There are a lot of administrative staff at research universities whose jobs support... research. Is there bloat and are there too many managers/VPs? Probably somewhat, but the more of the grant administration work that gets pushed back down to PIs and research groups, the less time they have for research. They will also make many mistakes in both grant applications and how they spend the money, because the regulations are byzantine. That will jeopardize future funding and possibly get them penalized.
Yes, and similarly to increase the efficiency of our healthcare system, I suppose doctors should have to get good at also doing their own billing, janitorial, etc.
I've worked with a lot of brilliant people who know how to do the paperwork that they have to do, and then they do it. Don't believe me? Check out the paperwork that medical doctors have to do -- it's insane, and what these researchers are being asked to do (assuming it's admins who get laid off) is way less. Or how about software developers? We have to dot our i's and cross our t's all over the place -- design reviews, architecture reviews, code reviews, test writing, and lots of process, and then we get to maintain and debug our own code and sometimes even operate it.
