Ballooning bureaucracy? Stylized facts of growing administration in Swedish higher education.
Posted: 23 Aug 2021 Last revised: 8 Jun 2023
Date Written: August 19, 2021
Abstract
All organizations need to allocate labor to production and administration. In many cases -- particularly within the public sector -- the optimal allocation is far from obvious. Indeed, vocal concerns have been raised about the administrative burden in several public services, not least in education. We investigate this issue using detailed registry data on all employees at Swedish universities and colleges from 2005 to 2019 and document three stylized facts. First, the group of highly educated administrators has grown rapidly, almost by a factor of seven compared with teachers and researchers. Second, the number of less-educated administrators has stayed flat. Third, the time that teachers and researchers spend on administrative tasks has been roughly constant over time. This indicates that resources have been diverted from teaching and research and raises fears of excessive administrative growth in Swedish higher education.
Keywords: Organization theory, Sclerosis, Productivity Growth, Bureaucracy, Higher education
JEL Classification: P16, L25
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation