Students have demonstrated for more ethic studies programs and lower tuition rates, and against national and global economic structures — namely capitalism — university investments in unethical corporations and their undue influence on campus curriculum and research as well as a range of other university practices and policies.

The rumblings amongst students nationwide are encouraging for many, particularly those struggling for a more just society. For others, namely university administrators, student activism marks a direct affront to their supreme control over the goings-on on campuses and to the assembly line-esque progression of college kids from students to docile workers and donors within a broader capitalist country.

At nearly every turn, university administrators work to undermine, intimidate, silence and ultimately neutralize college activists to maintain the status quo. After all, their six-figure salaries depend on the continuation of policies which empower them while simultaneously disempowering others with whom they share their campuses with.

I do want to say some university administrators provide necessary services to students and many are well-intentioned. But over the past several decades, built into the actual architecture of higher education is a renewed desire amongst the university establishment to centralize control over campus policies and their overall brand.

A new book out last year by Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg, “The Fall of the Faculty,” chronicles decades of bureaucratic growth at American universities. Ginsberg writes that between 1975 and 2005, faculty numbers at universities have raised 51 percent compared to an 85 percent raise in the number of administrators and an amazing 240 percent increase in university support staff.

The result, argues Ginsberg, is the disempowering of faculty and students in the decision making process at universities and a general loss of academic freedom as well as a shift in universities from places for education to places of business.

And Ginsberg is not alone in his concern.

This month, Yale’s campus paper wrote about the “long-standing concern among some professors that unnecessary bureaucratic positions drain resources from the University.” The paper wrote that among faculty, some “worry about a growth of unnecessary positions and the centralization of power within the University” which threatens academic freedom, the faculty tenure system and the implementation of progressive and innovative university policies.

As students struggle for more autonomy and socially just campus policies and practices, there are rays of hope. Faculty at several campuses have joined students participating in teach-ins and demonstrations. Last week at the University of California, Berkeley, months after campus police at other University of California campuses beat and wounded students engaged in nonviolent protests, faculty joined students in an occupation of a library and warned off administrators and police from removing anyone from the sit-in. This after faculty at UC Davis, Berkeley and others across the country have called for university police and administrators involved in the assault of student protesters to resign or be fired.

As students, we are living through a revival of massive and widespread social justice struggles reminiscent of the 1960s. In order to make substantial and lasting change, we must build broad coalitions amongst students and faculty to imaginatively challenge regressive university and governmental policies.

Mitch Goldsmith is a State News guest columnist and social relations and policy, women’s and gender studies senior. Reach him at goldsm40@msu.edu.