Will administrators soon outnumber professors?

In the Nov. 9, 2011 Republican presidential candidates’ debate on the economy, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered a surprising statistic. “By 2014, there will be one administrator for every teacher on college campuses in the United States.”

We did find one study that supported that claim, but we also found it depends on how broadly you define administrator and that the number of instructional staff grew from 2000 to 2008, in part because of the use of part-time faculty. We found it Half True.