People talk a lot about the bloat at universities, but I think that they don’t often think about that bloat as being the rational response to a system that is increasingly pushing them to (a) provide collegiate credentialling to basically the entire US workforce and (b) operate the infrastructure of a small village. Yes administrative bloat is real, yes universities are opaque morasses of money and bureaucracy. They are also charged with the care of tens of thousands of young people; keeping them fed, providing medical services, transit, housing, therapy, IT support, and obviously education in advanced topics across the entire breadth of human knowledge. Does this require endless “Vice Provost of X” type bullshit jobs? No, but consider the amount of cruft at a private corporation of similar size and scope. In some ways this is simply what happens when organizations grow this big, IMO
edit: I didn't even mention that they also must maintain enormous research operations, some of them performing research that is literally the bleeding edge of human knowledge. Like imagine trying to helm a corporation that is simultaneously invested in multi-billion dollar government grants for deep-tech R&D, alongside a portfolio of ~15 hotels, a minor-league football team, an urgent care, a landscaping company, and something like 10-20 high schools of students. Not to mention libraries, museums, gyms, food, etc. And god help you if your campus is more than 50 years old, because the cost of maintaining all those buildings are going to be insane. If you were able to do this all without bloat or graft honestly I think you'd a generational genius in management.