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.
Now that's a business model screaming for disruption.
Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
201–210 of 296 posts
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gaming a magazine is one thing, but I'm not sure how schools are able to game google to hide "graduating" masses of unhappy, unqualified, and unemployable students.
When there's disconnect between the happytalk of the university and the employability/performance of students the students will blame themselves for not working hard enough. They will not blame the university for having an outdated curriculum or incompetent faculty. My institution offers a seven-year combined BS/MD program. Graduate on time, get an MCAT score above the national mean and a decent GPA, and after 3 year…
Traditionally, a university's function was to educate students, not to make them employable. I spent years in graduate school learning the obscure details of my discipline, but I didn't take classes on how to get 22 year olds jobs.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#203As one of the 'pointless' admin staff at a British Russell group university, the article seems to be overly hammering home the authors point which has to be partly to do with the book 'Bullshit Business' that he's trying to sell. I don't deny that there are issues in the university system here in the 'United' Kingdom, but I feel he's overhyping issues to get clicks and sell his book.
As several previous commenters have noted, we have a some what dysfunctional market, where most universities charge the same fees. For students you're still picking based on courses and reputation. You can't really pick a cheaper 'no-frills' university. This marketisation has leeched into the central university services, where we're turning everything into a product to sell. Not much of a market when academics have to use us. We are very cheap, it's not like we've got to make money. Obviously if you got rid of that, you'd be able to remove some staff. You'd still need quite a few to meet the legislative demands which are required of universities these days.
There are definitely some truths in the article. Not everyone needs to go to university. Certainly there are some students who are getting massive amounts of debt for very little gain. Universities do chase various league tables and other such measures (some imposed centrally) which does require lots of data gathering. Large amounts of data require staff to deal with that data. Students do really like shiny new buildings, so universities go on building sprees. Again a poor NSS (national student survey) can potentially reduce students and thus income. But to be fair, you'd want things to be nice when you're paying £9k per year for your fees alone.
REF and TEF aren't well liked by academics, so I'm quite sure a lot of them would be happy if they were dropped. It's unsurprising that the article is penned by an academic and one of his main suggestions is the dropping of REF.
The USS pension scheme deficit is probably misleading. If you want some detailed reading around that, then Mike Otsuka's articles are good - https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#204I 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…
True that there is an expectation of the many non-academic needs of students is also well served. In Norway, this is done by an organization separate from the university ('Studentsamskipnad' or Student Welfare Organization). It is responsible for housing, health- services, food et.c. Students pay their semester fee (<100USD) to this organization (no tuition). Possibly this helps for keeping focus on academic needs in universities, though I don't know whether it helps or hinders organizational bloat.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#205I 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…
You assume the primary purpose of college/university is to teach. No. In America anyway, it is mostly a credential. The prestige and exclusiveness of your uni serves as a marker of intelligence in a society in which it can be legally treacherous to give potential employees IQ tests. I will agree that for a significant minority of students the learning and learning to teach oneself are important. I doubt the top unive…
Also, university is essentially 4 years of full-time studying you can do. Spending 4 years "unemployed" while taking online courses/building your own projects/whatever would very likely look odd to potential employers (compared to a more "traditional" path).
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#206I 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…
> Universities fear that if they were to stamp their feet and refuse to supply these amenities in the name of keeping down tuition, matriculation rates would decline as students would seek greener pastures elsewhere. I find this so fascinating. In a normal market, demand is driven by differentiating factors, and I imagine paying for a reduced set of services could be wildly popular. I certainly never took advantage o…
Meanwhile, schools appear to be in the race for positioning schools as anything but a place to get a degree.... which is the entire role of college in society today.
Yes and no. Elite colleges have another purpose, which for many will be the primary purpose - it's how the next generation of the elite meet and get to know each other over the course of a few years, with plenty of leisure time in which to do so. Membership of the Bullingdon Club or Skull And Bones will obviously have a far, far greater effect on the outcome of the rest of your life than a generic bachelor's degree. To attract the elite therefore, you need good amenities, because that's what they're really there for. It's also why "Harvard dropout" carries very nearly as much prestige or social signal as "Harvard graduate" - getting in is the real goal, getting out with a degree is just the icing on the cake.
Similar is true of "party schools", or certain colleges where everyone just does activism full-time and no-one goes to lectures anyway.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Universities fear that if they were to stamp their feet and refuse to supply these amenities in the name of keeping down tuition, matriculation rates would decline as students would seek greener pastures elsewhere. I find this so fascinating. In a normal market, demand is driven by differentiating factors, and I imagine paying for a reduced set of services could be wildly popular. I certainly never took advantage o…
Also, consider that the desire for greener pastures is a very top-down cultural thing in the US, that's not always true world wide (though, it increasingly seems that way.) By number of students, most higher ed institutions are community colleges, which are (for the most part) low on the BS and extra fun. For profits, and a growing number of 'bootcamp' type schools also fit in this area. However, 4 year schools (star…
Here in the UK my wife has degrees from 4 universities - from middle ranking to prestigious and by her accounts by far the worst teaching was at by far the most prestigious (and we are talking about a world top 20 institution).
Having worked in academia this doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
NB I know these ranking schemes are pretty dubious.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the view of people who have not really looked at university budgets. "experiences" are cheap compared to headcount. Buildings and experiences are mainly funded by outside donation specifically for the experience or building. People do not often donate to "expand salaries and headcount for faculty and administrators". The result is that students pay for headcount and donors pay for experiences. It isn't just a…
On the research point, why are research and teaching commingled? Both are important, but it seems that they require very different skillsets. Would we be better off filling universities primarily with people who love teaching, and are great at it, and having some other kind of institution (or some separate division of universities) do the research? Is this heresy?
The main reason they are commingled is that teachers need to have mastery of what they teach. As subjects become more difficult, fewer and fewer people have the required mastery to teach a subject. At the end of this (i.e. graduate level courses) the only ones with sufficient mastery are those that are doing the research.
For lower level subjects (i.e. most undergraduate courses) this is much less an issue, but the above still explains why we need researchers to also teach. Issues occur when you let a brilliant but eccentric mathematician teach calculus 101. His research is in no way relevant to the course, and he might not be able to explain things on that base a level.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gaming a magazine is one thing, but I'm not sure how schools are able to game google to hide "graduating" masses of unhappy, unqualified, and unemployable students.
I'm not sure people ARE ignorant of that. When I was in school people would make jokes about what they'd do after college "I'm an English major, so probably wait tables. Ha ha ha!" And I always wanted to say "That's literally true." My perception is that people, especially at that age, feel pressure to follow a track, and going to college is expected, and some majors are easy, and so they follow the path of least res…
I love going off a tangent so here's so wthing previously on hn
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#210I 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…
> Add to this the fact that Universities receive no penalty from the market for continually increasing their prices.
This article is about universities in the UK, and they cannot arbitrarily decide to increase their tuition fees for home student.
> Because student loans are available to service ever increasing tuition costs
For many, a drop in tuition fees would never actually be noticed. For those that start to notice, it'll only make a difference when they're much older. This is because student loans in the UK are income contingent, and forgiven after a set period. Most people will not pay off their loans before they are forgiven.