And anyway, if I take a $300k salary you might see in industry, and split it between 1 associate professor at $150k and 2 admins at $75k, the admins get to WFH and all three get to have enriching time with their families where a single partner isn’t the sole caregiver, is that not the kind of community that educated people are agitating for anyway?
Universities are the future of work, not some sort of flawed or regressive past. I don’t know for certain if it’s a bullshit job. I know those people are happy though. You can argue all day for paying adjuncts more, or whatever, and I agree, but in principle, the admins are the community. They are the spouses and recent grads, they are the moms and dads.
The place where it is harmful is not the bloat. Like everyone’s income is someone else’s expense. It’s such a reductionist view, to complain about anyone who is getting paid to do something that isn’t exactly the same thing as you are doing. It’s harmful because those admins are shutting down communities, be they fraternities or co-ops, as a sort of vengeance plot against the people who wronged them when they were in college, which students never asked for. These college aged vengeances are the same thing motivating angry commenters against education in HN threads. No matter what the party, the sense of exacting vengeance is the nasty and bad part. Not the money.