I expect that the need for “support” roles scales roughly-linearly with the number of faculty. As I understand it, this is how most businesses ordinarily work, i.e. the need for support staff is roughly proportional to the number of object-level workers, at least once the organization passes ~100 people.
I would expect that to be the case for staff who truly support faculty. But many of them seem to be there to directly support students, rather than via faculty. The number of student mental health coordinators (and so on) you need doesn’t scale with the number of faculty you have. The largest increase in this category is ‘student services’, which seems to be definitely of this nature.
I expect that the need for “support” roles scales roughly-linearly with the number of faculty. As I understand it, this is how most businesses ordinarily work, i.e. the need for support staff is roughly proportional to the number of object-level workers, at least once the organization passes ~100 people.
I would expect that to be the case for staff who truly support faculty. But many of them seem to be there to directly support students, rather than via faculty. The number of student mental health coordinators (and so on) you need doesn’t scale with the number of faculty you have. The largest increase in this category is ‘student services’, which seems to be definitely of this nature.