HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Benjamin Ginsberg: Can We Halt Administrative Bloat? “Increases in administrative staffing drove a 28 percent expansion of the higher education work force from 2000 to 2012. This period, of course, includes several years of severe recession when colleges saw their revenues decline and many found themselves forced to make hard choices about spending. The character of these choices is evident from the data reported by Carlson. Colleges reined in spending on instruction and faculty salaries, hired more part-time adjunct faculty and fewer full-time professors and, yet, found the money to employ more and more administrators and staffers.”