Bureaucratic bulge

The Economist has (yet another)  article on the educational bubble and the lack of perceived value that lies behind the rising costs of higher education. The figure below will not be too surprising to anybody who has been around universities a while: universities have become very complex, if not complicated organisations, and at any one time it is seems very hard to justify so much of their activity in terms of the classroom. [Nice to know that student services exclude education….]. It would be much nicer to be able to drill down a level: how much of the fees undergraduates pay end up in the classroom.