It comes as no surprise that the University of Massachusetts has announced yet another increase in tuition and fees. Colleges and universities throughout the nation, public and private, are in lockstep in increasing the cost of higher education substantially in excess of inflation (“Tuition hike on tap at UMass,” April 4). This is one phenomenon that is not very difficult to explain. Indeed, a single word encapsulates the explanation: Bureaucracy.

Higher education bureaucracies exploded to the point where there now are some three times more administrators than there are professors at Harvard and other private universities.  Indeed, at UMass the percentage is doubtless even higher, since the beleaguered system is home to a small army of retired politicians. (Howie Carr – are you listening?)

I first ran as a petition candidate for election to the Harvard Board of Overseers in 2009, when I needed only 250 alumni signatures to gain a place on the ballot. I easily attained that figure. Indeed, I came very close to winning a seat but missed by  a whisker. Why? Because the Harvard Alumni Association, which governs the elections, refused my request that it send out to the alumni body my platform positions. That privilege, they told me, is enjoyed by the official nominees only. When I attempted to run for a second time, I learned to my dismay but not to my surprise that the bureaucrats had hiked the number of petition signatures to one-percent of Harvard’s total alumni body – that is, approximately 3,000 signatures.

Harvard may be good at many things, but is deserves a Nobel Prize in candidate suppression and circling the wagon for the status quo. And Harvard is not alone. The disease of bureaucratic bloat has spread to colleges and universities throughout our nation. The time has long since arrived for students and their parents – the victims of this bureaucratic racket – to rebel and force the dismissal of at least 90% of the bureaucratic army.

Harvey Silverglate

Cambridge

Can the reputation of the Boston City Council sink any lower, or are we at rock bottom now?  Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson stresses the importance of performance and accountability yet has seven missed votes since taking office for the councilor.

These, of course, are votes that force councilors to stand for something, to actually demonstrate that the people who put them in office are getting the representation they expect.

Any Boston city councilor who misses a vote shouldn’t be paid.  It’s all too easy for them to skip votes so that they can avoid taking on an issue they can’t handle.  There should be zero tolerance for absences.

Sean F. Flaherty

Boston