Bureaucracy in academia is not a department. It is a weather system — permanent, unpredictable, and strangely indifferent to human suffering.

It sits quietly in file rooms, crawls through committee corridors, hides inside circulars, and shows up uninvited in every conversation that begins with: “Actually, as per the new guidelines…”

But the true essence of academic bureaucracy is revealed only in private, off-duty conversations — where academics, freed from their official roles, speak the truth gently, like people remembering a long war they never signed up for.

Scene 1: Cambridge, Rainy Evening — Three Academics Under an Awning

A historian, a physicist, and a sociologist — all global stars in their fields — huddle together waiting for the rain to stop.

The historian sighs,

“I wrote a book in two years… and spent four years filling forms related to that book.”

The physicist adds,

“I built a prototype in nine months… spent nine years getting approvals to demonstrate it.”

The sociologist laughs softly,

“And I still don’t know which committee I’m actually on.”

They laugh — not out of humour, but survival.

Scene 2: Staff Room, Indian University — Afternoon Tea

A brilliant economics professor, exhausted after a full day of teaching, flips through a thick NAAC file.

She murmurs,

“Every page wants evidence.

But no page asks if students actually learned anything.”

Her colleague responds,

“This system doesn’t measure learning. It measures paperwork mimicking learning.”

They sip tea, smile, and return to their respective stacks of proofs, photos, attendance sheets, formatted reports, and the dreaded “Annexure 4.2(b).”

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Scene 3: International Conference, Berlin — Dinner Table Whisper

A professor from Tokyo University leans toward a European research director.

“You know what terrifies me?” he says quietly.

“We have replaced thinking with compliance.”

The director nods grimly,

“And compliance has become so vast… that nobody remembers what they were originally complying for.”

The table falls silent.

Academic bureaucracy has no geographical boundaries.

It is a global pandemic without a vaccine.

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Scene 4: The Dean’s Office — Anywhere in the World

A dean looks at the never-ending stream of files on the table:

• ranking formats

• accreditation dashboards

• grant utilisation certificates

• faculty workload matrices

• audit reports

• policy alignment charts

• curriculum revision summaries

• stakeholder feedback rubrics

He leans back and whispers to his trusted colleague,

“I became dean to shape minds…

and now my job is to shape spreadsheets.”

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Scene 5: An IIT Professor Walking After Class

He tells his former student, now a policy advisor:

“We became guardians of compliance, not guardians of curiosity.”

The student, embarrassed, says,

“Sir, the system was designed to prevent fraud.”

The professor smiles sadly,

“And in the process, it prevented freedom.”

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The Cruel Irony

Bureaucracy was meant to bring order.

Instead, it brought inertia.

It was meant to support teachers.

Instead, teachers support it — with hours of unpaid emotional labour.

It was designed to track performance.

Instead, it tracks paperwork pretending to be performance.

It was supposed to nurture quality.

Instead, it nurtures templates.

It was supposed to elevate academics.

Instead, it exhausts them.

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The Emotional Cost

A professor from UCLA once admitted to her colleague from JNU:

“Every form I fill takes away a minute of my brilliance.”

And her colleague replied,

“Every committee meeting takes away a year of my youth.”

They weren’t joking.

They weren’t exaggerating.

They were simply tired.

Academic bureaucracy doesn’t break people loudly.

It breaks them quietly — by stealing their time, their spirit, and the very reason they entered academia: to think, to teach, to learn.

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Yet There Is Hope — the Reluctant Teachers Fight Back

Not with rebellion, but with resilience.

They steal time for their students in between forms.

They squeeze research into the cracks of their day.

They prepare lectures after dinner, after committee meetings, after quota approvals, after uploading proofs.

They keep the lamp of learning alive

— despite the storm of bureaucracy blowing against it.

As one professor from UPenn joked during a retreat:

“Academia survives because teachers keep doing the right thing… even when nobody is watching… especially when nobody is watching.”

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The Truth

Bureaucracy did not kill academia.

But it slowed it down.

It dimmed its brilliance.

It drained its stamina.

It muffled its voice.

And yet — somehow — academia continues.

Because the Reluctant Teachers are still standing.

Still teaching.

Still trying.

Still hoping.

Still doing the real work while the system buries them in forms.

They may be tired, but they are undefeated.

And that is the only reason the academic world still breathes.