Doing More Without Adding Headcount in Higher Education

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Higher education leaders are being asked to do more with less, often while moving faster than ever. For Dr. Shari Veil, Provost and Chief Academic Officer at North Dakota State University, doing more with less isn’t about asking faculty and staff to work harder. They’re already working hard.

Instead, it’s about making more intentional use of the capacity institutions already have. That means looking at where faculty and staff spend their time, which processes create unnecessary work, where technology can reduce administrative burden, and whether resources are still aligned with the students and workforce needs institutions serve today.

In this episode of Next Practices, Veil shares how NDSU is approaching those decisions, why she prefers data-informed over data-driven leadership, and what happens when institutions stop automatically rebuilding yesterday’s university.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Doing More Without Adding Headcount in Higher Education

QHow can higher education do more without adding headcount?

By using existing time, people, and technology more intentionally. Veil points to rethinking advising and scheduling, removing unnecessary processes, and reducing administrative work so faculty and staff can focus on teaching, mentoring, research, and student support.

QHow should colleges use data to make resource decisions?

Veil distinguishes between data-driven and data-informed leadership. Data can reveal patterns, challenge assumptions, and point leaders toward problems — but the strongest decisions combine evidence with the experiences of faculty, staff, and students.

QShould colleges automatically backfill vacant positions?

Not necessarily. Rather than asking “Who do we need to replace?” leaders should ask what the institution needs now to serve students and fulfill its mission. A vacant position may need to be filled differently, moved, or reconsidered altogether.

QHow can colleges reduce administrative burden?

Start with the processes already in place. At NDSU, listening sessions surfaced policies, paperwork, and workarounds consuming time without advancing the mission — reducing that burden frees faculty and staff for higher-value work.

How Higher Education Can Do More With Less Without Working Harder

“Doing more with less” can sound like a simple productivity equation: fewer people and fewer dollars should somehow produce the same amount of work. Veil sees the challenge differently.

Faculty and staff are already carrying significant workloads, so asking them to work harder misses the larger opportunity to rethink how the institution works. As student demographics, workforce needs, public expectations, and technology continue to change, institutions also need to reconsider the programs, processes, roles, and workflows built around an earlier set of needs.

That can mean rethinking the academic program mix, improving advising or scheduling, or investing in technology that reduces administrative work. In each case, the goal is to use limited resources more intentionally.

At NDSU, Veil frames that responsibility around a straightforward standard: every dollar and every hour should support the institution’s mission.

Stewardship Is About Where Resources Create the Most Value

Limited resources force difficult choices. For public universities in particular, those choices carry an added responsibility. Tuition comes from families making an investment in a student’s future. Public funding comes with an expectation that institutions will use those resources wisely. That does not always mean spending less. It can mean stopping something so resources can be reinvested somewhere they will have greater impact.

“We can’t just keep adding things,” Veil explains.

That makes evidence especially important. When decisions are tied to strategy, student needs, and clear evidence, leaders can better explain why resources are changing, even when people disagree with the final decision. Transparency matters because reallocating resources can easily be interpreted as a judgment about the value of a department, discipline, or team.

Data Should Ask the Question, Not Answer It

Veil describes her leadership approach as data-informed, not data-driven. Data can tell an institution that students are struggling in a particular course, but it can’t necessarily explain why.

Lower course success rates can stem from several factors, including course design, academic preparation, or students balancing work and family responsibilities. The students taking the course may also have different needs than leaders assumed.

Getting from what is happening to why it is happening requires people.

“Data should ask the question, not answer it.”

For Veil, that means pairing institutional data with faculty governance, staff expertise, student input, and direct conversations across campus.

The Workarounds Have Workarounds

When Veil arrived at NDSU, she held listening sessions across campus. One of the clearest themes was not a lack of effort. It was the amount of effort being consumed by institutional processes themselves.

Over time, universities add policies, procedures, approvals, and safeguards. People create workarounds when those processes become difficult. Eventually, new processes emerge to manage the workarounds. The result can be faculty and staff spending valuable time navigating the institution rather than advancing its mission.

That creates a different opportunity for leaders facing capacity constraints. Before adding another position, initiative, or technology, look at the work already happening.

Which steps are still necessary?

Which exist largely because they have always existed?

Where is administrative work absorbing capacity that could be spent with students, in classrooms, on research, or solving more valuable problems?

Veil is careful not to advocate change simply for the sake of change. But “we’ve always done it this way” is not enough reason to preserve a process either.

Stop Automatically Rebuilding Yesterday’s University

The same thinking shapes how NDSU approaches hiring. The traditional question after someone retires or leaves is straightforward: Who should replace them?

Veil wants leaders to start somewhere else: What does the university need now to best serve students and fulfill its mission?

NDSU’s strategic hiring process asks deans to consider enrollment trends, workforce demand, research activity, and other evidence before proposing positions. Sometimes replacing a faculty line makes sense. Other times, demand may be growing in another discipline. The institution may need additional advising capacity. Growth in online education may create a greater need for instructional design. Changing student behavior may alter which courses require the most sections. Every open position creates an opportunity to reconsider where a long-term investment will create the greatest value.

As Veil puts it, institutions have to ask whether they are recreating yesterday’s university or investing in tomorrow’s university.

Student Needs Change. Resource Decisions Should Too.

Dual credit offers a clear example. Students increasingly arrive at college having already completed introductory coursework. Some enter with 30, 40, or even 60 credit hours. That does not make foundational courses less valuable. It does change where students need them.

If fewer students need introductory sections once they arrive on campus, while demand grows for upper-level coursework, institutions have to account for that shift when deciding where to put faculty time and resources. Otherwise, they risk preserving capacity where demand used to exist while leaving gaps where students need it now.

This is where data becomes especially useful. It can reveal how enrollment patterns, student behavior, workforce needs, and external forces are changing the institution. Leaders can then bring people into the conversation to decide what those changes mean.

How Colleges Can Create More Capacity Without Adding Headcount

Higher education’s capacity challenge will not be solved by asking people who are already working hard to work harder. It requires institutions to examine how work gets done, where resources go, which assumptions still hold, and which processes no longer serve the people they were designed to support.

Technology, data, and new operating models can all help institutions create more capacity, but Veil’s approach keeps people at the center of how those tools are used.

The point of creating capacity is not simply to make an institution more efficient. It is to give faculty and staff more time to teach, mentor, discover, solve problems, and support students.

Limited resources make it even more important to focus them on the work that matters most.

Links & Resources:

• Shari Veil (LinkedIn)
• Shari Veil (NDSU bio)
• NDSU

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