Hi,

Ah, so there are two different things happening here:

1) are administrators salaries higher than others in higher ed, and have they gone up over time?

2) is this a cause, or even a main cause, or rising college costs or college debt?

Your argument suggests the answer to both must be yes. But the evidence strongly contradicts that. The answer to (1) is yes, but the answer to (2) is no. The main reason is that the salaries for admin are up primarily in the private sector, and aren’t up nearly enough in the public sector to account for rising college costs. The other reason is that public institutions don’t have nearly the control over costs or debt that you’re attributing to them. There are many checks and balances in place such that the state has disproportionate power. All research outside of that done by ideologues (think American Enterprise Institute, Richard Vedder, etc) has confirmed that it’s state disinvestment not bad college actors and primarily driving up costs and debt.

Why does this matter? Because if you want to actually solve the problem, you need to accurately diagnose which aspect of the system is at fault.

(By the way, I’m well-known for tangling with highly paid college administrators not defending them, so this pains me more than a little. 😌)