What’s that smell? Bullshit jobs in higher education

This study examines the growth of administrative and non-academic staff positions in the United States higher education sector through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We first document the growth of these employments relative to increases in faculty positions and student enrollments, as well as common explanations therefor. Finding those explanations wanting, we proceed to synthesize the work of David Graeber, Benjamin Ginsberg, Roberto Michels, and Thorstein Veblen, developing an alternative explanation that focuses on the bureaucratic tendencies of large organizations and the business principles that have underwritten college and university management for more than a century. Next, using Graeber’s typology of bullshit jobs as applied to higher education we generate testable hypotheses related to our explanation. We then conduct our empirical analysis of the incidence of bullshit jobs in higher education. Finally, we summarize and discuss our findings and conclude with suggested topics for future research.