Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching • Hacker News Board

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#31

Post by devrandomguy » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:02 PM UTC

forkLding wrote: post #3

I have actually had an idea related to the sort of debt had to be taken by American university students for their academics. Why not use a mixture of blended learning and Coursera, where students pay not just professors but also industry folk for cutting-edge knowledge but also open up a marketplace for Youtube tutorial people to do physical workshops in their cities that can be charged and move onto a sort of Airbnb…

If our local makerspace can score a little funding in there somewhere for a glass workshop, I'm sure we would love to squeeze in a small bio/chem lab to go along with that and the electronics lab. We can make most of our own equipment, and our business license ought to enable us to buy chemicals from otherwise discriminating suppliers.

To put things in perspective financially, we appear to be sustaining ourselves on $40/mo memberships, with materials sold at cost for members. Projects for the outside world are expected to bring revenue in to the group, with a suggested minimum price of 2x material cost, unless they are for a charity or a primary/secondary school.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#32

Post by barake » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:02 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #6

Yes. This is why I refuse to donate to my alma mater anymore. Tuition has nearly tripled in in fourteen years while they are still teaching the same number of students with roughly the same or fewer full time faculty. There's something seriously wrong with that and this is a huge symptom of it. Until they get their shit together, they need less money coming in, not more. This is supposed to be a nonprofit institution…

Is tuition actually going up by that much? Most schools raise prices to raise scholarships to raise rankings, leaving revenue virtually flat.

There is a coordinated effort to temporarily exempt schools from antitrust rules so they can collectively coordinate a tuition drop, and stop the fake scholarship arms race.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#33

Post by fav_collector » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:06 PM UTC

muninn_ wrote: post #5

We can't cut the pointless admin for public schools because we need to comply with government regulations. Not making a judgement call here, but it's there.

What government regulations are relevant in this case?

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#34

Post by 2017Dude » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:07 PM UTC

rfdub wrote: post #29

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post secondary institutions are positioning themselves less and less and places to get an education and more and more as places to go for an "experience." Its no longer enough to provide a quality education, universities now are selling themselves on their facilitie…

Not sure about student party life experience given the recent rise of "no-fault" false rape allegations. Cannot be as careless anymore.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#35

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:08 PM UTC

rfdub wrote: post #29

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post secondary institutions are positioning themselves less and less and places to get an education and more and more as places to go for an "experience." Its no longer enough to provide a quality education, universities now are selling themselves on their facilitie…

>I haven't been in the sector long enough to have a real handle on when or why this shift happened, but from my perspective its the primary driver of the increasing administrative bloat. Schools are competing more on the intangibles, and so they need to invest more into these areas, which means more staff and more overhead.

If I had to actually guess, it probably started around the time they realized that the Millenial matriculation cohort was going to start "running down", resulting in universities having to either reduce their selectivity (which is death for a private uni) or somehow retain their selectivity by attracting more of a limited applicant pool. At the same time, there's a secular trend in cutting per-student funding for state universities.

The result is that state schools need to bring in more tuition money (forcing prices up on their end, reducing price competition against over-expensive private schools), while private schools need to retain selectivity (so they compete harder for students who can pay).

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#36

Post by bluetwo » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:09 PM UTC

As an adjunct professor running one class per year, I ran the calculation of:

(Amount I'm paid per class / (students in class * cost per credit * credits for class) )

And found I'm paid about 10% of what the students pay for the experience of taking my class. I can't help wonder what happens to the rest of that money.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#37

Post by maxerickson » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:10 PM UTC

zaphos wrote: post #28

Animats wrote: post #17

Stanford is building a new "campus" in Redwood City. 35 acres. 2,700 people on site. None are students. None are faculty. No teaching or research will occur there. It's all administrators .[1] "School of Medicine administration; Stanford Libraries and University Archives; the major administrative units of Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; University Human Resources; Residential & Dining Enterprises;…

The article is about UK Universities. Stanford is not broke. http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances

It can still be the case that they are spending excessively on administrators.

They can easily use any potential savings by adjusting the way their scholarships taper off versus income.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#38

Post by ams6110 » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:11 PM UTC

rfdub wrote: post #29

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post secondary institutions are positioning themselves less and less and places to get an education and more and more as places to go for an "experience." Its no longer enough to provide a quality education, universities now are selling themselves on their facilitie…

I work at a big state university as well and completely agree. The amount of money spent on luxury dorms, extravagant academic buildings, athletic facilities, student entertainment, and administrative on top of adminstrative staff is stunning.

Some of the facility spending, especially in athletics, is paid for by donors and athletics also has revenue from the major sport events, but there is huge spending and bloat on the academic side a well, funded by ever increasing tuition and fees that I just cannot see being sustainable.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#39

Post by extrapickles » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:11 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #6

Yes. This is why I refuse to donate to my alma mater anymore. Tuition has nearly tripled in in fourteen years while they are still teaching the same number of students with roughly the same or fewer full time faculty. There's something seriously wrong with that and this is a huge symptom of it. Until they get their shit together, they need less money coming in, not more. This is supposed to be a nonprofit institution…

When student loans were able to be discharged in bankruptcy, it was popular to declare bankruptcy on graduation. By the time they saved up enough for a down payment on a house, the bankruptcy will have fallen off the records, so effectively they got a free education (not the ideal mechanism for doing so, better to give people free education upfront).

Maybe there is a middle ground where student debt is not easily discharged, but can be in some cases (eg: graduated 10-20yrs ago, could never find a steady job).

Ideally we as a country should decide to make trade schools/college free (or at least give people $10k/yr towards tuition). This would not be a huge increase the in budget as we already spend ~$10k/yr (depends on state) to send kids to high school.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#40

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 11:13 PM UTC

ssambros wrote: post #30

oh_sigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing discharging of student debts in bankruptcy will lead to lenders tightening who they loan to, leading to the poorest of Americans not getting loans, and therefore no academic way to claw out of heavy poverty.

Why won't a poor high-SAT-score, future STEM graduate be able to get a loan? Banks will mostly take into the account the probability of loan repayment, not how poor the person is right now.

People from poor families drop out at a higher rate than non poor family peoples, as well as carry over lower average earnings and a higher likelihood of defaulting on loans even after graduation. A single generation getting a diploma will not equalize the gap between poorer and richer families.