Too much bureaucracy

Students I tried to help yesterday included:

1. An undergrad who in order to be allowed to take a graduate level course had to get signatures from four diffferent people.
2. A PhD student in his final semester trying to register in absentia. In order to do so, he needed three forms. Two are signed by two people, and the other is signed by six people. There was also a 4th form requested, but I got him out of that one in the following way: I emailed person 1, who told me to email person 2. I e-mailed person 2 who sent a message back to me and person 1. Based on this, person 1 then sent me an email saying he approved. I then forwarded the email from person 1 to persons 3 and 4.
   

Of all the signatures needed, none are mine. I am the person who makes it my job to know the rules, but I'm no longer allowed to sign anything because I'm not a faculty member. The people who do sign may not know all the rules, so sometimes a form goes through that doesn't meet all the requirements, and the form gets rejected. If that happens, then, after collecting all those signatures, the student has to do the form over again and collect all the signatures again. Also, faculty sometimes go to conferences in other countries, so if the person whose signature is needed is away, the student is out of luck.

Students are here to learn, not to run around collecting signatures. There are times when it is good to have someone check that what a student is doing fulfills the requirements, but there's no use in getting signatures from people who don't really check what they're signing. Sometimes it seems like the administrators spend their time thinking up more hoops for students, staff, and faculty to jump through, taking more and more time away from what we are here for, which in my opinion ought to be educating students. My job is to help students with paperwork, and I like doing it, but I things are getting out of hand.