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.
A poor, high-SAT-score, STEM student will get scholarships, not loans.
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;…
Yeah, who needs the Library and Archives? The book conservation lab is one of the things in the RWC location, that's clearly overhead that's totally not needed! Buckminster Fuller's models? Let 'em molder.
I don't think the argument is that all 2,700 administrators are unneeded, but rather that everything would run as good (if not better) without that much administration bloat.
Whether it's a university or a government or any other bureaucracy, the money eventually flows to the top. And the top tier of employees have no incentive to remove their own livelihoods. Thinning the waste at the top is a great idea, but never gets done unless a bigger bureaucracy makes it happen.
MY favorite are the exorbitant salaries paid to sports faculty, even when the sports program is loses money.
The universities that have highly paid coaches are the ones with premier, highly successful programs and earn way more from ticket sales, broadcast revenues, and merchandise than the coach is paid. It's like any other business (and it most definitely is a business), you need to pay well to attract the best talent.
Extremely unpopular opinion: Let's cut both the extra admin, and excess tenured professors. In fact, the entire tenure system should be completely upended. At my alma mater there were a lot of professors who didn't have enough students sign up for their classes, or their field of study was phased out, or reduced. Instead they sat around doing "research" and when they were forced to teach, quite a few openly expressed…
The purpose of universities is twofold: to educate and to produce new knowledge. You seem to have the mindset that most of a professor's work should be teaching-related. People don't do PhDs because they want to teach, they do it because they love their field. And a professor's status (and funding!) depends on a history of producing high quality (and quantity) research, not their teaching prowess.
Mind your generalizations there. I stated a PhD program because I wanted to do something about the poor preparation of my colleagues. I wanted to teach. But I learned to my chagrin that that's not what gets you hired, nor is it what gets you tenure. So I left academia once I got my degree. I don't think it's even true of all those who remain that they're there because they love research. Some of them are like me, but with more perseverence. Swimming against the tide, trying to teach.
I work in the administration for a top public US research University. The increase in size of University administration and bureaucracy is due to a number of factors. One is certainly unnecessary employment and over-employment. Not only at high levels, with VP's, Assistant VP's, Assistant Vice VP's, Chancellors, Vice Chancellor's, Executive VP's, Directors of XYZ, etc, but also at low levels where the work done by 3…
This is a good answer. The price increase is not uniform across the academy, and much of it is signaling-based. At many state schools, the amount spent per student has actually gone down over the last 30 years:
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-educational-e...
College is more expensive for the student because state funding for students has dropped precipitously. That means an increase in tuition, but that increase pretty linearly-maps to the decrease in state funding.
Now. many private schools have increased their nameplate cost. This is the signaling issue I mentioned before. When StateU tuition rises from $5k/yr to $10/yr over 5 years, the private universities use that increase to justify an increase in their nameplate cost from $25k/yr to $40k/yr, because they can. Of course, few people actually pay that. Increases in the actual amount people pay for college (other than at 4-year state funded schools, due to the changes in state funding) are much tamer than the headlines say: http://www.businessinsider.com/college-cost-changes-over-25-...
Extremely unpopular opinion: Let's cut both the extra admin, and excess tenured professors. In fact, the entire tenure system should be completely upended. At my alma mater there were a lot of professors who didn't have enough students sign up for their classes, or their field of study was phased out, or reduced. Instead they sat around doing "research" and when they were forced to teach, quite a few openly expressed…
As a tenure-track professor, obviously I'm biased, but tenure doesn't mean you don't have to work. Professors still have to pull their weight around the university and department. If nobody takes their classes or they aren't bringing in research dollars, that would be a problem that would be brought up in their performance appraisals. The vast majority of tenured professors make about 1/2 to 1/4 of what their value i…
As a university staff employee, I've seen very little indication that anyone is ever let go on the basis of performance. They might get shifted off the upward track, but they will rarely get a pay cut and almost never get fired.
As a tenure-track professor, obviously I'm biased, but tenure doesn't mean you don't have to work. Professors still have to pull their weight around the university and department. If nobody takes their classes or they aren't bringing in research dollars, that would be a problem that would be brought up in their performance appraisals. The vast majority of tenured professors make about 1/2 to 1/4 of what their value i…
What impacts can performance appraisals have on a tenured professor? Is it possible to be fired or have your salary severely cut simply from poor performance?
Almost never. You'll get fired if you sexually harass a student, but not for performance in the classroom.
Not sure about student party life experience given the recent rise of "no-fault" false rape allegations. Cannot be as careless anymore.
There is a huge new "student ethics" bureaucracy to handle that stuff that never used to exist. In the past, if you got drunk and did something you later regretted, that was your problem, as it is for any adult in the real world.
That's not true at all. Universities used to be much more involved in student life. Read up on 'In Loco Parentis' in higher education.
Not sure about student party life experience given the recent rise of "no-fault" false rape allegations. Cannot be as careless anymore.
There is a huge new "student ethics" bureaucracy to handle that stuff that never used to exist. In the past, if you got drunk and did something you later regretted, that was your problem, as it is for any adult in the real world.
Exactly and eerily true. At my university there this is a category 2 serious incident; like a fire, flood or epidemic. Any student admitted to emergency medical care due to inebriation, means the Serious Incident Officer is involved. How the SIO is supposed to find out I don't know.
I struggle to understand why relatively high-level management or SIO needs to be paid to get involved in what another 'adult' does out side of lectures/labs and campus.
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 think there's somewhat of a vicious cycle at work. Someone paying $50k/yr. wants more than classes in a run down building, and then a threadbare dorm to sleep in. That's a ton of money, and I don't think it's ridiculous for people to expect a pretty darned nice experience (inside and outside the classroom for that). But of course, providing those facilities and experiences costs a lot, so tuition increases. And with the increased tuition, so too increase expectations, and the cycle repeats. I'm not saying it's right, but it's what I've observed.