“Doing more with less” has long been worn as a badge of good stewardship in higher education. It’s worth asking, honestly, when it stops being that and starts being something else.
When a vacancy goes unfilled and its responsibilities simply migrate to whoever is left standing, that can look like efficiency on a budget spreadsheet. On the ground, it often looks like quiet erosion — a slow accumulation of extra duties that no one signed up for, absorbed by people who are too committed to the mission to say no.
Good stewardship asks what an institution can responsibly stop doing, not just what its people can be asked to absorb. That’s a harder conversation than trimming a line item, because it requires leaders to name priorities out loud and let some things go. But institutions that never have that conversation tend to find out the hard way, through turnover, burnout, or both, that “more with less” has a limit.
Where is your institution on that spectrum right now — and who’s decided?
