They didn’t used to have to deal with FAR and DFARS compliance, export compliance, cybersecurity, iEdison reporting, and so on. Nevertheless, the administrative component of F&A indirects has been capped at 26% for years. The universities have to fill the budget gap with other funds (and no, not tuition, that is not used for the research enterprise).

This is exactly it. A modern university has needs that are far greater and demanding than one of 50+ years ago. And generally, the people doing the ground-level work are underpaid and overworked. If anything, there may be a glut of VP and C-level positions, but they don’t make up the bulk of employees.

In addition to what the other commenter said, most of the public universities doing scientific research used to be far better funded from their states than they are today on a cost-per-student basis. Additional administrative staff that many universities now have is often necessitated by their regulatory complexity as well as the need for generating different sources of funding. These are broad statements that do oversimplify matters, but part of the full story.

Why would digitization reduce the number of university admins? I'm sure there were some clerks and secretaries whose jobs were automated, but the universities also had to add huge IT departments. Plus, everything about a university is more complicated now then in was 50 years ago. In 1970, Harvard had 6000 applicants for 1200 freshman spots. Today it has 54,000 for 1900 spots. I'm sure the percentage that are international is vastly higher now. Probably a higher percentage want to visit campus. Financial aid is a lot more complicated. So just the admissions office is doing much more work.

> In 1970, Harvard had 6000 applicants for 1200 freshman spots. Today it has 54,000 for 1900 spots.

Why not sort descending by SAT score and call it a day? Evaluating things like extracurriculars continues to be classist bullshit and is probably responsible for making acceptance criteria "complicated".

By this metric I would have got into any school I wanted, but that’s just because I put an exceptional amount of effort into preparing for the test. My grades and extracurriculars weren’t top-notch. I did go to an elite-ish school and it was clear that many other students deserved to be there more than me (ie. were able to contribute to society more in various ways), and in my view that difference was legible in the admissions process.

Because SAT scores, alone, tell you nothing about a candidate outside of their ability to completely that test.

Because when it comes to Harvard, out of 54,000 applications you'll have at least 1900 perfect SAT scores. Then how do you decide who to admit? You still need some process.

Alternatively, why have they not expanded the number of available seats with the more than adequate resources available?

> Then how did the universities operate before the increases?

Easily. Every additional rule and regulation has a compliance cost, we've added far too many rules and regulations.