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Comment by exe34 | Hacker News Reader

> there was a time in very recent history when these same schools ran successfully with much smaller administrations.

as the comment you're replying to has already stated:

> one clear driver is continually increasing rules, regulations, and compliance, along with fears of audits and lawsuits. I'd even make an analogy to increased malpractice insurance costs for doctors due to increasing number of lawsuits doctors face. > For example, there are more compliance costs around IRBs for human subjects, export controls of potentially sensitive data, companies we can't work with (e.g. in China), contracting with companies we can work with, intellectual property and startups, Title IX, discrimination, Federal funding do's and don'ts, cybersecurity requirements, travel to foreign countries (soon to be implemented), and a lot lot lot lot more. Also, like security, these things only ratchet upward, never down.

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First, I don't think we should take it as a given that all the admin. growth is just efficiently working on complying with regulations. And I'm pretty sure foreign countries, and travel to them, already existed in 1976. As did patents, contracts with other companies, and sanctions that US entities had to respect - remember, in 1976 there was the cold war.

Second and more importantly - these same schools ran successfully with much smaller administrations. The regulations you cite are not a law of nature - are universities or their bloated administrations lobbying to have this regulatory burden reduced or streamlined? It sure doesn't look like it.

Do you work in higher ed? It’s ok to admit that you weighed in on a topic you don’t understand, then bow out gracefully, since you’ve repeatedly been given accurate responses to your assertions.

More than half of the explanation for the administrative bloat since 1976 was blamed on factors that did not change much since the 1960s - with the notable exception of foreign sanctions, which were much worse due to the cold war. Also blamed were IRBs, which have been a requirement since 1974: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research_legisla...

The "accurate responses" were non-explanations. Like blaming being three hours late on a single red light.

You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Please stop.

Such assertions are a lot more persuasive if you can point to significant errors the poster has made.

> The "accurate responses" were non-explanations.

Could you give some hints as to what would constitute sufficient evidence to convince you?

Just looking in from the outside of this conversation,

> More than half of the explanation for the administrative bloat since 1976 was blamed on factors that did not change much since the 1960s - with the notable exception of foreign sanctions, which were much worse due to the cold war. Also blamed were IRBs, which have been a requirement since 1974: ...

Is it that those were just bad examples and the actual bulk of the work is coming in from elsewhere? Or is it the case that these areas were already in place, but have since come to demand additional work that they didn't before (for what reason?)? &c

Have you considered the other "half"? (note, the claim of "half" was from the person dismissing all the arguments).

Are you using 1976 as a baseline? Given this and your other comments in this thread, it seems like it. I'm sure the regulatory and compliance environment have changed significantly in the last 50 years. E.g. OSHA and other agencies have significantly increased the monitoring and procedures needed to run a chemistry research lab due to accidents and deaths.

The ancestor comment cited statistics on admin. growth from 1976 to 2018, that is why I mention 1976. Otherwise, your comment is very representative of the defenders of admin. bloat - a learned helplessness in simply assuming that all this busy-work must be serving some purpose, then pointing some example of superficially beneficial regulation.

But even if we grant that all the regulations are as crucial as chemistry lab safety, that doesn't explain the bloat:

regulatory compliance comprises 3 to 11% of schools’ nonhospital operating expenses, taking up 4 to 15% of faculty and staff’s time. - https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureau...

This answer eliminates the “regulations are the reason” counterclaim

It is just funny how technology was supposed to help society become less bureaucratic, but it has done just the opposite. Now to do anything, you need a bunch of administrators that will manage the systems that one needs to be "more efficient"!

Most IRB's further outsource to consulting firms and blindly do what the consultants tell them to do (not included in head counts). That is just to say the administrative people added are just trained to follow expensive rules and lack any domain knowledge whatsoever.

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