Limited budget vs uncapped budget.

The way student loans are structured is the cause.

Michigan state is a public university, which generally aren't as bad because their mission tend towards providing low cost education to residents.

Stanford University, for example: Academic staff: 2,279; Administrative staff: 15,314, Students: 17,246 - that's basically 1:1

A less prestigious private university like University of Southern California: Academic staff: 4,706; Administrative staff: 16,614; Students: 49,318 - that's about 1:2.5

But both of those universities are quasi-private (I don't consider any university to be truly private unless proven otherwise) so it's less of a concern. That being said w.r.t administrative staff some of those staff may be research scientists that work with academic staff, or maybe they're dual-employed at Meta and Stanford, or something like that.

You have to really break down the administrative staff number (if that's what's of concern here) to see what people are doing to make an informed argument (not saying you are making an uninformed argument or anything like that).

-edit-

For a while I was in on the administrative staff thing and I certainly think there is bloat and just flat out incompetence at many universities in this area, but I also think it's a bit of a red herring to avoid other issues like funding reductions, etc.

Are adjuncts included in those numbers? Universities use a ton of contract labor to teach classes and those adjuncts aren't actually employees.