The high-level administration has multiplied also, in addition to the more peripheral administrative initiatives growing. Where there might have once been a Chancellor and perhaps a Vice Chancellor, there's now a whole Office of the Chancellor, a slew of Vice-Chancellors and Executive Vice Chancellors and Provosts and Deans and Associate Deans, all with staff, etc. Their pay has also increased, even relative to other university pay; the salary multiple of top-level administrators relative to a median professor in 2010 versus 1960 is much larger.

It seems to largely be a result of the professionalization of the administration; in ye olden days universities were largely self-run by the faculty, with Deans and Vice-Deans just being professors who moved up into that position, sometimes rotating in temporarily. Now there's a whole category of professional career administrators who jump school-to-school, roughly parallel to the executive-management class in private-sector organizations (and they expect salaries in the $200k-$600k range).

But they need to meet the "evolving standard of care in education that is set externally."

One of the most revealing pieces of this interview: ...the dark little secret about these [merit] grants. They do not create access to higher education for students who otherwise could not go.

Interesting - merit grants are not helpful for people who can't afford college? Doesn't that imply that people who can't afford college (mostly) lack merit?

Oops, politically incorrect thought.