Touborg objects to the contention, noting that the central administration, on the recommendation of the Central Administration Budget Committee, has instructed each of its departments to limit the growth of its 1996 budget to no more than two percent, roughly equal to the rate of inflation.

And before this year, Rudenstine says, there were no requests for the specific information; as a result, individual growth figures were often lumped into aggregate statistics.

"It hasn't been an issue particularly, and therefore people have been added out," says Rudenstine. "Because putting things in little boxes, that's sort of the way somebody wants to know it...it's not so easy to reconstruct 20 years, or leave alone six or seven or eight."

According to Landes, however, concerns about the size and scope of the central administration are not new.

"I've been calling for a report on the budget of the central administration for the past 10 years," Landes says. "I've become a pessimist on the issue. The central administration doesn't have the answers because it doesn't even know the numbers involved."

Better Recordkeeping

Limitations in the University's recordkeeping system pose a formidable obstacle to the accurate measurement of the central administration's growth, Rudenstine says.

"We do not have the kind of information technology system in place that connects all of Harvard," Rudenstine says. "And that means that almost everything that has been done has been hand-calculated, and it has been hand-calculated snapshots, and sometimes the snapshots have been at different times of the year."

Rudenstine adds that Harvard's sheer size, combined with the fierce decentralization of its schools, creates further complications.

"This is not to say that there hasn't been growth," Rudenstine says. "It is simply to say that tracking the growth and getting it precise, and reconciling different bases, isn't as easy as one might wish."

Touborg says the administration is currently moving to develop a technologically-improved record-keeping system.

"The result will be a better grip on growth, and a better sense about how it compares in one area or another," she says.

Touborg adds that the planned improvements will allow the administration to monitor growth more precisely by distinguishing between seasonal fluctuations and permanent increases in support staff.

The central administration currently uses a system based upon changes in payroll expenditures, Touborg says.

But Landes says improved record-keeping alone will not be enough; the University requires a fundamental change in the way it spends its money.