At the University that I went to, Wisconsin, there are 2200 academic staff. (Professors, TAs, Deans, etc).

The total number of employees, however, is roughly 21000.

Now I understand that this is due to large, operations level bureaucracies that are necessary to pull off something like a University of Wisconsin. Facilities and Plant, Campus police, not to even speak of the big ones like DoIT. (DoIT is all the IT people. Network support, web developers, DBAs etc.) I get that. At the same time, that's almost a 10 to 1 ratio. Keep in mind, the University of Wisconsin is one of the more frugal universities out there in this regard.

Again, I don't question that some of this is necessary, how much? I don't know. But having the numbers and the positions these people are employed in does put us in a better position to, at a minimum, have an informed discussion of the subject.

I know that if the University of Wisconsin shut down the math department because the web developers and DBAs at DoIT had to be paid, I would definitely be someone who would assume that to be an unwise decision. Just putting myself in the shoes of the people who care about the subject university.