HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Some faculty members argue that surrendering the ‘professor’ title to some academic staff will further confuse students and the public.” “Colleges across the country have shrunk the share of tenured labor force for more financial flexibility. Institutions then offset those positions with instructors who operate on short-term appointments with heftier teaching loads, lower salaries and less academic freedom. ‘I believe what we are being asked to do today is to relinquish that,’ physics professor Lisa Everett told the Faculty Senate last month. ‘And no matter what statements are there in bold at the end (of these resolutions) about how we don’t want this to be used as arguments against hiring more faculty positions, I think it’s very clear that that’s already going on.'”

From the comments:

A minor element of ongoing decadence.

A decaying institution will steadily add more process and overhead, creating more tail to tooth, more staff to line. And they will act according to internal rather than external incentives.

Its all in Schumpeter. It is also inevitable, until something external comes along to destroy the entire minimally functional system.

Yep.