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Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
261–270 of 296 posts
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#262I 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…
Paragraph 2 is worth more discussion. I work for a moderate-sized private university in an urban environment. Beyond the startup and labor (staffing, administration) costs of the amenities, they require real estate as well. While suburban/rural universities may have options for constructing new buildings, we have to rely on purchasing real estate in a fluctuating market. Then we have to re-purpose it, often bringing it up to modern health codes. This is expensive to undertake.
A ramification of purchasing real estate, for amenities in current demand, is that we can get stuck with expensive real estate when enrollments are down and, correspondingly, the amenities in those buildings are less used.
The amenities come due to demand. But, they're costly. When amenity use is down, we're kind of stuck with those costs unless we can unload or re-purpose the real estate.
[EDIT: Added "costs" in sentence 3 paragraph 1.]
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
> At the end of this (i.e. graduate level courses) the only ones with sufficient mastery are those that are doing the research. Sadly, sufficient mastery of the subject often comes at the cost of sufficient mastery of teaching , which becomes especially important for such difficult subjects. If only some of that money spent on more staff was spent on assistant teachers whose main skill was teaching and coaching other…
Honestly, when mastery of the subject becomes detrimental to teaching the subject, your not taking the highest-level courses.
A great researcher has to teach and convince themselves, those skills translate to teaching at that level.
I'm mostly thinking about the highest level math courses though.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one you are looking for is student/faculty ratio. They used to promote that until they realized they could puff up their ratio by including staff as well. Similar to the unemployment rate excluding people who can work but have stopped looking. SO much BS in the US.
Regarding academia, what countries do you suggest and why?
I don't have any experience with academia outside the US. For people wanting to go to college in the US, I would recommend Junior College for the first two years, then University for the second, and select in-state college that is close to where you already live.
I wish I had gone to JC my first two years. I was so thrilled with being out from under my parent's supervision that I goofed off too much in my first two years. JC is a little more forgiving, and in my experience, didn't have those huge lecture hall entry level course that spit out so many new students.
In state because it's much cheaper.
Also, unless you are already wealthy or have a family job waiting, get a degree based on what you like, but it must be fairly lucrative. Accounting, Finance, IT, CS, Engineering, etc. Stay away from art degrees and English majors. The subjects are fascinating, but it's awful hard to land a good job in those majors. Also, being a professor is very difficult to get into and getting tenure is even harder, so you probably want to skip that route.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#265I 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…
> Schools are competing more on the intangibles
Because you can share course videos, but you can't share intangibles.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#266I 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…
> and students pretty much need to go to college to succeed in the 21st century
I do not agree with this. There are plenty of trades out there that can earn you a great salary without a degree. If you want a white collar job and are willing to put in the time and effort, there are plenty of ways to connect with employed nerds and show that you are capable of being an employed nerd as well via open source projects. NOBODY sane on github is going to ask for a degree before contributing to open source, and if you do it consistently would likely be as impressive as on-the-job experience.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Source?
Source for the bankruptcy: http://archive.gao.gov/f1102a/101903.pdf
Wow, 4 people in 1975-1976 made over 90k in todays dollars and still declared bankruptcy and dissolved their student loans.
The report doesn't say why those 4 specifically went bankrupt, but does talk about some issues affecting these people. Injury, large business losses. Guess we better ban anybody from dissolving student loans!
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#268Kind of unrelated, but I am extremely disappointed in how much 'giving back to local communities' has been abandoned by modern universities, in favor of their massive administrative payrolls. What used to be a core tenant of thought, is now a dollar figure. If you live in the state, you get a discount. End of story, obligations fulfilled, full stop. But it's not a commitment or a central belief. No university will op…
Do you have evidence of this? I'm just curious because I see all sorts of university events open to the public. Both in public and private universities. There's musical performances, special events (like physics students hosting solar eclipse day and providing hundreds of glasses to the public), theater performances, sporting events (for a low cost), donations to local charities and events, etc.
Just anecdotal evidence - I guess I see what you're describing as part of the student experience. Other people are allowed in, which is nice, but those things are done for the students' benefit.
I mean that no university I've dealt with in any capacity, (which, okay, is only about a half-dozen,) has shown even the slightest interest in educating their local communities. That 'commitment' begins and ends with a discount given to a handful of people.
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you seeing tuition of $20k or $50k? Public universities in state are closer to $10k a year, even out of state isn't usually anywhere near $50k.
My alma mater, a northeast, private university ranked in the top 50. It was actually ranked higher when I was there and cost $20k. Now tuition alone is just shy of $50k.
But does anyone but the scions of the 0.1% actually ever pay that $50k nameplate cost? For example, Brown University in Rhode Island has a nameplate cost of $49k. However, the average net cost paid by students there in 2016 was only $25k. Students with a family income under $75k paid an average of $12k. That nameplate number is just bogus, in most cases.
Source: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=brown&s=all&pg=3&id=...
Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
My alma mater, a northeast, private university ranked in the top 50. It was actually ranked higher when I was there and cost $20k. Now tuition alone is just shy of $50k.
Sounds familiar. I went to a highly ranked private college where tuition went from 35k in 2007, to about 50k only 4 years later, and now it's around 60k I believe. The professors were mostly excellent and well known in their fields, but at the same time many departments were understaffed while the university spent 42 million dollars on an "Institute for Global Citizenship" that ended up being mostly unused, though it…
That may be true, but the average net price paid by Macalester students has been flat at $28k for the past three years. The increase in the nameplate cost is meaningless.
Source: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=macalester&s=all&id=...