Administrative staff are crucial to university efficiency, but only in teaching-oriented institutions

(Press-News.org) An international team of researchers, including scholars from HSE University, has analysed how the number of non-academic staff affects a university’s performance. The study found that the outcome depends on the institution’s profile: in research universities, the share of administrative and support staff has no effect on efficiency, whereas in teaching-oriented universities, there is a positive correlation. The findings have been published in Applied Economics.

In today’s universities, academic staff make up less than 50% of the workforce on average, while the number of administrative and support employees is growing worldwide. In Australia, for example, the proportion of non-academic staff increased by 53% between 1997 and 2017, and in Denmark by as much as 93%. Researchers from the HSE Institute of Education (IOE), together with colleagues from Italy, the UK and Germany, analysed data from Russia to determine whether there is a link between university efficiency and the number of auxiliary, technical, and administrative staff.

The authors examined data from 252 public universities covering the years 2012 to 2021. These institutions account for 67% of all students in Russia. The researchers divided them into two categories: research universities and teaching-oriented universities. The main criterion for classification was the share of income from R&D, which must be at least 10% in research-oriented institutions. In assessing efficiency, they considered student numbers, and for research universities, also the number of publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and income from R&D.

The analysis showed no relationship between the number of non-academic staff and performance in research universities. In teaching-oriented universities, however, the correlation was positive: the higher the proportion of administrative and support employees, the more efficiently the institution operated. Further analysis confirmed that it is administrative staff in particular who play a key role in improving performance.

‘Our findings suggest that a uniform HR policy for all universities may be ineffective. In teaching-focused institutions, expanding the number of non-academic staff helps to manage administrative workloads and support the educational process. In research universities, by contrast, what matters is not the number but the specialisation and functions of administrators,’ says Pavel Serebrennikov, one of the study’s authors and Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Laboratory for University Development.

The study is based on the modern conditional efficiency method. While this approach does not establish causal relationships, it allows researchers to accurately identify patterns, taking into account the complex nature of universities.

‘This does not mean that every university must follow these recommendations strictly, but they can be useful for policymakers when allocating resources and developing incentive systems for universities,’ the authors note.

The findings could inform higher education policy, taking into account the diverse missions and organisational models of universities. In future, the researchers plan to study the roles of different types of non-academic staff in determining institutional efficiency.

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