> If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc.

That's often how it works these days. Means the university can keep most of the workers on lower pay scales and avoid having to grant them tenure.

"If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc."

Well yeah. Professors are like business unit leaders/managers, acquiring funding for research and setting the main outline of what to do. Then the others (usually, although not always, designated 'administrative staff', or grad students/post docs) execute the work. I'm not sure I would call them 'real workers', that implies that others (i.e., managers) don't do 'real work'. I mean I understand what you say - you mean 'real work' as 'producing something', but 'creating the circumstances in which others can produce something' is also work.

It’s not about “who’s doing the real work” it’s a question of what type of work you are doing. A facilities administrator (fancy title for handyman) will have a much more hands-on part in bringing in new research equipment and setting it up. But it’s still the research staff who ordered it and will plan the experiments that get published in nature.

That depends on how you define 'admins', doesn't it. When you have two classes, 'academic' and 'admin', and only professors are 'academic' - well then everybody else is 'admin'. It may sound weird and yes it's outside of the normal usage of 'admin', but in universities it's not uncommon to have this sort of division. It's driven by two things: first the historical context where you had lots of 'academics' who were all professors and had actual secretaries, and very few 'overhead' people like those managing buildings and activities etc (whereas now that's very different, because of the different role of universities); and secondly by the recent trend of keeping the number of 'academics' low because they can't be fired and are expensive. But you still need to hire people, and if they're not 'academics', they're 'admins', even if they don't do what is in common usage seen as 'administrative work'.

shrug I was just responding to the GP with 10 'academic staff' and 70 'administrative staff'. It's not like every professor has 7 secretaries there. Every university divides things differently. I was just pointing out that the 10/70 is not what it looks like at first, or rather, what some people here seen to think. (at least, I think - I'm not GP, maybe they actually do have 7 secretaries each).

The answer depends on the university.

Most universities only distinguish between "academic" positions and "staff" positions.

At most universities, "Academic" positions are something rather specific: usually only the faculty proper, Ph.D.-holding researchers, and maybe a few other student-facing roles (e.g., librarians).

Here is my quick two-part litmus test that's probably pretty accurate for most universities. Assuming you don't know for certain that you are in the "academic" or "staff" bucket, consider these two questions:

0. Are you a Ph.D. student with some funny title like "research assistant"? You are a student. You are not "staff". You are not "academic". You are a student.

1. Do you hold a Ph.D. AND listed as a co-PI on grants? If yes, you're most likely in an "academic" role. If not, you're most likely in a "staff" role (unless you're working with someone who has a shitload of clout).

What happens often in reporting is that "academic" and "staff" numbers are reported, and we assume "staff = administrative".

See the Stanford numbers, for example. Notice how there's no category for "non-administrative non-academic staff". You're either a member of the "academic" group or you're an "other", and the "other" group is not broken out into "administrative" and "not administrative".

Hopefully, this helps. It's all rather confusing and political and, in many cases, institution-specific :)