Today’s institutions of higher education are complex organizations, some easily comparable to small cities. While we pay much attention to their eager students, their esteemed faculty and researchers, we often overlook the people who make them run—the administrators. On a daily basis, administrators manage the ins and outs of the often behemoth organizations for which they work, each in its particular set of circumstances, its individual people, and its peculiar assets and liabilities.

Confessions of an Habitual Administrator offers practical principles for survival based on a clear concept of what a university should strive to be. These principles are distilled into some general rules, called "Bryant's Laws," that are designed to produce good administrative decisions and to prevent bad ones. Based on the author's 46 years in academe, this book is a candid and often humorous look at one administrator's experiences and the lessons he learned. These lessons are relevant to a variety of settings and will help administrators to understand their opportunities and to avoid pitfalls.

Contents include

• How professors become administrators, or, where did I go wrong?
• The selection process
• Doing the job: Administrative concepts
• Doing the job: Staff and students
• Doing the job: Faculty
• Accountability and academic freedom
• The budget and resources maze
• What is a university? Or, what should it be?
• Who should govern a university?