THE BURDEN OF COMPETENCE. It's the phenomenon I refer to as punished for being cooperative, and there's some venting on the subject at Reassigned Time.

I am not an administrator. And the more administrative duties that somehow land in my lap, the more I have to pick and choose which parts of my job I will do adequately and which parts of my job I let slide. Notice that there is no pride in doing a good job in this scenario, because it's pretty much impossible to do a really good job when you're being pulled in about a thousand different directions. Especially when some of those directions in which you're being pulled are into doing administrative bean-counting that has nothing ****** to do with being a college professor.

I propose to unpackage this proposition. Faculty at Reassigned's university, like those at most other public comprehensives and land-grants, are doing the work of three or four people, a combination of budget constraints and misguided notions of productivity. Those administrative burdens include the numerous pet projects that are tangential to higher education, but keep the special education division active. Draw your own conclusion.