I have written extensively about the bureaucratic bloat that is suffocating higher education in the United States (for example, here and here). Higher education is hardly unique in this regard, but I have written about it because I spent 55 years as an eyewitness to this disaster, watching a relatively lean and efficient enterprise turn into a distended, barely recognizable caricature.

This calamity is an illustration of Parkinson’s Law. That’s the title of a 1955 Economist essay written by the naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909‒1993). Parkinson observed that between 1914 and 1928, the number of active ships in the British navy fell by 68% while the number of admiralty office workers increased by 78%. He also observed that, while the number of colonies in the British Empire was declining, the number of employees in the British Colonial Office nonetheless continued to greatly increase.

He explained this disconnect with Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Someone who has an hour to complete a 10-minute task, a week to complete a one-day task, or a year to complete a one-week task will find ways to make the task exhaust the available time — procrastinating, mulling over the task, tweaking the details.

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He argued that this law is the key to understanding bureaucratic bloat. When bureaucrats are hired, they invariably find things to do to justify their existence and occupy their time fully—regardless of the importance of the tasks or how quickly they might be done. They reason that,  “I can improve this report, this manual, this rulebook, these guidelines by fiddling with the language, fonts, and colors; adding more examples; inserting more graphics; asking others for suggestions.” Just as authors inevitably find ways to improve their writing every time they reread a draft, so bureaucrats who have time to waste can always use that time to find “improvements” right up until the allotted time expires.

Meetings that are scheduled to last an hour reliably last a full hour or even more, no matter how light the agenda. Issues that are vexing are routinely punted to bloated committees that will have ample time to discuss, debate, and prepare reports that are duly noted, responsibly filed, and largely ignored. Optimally, by the time a carefully researched, debated, and crafted report is finished, the issue will have resolved itself and be moot — or will at least have outlasted the attention span of those involved.

The recommendation for change is always to hire more administrators

Self-studies are doubly rewarding. Administrators can spend massive amounts of time preparing for, conducting, and reporting the self study, with the final report inevitably recommending that more administrators should be hired. Bureaucrats also form useful bonds across institutions as they climb the administrative ladder by jumping from one place to another, and they can use these relationships for cross-institutional busy work, like inviting each other to conferences and hiring each other to do external reviews and give workshops. It is not surprising that the external reviews, like the self-studies, recommend hiring more administrators.

Exhausted by such busywork, bureaucrats understandably feel that they need subordinates — not rivals — who will do some of their work and (added bonus) increase their domain, making them seem more important and powerful. No matter how many subordinates they hire, Parkinson’s Law ensures that they will always need more. Their subordinates feel the same way and, likewise, need their own subordinates — creating an ever-expanding Ponzi-like pyramid of bureaucrats. Parkinson estimated that the number of bureaucrats in an organization tends to increase by 5%‒7% a year, “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”

Like an invisible hand, an institution’s bureaucracy sustains this growth by using largely pointless memos, reports, committees, and meetings to create work for one another and an endless demand for more subordinates throughout the organization.

I’ve noted elsewhere that, when I came to Pomona College in 1981–82 there were 1,443 students, 174 tenured and tenure-track faculty, and 39 administrators. In 2025–2026, there were 1,730 students, 175 faculty, and 358 administrators. While the number of students had increased by 0.4% a year, and there had been essentially no change in the number of faculty, the number of administrators had, as predicted by Parkinson, increased by 5.2% a year.

Administrators set the hiring priorities. Of 320 faculty and administrative positions created during this period, they prioritized administrators over faculty 319 times. If the hiring priorities had been set by faculty, the results might have been a bit different. The only constraint on this growth was that the mediocre performance of the endowment limited the funds available for hiring even more bureaucrats.

I’ve noted some of the more bizarre tasks created by Pomona bureaucrats to fill their time and increase the need for more bureaucrats; for example, a 12-person Wellness Task Force that organized a guided sound bath experience, Easter egg painting, bouquet making, and an all-day paint-by-numbers bash. It little matters what any of these well-intentioned activities have to do with educating students. What matters is that they help fill the days of administrators, who then need subordinates to whom they can delegate tasks.

Here’s another example: Pomona’s human resources tasks used to be handled quite capably by a single person. Now there is an eight-person Human Resources Department that, in addition to sponsoring workshops on topics like “How to Build Workplace Motivation and Morale,” came up with a slogan that they attach to their campus-wide emails: “Empowering your growth, shaping our future!” Never mind asking why college departments need generic, recycled slogans that seemingly serve no useful purpose. Parkinson’s Law reminds us that bureaucrats need to keep busy so that their bureaucracy can expand relentlessly. Any activity — even the time wasted creating a blah-blah slogan — is time well spent if it furthers that objective.

May I humbly suggest an alternative slogan?: “Powered by Parkinson’s Law.”