How about a first hand example from the secretary at the last university where I worked? The university used to give travelling professors and students a per-diem for food. I think it was around $50 US per day, so pretty reasonable. You had to justify if you spent more than that.
However, while I was there the administration decided that they wanted to cut down on some imagined "abuse" that people were not spending the $50 on food, but maybe kept some of it, or used it to buy a beer heaven forbid. So they required receipts for everything, no more per-diem. Even better, they decided that they know how and when you should eat and set limits on breakfast lunch and dinner individually.
This created so much paperwork that they had to hire more full time staff to go through all the receipts. Clearly this cost the university way way more than it potentially saved and also created huge problems for people with special dietary requirements.
All of this was exclusively caused by the administrative staff, not tenured professors who universally hated it. The older secretaries who were around when things were better also hated it and thought it stupid.
But it served exactly the purpose it was supposed to do which was to make more work for administration. You can't expect some administrator to put themselves out of a job by proposing less paperwork. The only way to break this crazy situation is give them something better to do with their time like teaching and research.
You seem to totally not grok compliance at a fundamental level. You're blaming the tail for wagging, but the dog's tail doesn't wag just because it chooses to.
This is not an external compliance issue, it is entirely the university management that is responsible. Plus, it is only one example out of many. I was never in the system deep enough to be able to recount the other examples, but I certainly remember lots of drama around forced classroom aids and other nonsense.
Excessive bureaucracy is not some inevitable thing that you cannot help. It's driven by people who directly cause it to fester and grow.
Some of my favorite sci-fi authors like Asimov (Foundation) and Harry Harrison (Stainless Steel Rat) might disagree with your last sentence. ;)
Personally, I think both sentences at the end of your comment are correct: it is inevitable that bureaucracy grows, and it is driven by the bureaucrats.
It's almost like a "law" of economics, which, of course, describes human behavior. So they can at once be the cause of something that is inevitable.
How does it makes sense for administration to take their overhead and then spend it hiring unnecessary beurocrats (rather than shuffling funds to give themselves raises)?
The ever-growing regulatory burden that the private sector always cries about? This is the same thing.
However, while I was there the administration decided that they wanted to cut down on some imagined "abuse" that people were not spending the $50 on food, but maybe kept some of it, or used it to buy a beer heaven forbid. So they required receipts for everything, no more per-diem. Even better, they decided that they know how and when you should eat and set limits on breakfast lunch and dinner individually.
This created so much paperwork that they had to hire more full time staff to go through all the receipts. Clearly this cost the university way way more than it potentially saved and also created huge problems for people with special dietary requirements.
All of this was exclusively caused by the administrative staff, not tenured professors who universally hated it. The older secretaries who were around when things were better also hated it and thought it stupid.