Centralise, Centralise, let not one task evade your eyes...

Naval historian, C. Northcote Parkinson coined the phrase:

 "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

This is known as Parkinson's law.  Parkinson was a University man and so may well have been thinking about the increasing managerialism and centralisation in modern Higher Education (doubtful, as he died in 1993, but bear with me...)

picture from: kisspng-trinidad-blackhole

Over thirty years in Higher Education have certainly taught me that Parkinson was partially correct.  The work certainly expands but not always because we want to "look busy" as "the boss is coming".

The work expands as:

• Centrally positioned administrators find "efficiencies" in faculty based administrators and academics taking on more administrative tasks.
• The multiplication of meetings, sometimes to discuss other meetings, soaks up time better spent on the "real work".
• IT systems multiply as new uses of technology are embraced.  The investment in getting each to talk to existing or separate systems never quite materialises.
• Marketing, Human Resources, Finance and Academic Registry procedures are codified, translated into forms to be completed by staff and then embedded deep in intranet sites, clearly to challenge the intellectual capacity of users.
• The concept of "end user" control is applauded and enthusiastically applied to everything from booking travel, claiming expenses, getting permission to travel, submitting, refereeing, announcing and recording research outputs, classroom booking, equipment requests, photocopying, VLE completion....the list goes on.

A pity that time does not expand so as to ensure that the work assigned can be completed.