Critical Correspondence to Nature From Australia Regarding Universities' Administrative Bloat. (October 17, 2011)

In a correspondence published in the September 29, 2011 issue of  Nature Nicholas Graves and Adrian Barnett from The Queensland University of Technology have some cogent criticism of Australian university administrative funding bloat which they contend should be redirected to research. And they cite as an example of administrative cost reduction that instituted by Australian Alan Trounson, as president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) in San Francisco:

We believe that there is a pressing need to cut the cost of bureaucracy in universities and to channel those savings into research.

In Australia, for example, spending by the top ten research universities rose from almost Aus$6 billion in 2003 (US$3.9 billion at the time) to more than Aus$10 billion in 2010 (2010 US$9.2 billion), but only 30% of this was allocated to the employment of academics. This is worrying, given that a university's main objectives are research and teaching. Almost as much (26%) was spent on non-academic salaries; the rest went on assets such as branding, buildings and equipment. Similar spending patterns can be found in UK and US universities.

As well as the restrictive effect on academic appointments, this bureaucratic burden adversely affects scholarly output, with academics spending too much time on paperwork and internal meetings. Some must even forgo research altogether as they become swamped by administrative tasks.

Senior university officials should make radical changes to the spending habits of institutions, despite the likely resistance that would come from non-academics. Australian academic Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) in San Francisco, has shown that such changes are feasible. In 2009, he pledged to spend less than 6% of CIRM's revenues on administration costs, a figure that is better than for most commercial firms (see http://go.nature.com/ummgkb). As of February 2011, CIRM had spent 4.1% on administration (see http://go.nature.com/ntv5he).

Administration should enable universities to run efficiently, but it must be streamlined. A bold university that reforms its cost structures will have more money to spend on its core business.