolley · 14 February 2025 at 07:46
[Reposted from Opportunities]
OK so I have this theory. What do you think. Is it possible the senior admin (registrary, HR, legal and so on) have deliberately “mined” the VC role so they were ready to nuke her as a failsafe before their own scandals broke?
And sidn’t they already do this before to Stephen (Toope)? Let’s piece it out.
For example they knew when they made that “Christmas video”, they were copying the style and format of the Queen’s speech. I doubt she noticed it. But they must have. Then they knew those travel expenses could have been omitted or reclassified. But kept them in (even declared them to the press).
And now, their “big idea” was to splash her in a weekend profile piece in the Guardian (about supporting the government’s agenda, oxford corridor blah blah).
But surely – oh surely, surely, surely – the press office knew, full well, this is the biggest brightest red flag for the right wing press to go all guns blazing against. (And even that piece backfired with a dangler about her obscene salary and offensive justification for it).
So I know this probably sounds cynical. But I really don’t know.
I kind of suspect they leaked a lot of stuff against Toope in 2020/21 and the same old “sir (and madam) humphrey” characters are still ruling the show.
Thoughts?
Anon · 14 February 2025 at 10:18
“Is it possible the senior admin (registrary, HR, legal and so on) have deliberately “mined” the VC role so they were ready to nuke her as a failsafe before their own scandals broke?”
…detracting the attention from the real spider in this tangled web? The total control freak, totally obsessed with their own power and totally focussed on removing (agency from) those who cannot be or refused to be controlled?
It would be worth looking in more detail at who was appointed when and to what position… and how this institution has been allowed to evolve into an organism that now focuses on endlessly re-imagining itself.
angrybarbie · 14 February 2025 at 10:32
starting with the anti-Midas deputy, who has turned brown and soggy every single case and every single career they touch.
Isib · 14 February 2025 at 10:51
“how this institution has been allowed to evolve into an organism that now focuses on endlessly re-imagining itself”
Right up to the end, the Soviet Union was hyping the promise of its 12th Five-Year Plan, given the ridiculous name: “acceleration”. The plan was going to achieve that via – don’t laugh – even more capital for heavy industry, together with fresh measures of “labour discipline”. Of course by then the factories were already rusting and scientists had fled.
For years our physically proximal and yet somehow impossibly distant rulers have been doing the same. They are so high on their own hype, and so remote from the reality on the ground, that they really believe in it.
The Chief People Officer - 21percent.org · 16 February 2025 at 08:11
[…] Remarkably, HR departments continue to increase in size, even as universities are being dismantled. For example, at Cambridge University, the HR department has doubled in size in under a decade. There were 99 HR employees in 2014 and there were 226 in 2024. This is part of the substantial increase in administration numbers we have already reported here. […]