A comparison between the rise of university administration and other institutional growth patterns --such as student enrollment, faculty, and the increasing demand of business and financial affairs --reveals that administration has grown about the same rate as the student body and total faculty. During the first 250 years of higher education in the US, administration depended on the character and attitude of the college president. Today, no standards exist for determining the number of administrative officers necessary for the most efficient operation of a university. Importance should be placed on the effect of various teaching faculty-administrative faculty ratios on the quality of instruction as measured by test scores, persistence to graduate, enrollment in graduate schools, success after graduation, and other factors. A decrease in the teaching faculty, with a constant size student body, will naturally mean larger classes. Although a large segment of the faculty would react negatively to increases in the size of the administrative faculty, several studies of controlled experiments indicated that a decrease in the size of the teaching faculty would not have adverse effects on educational outcomes. Small classes were not shown to have any advantage over large classes. A critical test of leadership would be to shift more effort into administrative functions while minimizing teaching faculty losses. (WM)