Administrative staff in modern universities: international experience analysis

Reform of the Russian higher education system is aimed at upgrading quality of universities and changing their role in the development of science and economics of the country. It suggests major change of academic performance evaluation principles and upgrading of university administration's responsibility for the quality of rendered services. Several universities received special status, several were merged, there is an ongoing change of executive staff at ineffective universities, academic activity financing system is also changing. Eventually it will require rethinking of academic staff functions and tasks as well as structure. Russia literature dos not present complete overview of this problem. Foreign academic publications have demonstrated interest towards administration efficacy for a considerable period of time and the topic of staff numbers increase has been raised many times. This article analyses main trends related to administrative staff changes at foreign higher educational institutions. We describe dynamics of academic and administrative staff numbers, dynamics of administrative costs' share in the overall costs structure of the university; qualitative changes in the functions of administrative staff during the recent years; provide systematic description of main theoretical explanations for existing processes.