Oh, and also it's important for actual teaching...

Just saw, buried down the page on this Inside Higher Ed.com Quick Takes, that concern is rising that employment patterns in higher education are making it tougher to find qualified faculty to become administrators. The note mentions that only 3% of folks under the age of 34 who are teaching are doing so in full-time positions.

That's a lot of adjuncts (and likely grad students), though maybe it would be a little tempered by how many people teaching are under 34. I'm betting the number is higher than my first impression of it.

It amuses me though that the thrust of this is on how this is affecting administration and not on, say, how it impacts the quality of education itself. It's a bit like when I worked in the corporate world and there was a big shake up. The whole company freaked out because they were afraid they weren't going to have enough middle-managers. The thought was "of course we can get folks on the line: there's a ton of them."

It came back to bite that company in the ass, and I do wonder whether it won't do the same here in good ol' higher education.