Goldstein, Administrative staff and faculty compete in two very different economic worlds.  Private sector enterprise competes with universities for skilled administrative staff.  University administrative staff have choices about where they work. To your point, that indeed tends to inflate salaries for admin people. That’s what competition does. Faculty have more limited opportunities if they wish to stay in academia. And generally speaking there is no shortage of qualified instructors, so that dampens salary inflation. I agree with you that faculty are accused of being at the heart of university budget problems. There is some truth to that accusation and it has little to do with faculty salaries. The problem is too many faculty with abysmally low productivity. For example, we can find many instructors teaching one or two courses per semester. For that meager workload they receive a full benefit package and salary for nine months work. In that regard they are part of budget bloat.