Academic Influence Ranks Colleges with the Most & Least Administrative Bloat

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Sep 05, 2024, 08:39 ET

OOLTEWAH, Tenn., Sept. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Academicinfluence.com has released its latest ranking of colleges and universities using its innovative methodology. Specifically, Academic Influence set out to recognize the colleges and universities with the most efficient administrations while also identifying schools that signaled high levels of administrative bloat.

The article explores why administrative bloat matters, and highlights how identifying efficient and inefficient administrations may be helpful to prospective students.

School Ranking Methodology: Machine Learning and Data Science

Using its proprietary InfluenceRanking™ Engine—machine-learning technology that objectively measures a school's real-world influence. This influence is measured by tracking the school's contributions to academia and professional markets through its students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Academic Influence primarily ranks schools and degree programs for prospective students, but also tracks influence of influential academics and professionals.

To identify schools with the most and least efficient administrations, the team at Academic Influence first started with a subset of highly influential colleges and universities. Then they weighted metrics which signaled administrative efficiency. One of the core formulas leveraged was "the total number of full-time instructional staff divided by the total number of full-time non-instructional staff."

Why Does Administrative Bloat Matter?

In this article, Dr. James Barham argues that administrative bloat matters for a variety of reasons. Most notably he argues, "As more of the institution's budget is allocated to salaries and benefits for administrative staff, tuition fees could increase, making education less affordable and accessible. Funds that could have been used for academic purposes, such as hiring faculty, improving facilities, or supporting research and student services, are instead spent on administrative salaries and benefits."

Dr. Barham then goes on to outline a series reasons why administrative efficiency is an important metric for students to pay attention to:

Efficient administrations may correlate with more affordable tuition.
Efficient administrations allocate more of their resources to teaching and students.
Universities suffering from administrative bloat may struggle to compete with leaner organizations.
Administrative bloat may correlate with an overload of administrative tasks and policies, distracting faculty from their core responsibilities.
Students who attend schools with high administrative efficiency report higher satisfaction levels
Schools with high administrative efficiency often have stronger alumni networks

Top 10 Colleges with the Most Administrative Bloat