If the combined salaries of all administrators at Meechigan account for less than 10% of its totabl budget, is that also a "drop in the bucket" and thus insignificant?
If you want to make an even more sophisticated argument/question, ask him whether 1-10% of the budget is significant given the enormous drop in state support for general funds for public universities over the past 50 years? In other words, if 80% of the general funds for a university used to come from the state and now it is down to 15%, is 2% of the budget devoted to diversicrats significant when faced with the prospect of that percentage of state support dropping to 12% in a couple years?