Dr. Glenn Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, has a new column in USA Today that focuses on a major factor in the Higher Education Bubble: Skyrocketing administrative costs.

Now colleges and universities are actually facing declining enrollments, and in some cases even credit downgrades as their ability to endlessly raise tuition comes into question. But why has tuition risen so fast?

Some commentators blame lazy, overpaid faculty. But while faculty teaching loads are somewhat lower than they were decades ago, faculty-student ratios have been quite stable over the past several decades, while the ratio of administrators and staff to students has become much less favorable. In his book on administrative bloat, The Fall Of The Faculty, Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg reports that although student-faculty ratios fell slightly between 1975 and 2005, from 16-to-1 to 15-to-1, the student-to-administrator ratio fell from 84-to-1 to 68-to-1, and the student-to-professional-staff ratio fell from 50-to-1 to 21-to-1. Ginsberg concludes: “Apparently, when colleges and universities had more money to spend, they chose not to spend it on expanding their instructional resources, i.e. faculty. They chose, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources.”

And when they had less money to spend, they did the same thing. Ginsberg comments that even during the recession, “Colleges reined in spending on instruction and faculty salaries, hired more part-time adjunct faculty and fewer full-time professors and, yet, found the money to employ more and more administrators and staffers. ”

A simple stroll through most campuses will underscore this change. The number of buildings devoted to administration is much greater than in past years. Priorities show in other ways, too: While more and more actual teaching is outsourced to low-paid adjuncts who lack job security or, often, benefits, the work of administration never seems to be outsourced this way. Who ever heard of an “adjunct administrator?”

…But the biggest challenges facing overpriced and bloated institutions will come from technology and the market. With lower-priced alternatives appearing online just as buyer resistance to increased tuition is taking off, colleges must adapt. Purdue University President Mitchell Daniels remarked recently, “Why, in 10 or 15 years, will students still find it wise to pay lots of money to go and live somewhere for four or more years, when a host of competitors are offering to bring them excellent teachers and instruction in the inexpensive comfort of their own homes?” Daniels went on to note that many other industries have seen sudden declines when consumers found better alternatives.

He’s right. Smart higher education leaders around the nation will be asking his question, and looking at ways to cut administration and costs, before it’s too late.