The administrators aren't really the problem per se, though. They're there to address mandates from various levels of government. Colleges won't reduce the number of administrators because they can't under the current bureaucratic regime.
People are offering solutions without following the money.
"The compliance problem is exacerbated by the sheer volume of mandates—approximately 2,000 pages of text—and the reality that the Department of Education issues official guidance to amend or clarify its rules at a rate of more than one document per work day. As a result, colleges and universities find themselves enmeshed in a jungle of red tape, facing rules that are often confusing and difficult to comply with."
You don't think colleges would rather have the money than all these extra paper pushers?
- "We want all responsibilities, Minister, if they mean extra staff and bigger budgets. It's the breadth of our responsibilities that makes us important, makes YOU important, Minister. When you see vast buildings, huge staff and massive budgets, what do you conclude?"
- "Bureaucracy?"
- "No, Minister, you conclude that at the summit there are men of great stature and dignity who hold the world in their hands and tread the earth like princes."
no doubt. Just look at these salaries :) http://ucpay.globl.org/
My thought is a cap on the multiplier on the minimum wage (for example, a 50 times multiplier at a minimum wage of $15 per hour would mean an annual cap of $15 * 2000 * 50 or $1.5M). Similarly, a private corporation could declare that it will cap its pay at 100 times multiplier of the minimum wage.
I think this is something the Regents of the University of California system could easily impose if they had the will to do so. Would a pay policy like that be illegal? Would it be considered conspiring or "fixing" if it applies to everyone at the organization?
I don't see what being not-for-profit has to do with salary caps. But the whole reason that the head coach is paid so much is that the football team is being run as a for-profit enterprise, which is a seemingly rational thing for the university to do, yet I think it makes sense to restrict universities from distracting themselves with that sort of enterprise related to their purpose.