Yesterday I took my daily walk to the park, and I met a fellow professor. Though he is at a small LAC and I am at a large, state, research university, we had no trouble telling “funny” anecdotes about administrators for half an hour.
Perhaps the funniest one was about how administrators had taken admissions and recruitment away from faculty at his small school, found out they were not as effective as faculty (parents wanted faculty contact), and now wanted the faculty to become re-involved. The faculty, however, had discovered (1) they enjoyed using that time for other activiities and (2) that the administrators wanted the faculty to function under them. Since the administrators had already proved their incompetence, the faculty had no desire to work under them.
I then told a tale about how administrators had tried to run our teaching center by having administrators (with minimal teaching background) run workshops for the faculty on how to teach. No one turned up. After running the teaching center into the ground for 5 years, they finally have put a faculty member back in charge, but he has a major task putting the center back on track.
Hurray for the great services brought by administrators!