Colleges and universities are cutting budgets by the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. But what exactly are they cutting - fat or lean?

There are two new contributions to the debate, which is more like a shouting match on many campuses. The two key questions: Are the masses of administrators and executives who sprouted across higher education in flush times taking their fair share of the pain during the current crisis? And will the crisis really force higher education to be more efficient?

Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg has buttressed his acerbic attacks on higher education's "bureaucracy gone wild" with a new book. But a report out Wednesday from a research group offers a more positive take. It concludes that compared to previous downturns, colleges have better resisted the temptation to balance the books with easy cuts to teaching, and are trying to make structural reforms.

"These guys know that doing the usual round of across-the-board cuts and waiting for the money to come back wasn't going to work this time," said Jane Wellman, executive director of Delta Cost Project, which studies university spending patterns.

Thousands of jobs lost

College teaching has taken an unprecedented hit during the Great Recession. Universities have cut tens of thousands of mostly part-time teaching positions. That means fewer and more crowded classes, and much more work for teachers who remain.

The University of North Carolina system has eliminated more than 3,000 positions - mostly adjunct professors - to bridge a $414 million state budget cut this year. The California State system - which has lost roughly $1 billion in funding - has turned away 50,000 otherwise admissible students in recent years for lack of resources to teach them.

Change is happening

But at the same time, major system reorganizations are under way in several states. Recently the University of Wisconsin detailed plans to cut 51 jobs at its system HQ, giving more autonomy to branch campuses and shielding them somewhat from even harsher cuts. Missouri's university system has cut central-office jobs, while universities in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are all at least starting to collaborate on bulk purchasing.

The latest Delta Project report covers only spending through 2009, so it captures only the early stages of the latest budget pressures. But it does suggest universities have begun making important changes in spending.

Over the past 10 years at public universities, instructional spending rose only around 10 percent per student, while spending on "institutional support" rose 15 percent and maintenance 20 percent. But more recently the figures have turned. In 2009, instructional spending rose 1 percent, administrative spending 0.4 percent and operations fell 5 percent.

"The first place that they're going is in those administrative areas," Wellman said. "There's big money in that. It's painful but they have to do it."

Administrative job postings

And yet, just when you think the budget battles of the Great Recession might be what finally tamed academia's sprawling bureaucracies, take a look at the job openings listed with The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.

On the latter's website last week, fewer than 40 percent of the approximately 7,100 help-wanted ads posted by colleges and universities were for faculty jobs.

The other two-thirds were for administrative and executive jobs, some with titles that make critics cringe: "Marketing Coordinator," "Consultant-Talent Acquisition" and "Director of Discovery."

Plenty of campuses still have their share of Ginsberg's stock characters - like the business-minded dean obsessed with starting new programs and writing strategic plans but out of touch with the basic business of teaching.

Ginsberg's book, "The Fall of The Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters," notes that in 1975, roughly 275,000 administrators and staffers supported 450,000 professors on college campuses. By 2005, staffers and administrators easily outnumbered teachers.

Ginsberg said he's glad to hear the Delta Project found signs of progress but doubts it will last. He says universities are treating the symptoms, not the disease.

"Senior administrators still have good reasons to extend the ranks of their administrative armies," he said in a telephone interview. "All the deans and deanlets and dingalings hire more of themselves and make work for one another."