114university’s processes for addressing these regulations and additional rules. Within the first level of bureaucracy, a university is subject to an array of regulations from federal (e.g., Department of Education, Department of State) and state (e.g., for public universities, respective Boards of Governors and other entities) governments, as well as accrediting bodies at university (e.g., regional for two- and four-year institutions: the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges [SACSCOC]; other categories include national faith-based and national career-related) and college/school programmatic (e.g., the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business [AACSB] for business and accounting) levels. The second level, internal, captures universities’ unique processes. External and internal policies can be scaled from very poor in terms of heightening bureaucratic administration and bloat to very good in terms of reducing bloat and leading to greater entrepreneurial activities, and there is not necessarily a correlation between the two. The tendency toward inefficient practices at external and internal levels highlights a clear case against Mazzucato’s (2014) thesis of an entrepreneurial state comprised of highly functioning public bureaucracies. It is important to distinguish this bureaucracy from a pure measure of size. That is, economic theory suggests that size positively correlates with performance as greater size enables economies of scale and scope, thereby leading to lower fixed costs of services across a range of activities, greater purchasing power, more favorable fund rates, lower innovation Reducing Higher Education Bureaucracy and Reclaiming the Entrepreneurial. . .
115costs, and an improved ability to recruit and retain managers interested in working for large organizations (Jung, 2013; Andrews et al., 2017). The focus of the bureaucracy is on the administrative intensity around empire-building, of which extant research indicates that some administrative intensity is necessary to synchronize the many activities in public organizations.
At level one of external forces, some regulations are necessary to keep university efforts on track for mutually desired outcomes (see Kelchen, 2018, for a review of higher education accountability efforts and results; and Hall, 2019, for an overview of higher education accreditation). One important set of indicators is the U.S. News and World Report’s (USNWR) annual ranking of U.S. state-level higher education, which focuses on students’ completion times for two- and four-year programs, in-state tuition and fee costs, and graduates’ debt burden. To achieve these outcomes, universities require some regulations around key functions such as admissions, financial aid, and registration. These regulations improve inter-state competition, e.g., resulting in Florida’s consistent USNWR #1 rank in the United States, attributed to improvements in three of five metrics: four-year graduation rate, average debt, and tuition and fees (Florida Board of Governors, 2021).
At level two of internal forces, universities have some discretion to shape policies to address the government and accreditor guidelines, but may also exercise considerable discretion in creating a range of policies that exceed any guidance. Universities are large, complex organizations that serve many stakeholders, and require significant integration across areas. Several studies document that university employees have strong prosocial motivations (McNeely & Meglino, 1994; Grant & Sumanth, 2009), and are often intrinsically motivated, particularly in helping students succeed. A recent study of five research-intensive universities describes how major organizational and governance changes to strengthen inter-university coupling, control, and coordination lead to both positive and negative consequences (Maassen & Stensaker, 2019). Zywicki and Koopman (2019, pp. 148–149) highlight that an “inability to measure results and monitor outputs effectively in a nonprofit organization gives an opportunity for academic administrators to pursue their selfinterest at the expense of the enterprise, which they do by increasing the size of their discretionary budgets and staffing, much as government bureaucrats traditionally have been thought to do. Yet those developments present a puzzle, as the growth of the administration apparently has resulted in a siphoning off of resources from the university’s academic mission.” Ginsberg’s (2011) Fall of the Faculty argues that a considerable share of bureaucracy is unnecessary, often developed by career administrative bureaucrats with no teaching, research, or service obligations at their respective universities. These individuals with little exposure to the “front line” customer have a tendency to invent work for others, particularly faculty, in the university (Ginsberg, 2011), and the processes and outputs are very unpopular with faculty (Kallio et al., 2016). In a Swedish study, Andersson et al. (2021) noted that even when qualified administrators are hired, teachers’ and researchers’ time spent on administration does not decrease over this time period. One example of new internal administration is the appointment of a chief diversity officer (CDO), usually at the executive level in a vice-president position as a signal of commitment to a university’s diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly around faculty hiring. A S. Terjesen
116recent study examined the effect of a CDO hire using a 15-year panel study of large four-year or higher institutions with high research standards: Carnegie Research 1 doctorate-granting universities with highest research activity, Carnegie Research 2 doctorate-granting universities with higher research activity, and Carnegie M1 with larger master’s degree-granting activity; all with 4000 or more students. Bradley et al. (2018) report that a CDO appointment does not substantially change the pre-existing, organic growth of underrepresented racial/ethnic minority tenure and non-tenure track faculty, faculty hired with tenure, or university administrator hires. By contrast, a meta-analysis of 18 research papers identified that underrepresented minority faculty in academic medical centers benefit from dedicated mentoring programs (Beech et al., 2013). A recent study of four major California research universities found that women and minority Ph.D. students in STEM fields were more likely to publish research at rates comparable to male majority peers if they were well prepared for their graduate courses, accepted by colleagues (both faculty and fellow students), and undertook their studies in well-articulated and structured Ph.D. programs (Fisher et al., 2019). Taken together, these findings suggest that universities should devote time and effort to building the necessary infrastructure in culture and quality content, rather than creating new administrative positions.