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

theguardian.com

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

#281

Post by tonyedgecombe »

IanCal wrote: post #212
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #192

The problem in the UK is there is no significant competitive pressure. What would help is separating the teaching from grading, just as it is in schools. Right now an employer has to consider a degree from Oxford Brookes in a completely different light to one from Oxford University. If they knew the students were graded in exactly the same way then it could really shake the system up.

I'm not a fan of that, it's adds huge drag to any change. Want to add a module on deep learning that you also want to test? Now it needs to be added by a country-wide exam board. Want to add something on cognitive neuroscience to the standard "AI" degree? Only if everyone can teach it. Given how regularly things are messed up by the boards on simple GSCE level questions covering far fewer subjects, I'd not like to ha…

I'd be interested to know how much variation there really is, when visiting universities with my children the options looked remarkably similar.

There might be some drag on creating new courses but there could be huge savings as well.

One thing I'm sure is the academic community wouldn't like it, it would need to be forced on them.

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

#282

Post by rocqua »

vanderZwan wrote: post #276
rocqua wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess you're talking about the point where it's more collaboration on a half-solved problem than data transfer about solidified knowledge? Because then I agree, but that's a really different type of knowledge transfer we're talking about then.

There's a point before collaboration, where you ask a researcher to bring a student up to the level of the researcher. At that point, the student and researcher struggle with similar enough problems that the researcher can think from the students perspective.

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

#283

Post by velobro »

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…

You lost me at "provide safe places" because it's apparent what kind of bias you have

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

#284

Post by candiodari »

phlakaton wrote: post #251
candiodari wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that to cut the bloat you actually need to know the business and how the parts fit together ? Heresy ! If that is true then the whole idea behind management is flawed. (management, MBA, business administration and the like depend on the idea that managing one company is pretty much the same activity as managing another. If what you say is true, that you cannot just generically cut then such people shou…

I don't have an MBA, but I recognize that there are many aspects to running a good business, common to many businesses, that an MBA can probably help teach. But just like any other college degree, an MBA is a start or a rounding out, not the complete package in and of itself. I know of nobody sane who thinks that you don't need to know your business's specific needs backwards and forwards to run it well.

Well, I work at a big company and

1) I know many people who think like that (in some cases because they have such a position. Manager without knowing what their reports actually do)

2) The hiring decisions made -regularly- prove that this is in fact the overriding opinion in our management.

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

#285

Post by tommorris »

ams6110 wrote: post #86
lutorm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this article ( https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-ma... ) is any guide, the money made by the athletic department mostly goes to the athletic department and not to funding anything else useful.

I would agree, but dispute the claim that athletic scholarships are not "useful." Most collegiate athletes do not progress to professional careers in their sport. Their education (at least in theory) prepares them to be contributors to society after they graduate. Athletics is an "auxilliary enterprise" at most educational institutions. It's self-funding, thanks to alumni donations and a few high-revenue sports (bask…

> Their education (at least in theory) prepares them to be contributors to society after they graduate.

That assumption seems to be in doubt.

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/7/9/5885433/n...

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/vvan54/how-much-is-a-d...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/sports/13cnd-auburn.html?m...

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/17/165345780/online-courses-keep-...

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

#286

Post by RepressedEmu »

monocasa wrote: post #247
learc83 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are private high schools that cost tens of thousands of dollars too. The OP was talking as if this was normal. The average student is going going to a state school and paying somewhere near $10k a year for tuition. If you can't get a scholarship and it's not a top 10 school $50k per year probably isn't worth paying.

Most of the public schools around me are ~$10k a semester, not a year.

And then with 10-15k for overpriced student housing since most colleges make mandatory for Freshmen and sometimes even Sophomores. Then you might have to pay 1k a year to pay for a parking spot. 2-5k for cafeteria access. Add it all up and you've got 80k-100k(at 4%-9% interest) for four years at a state school. Its not impossible to get out from under but it represents a large delay, especially for degrees with low ROI

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

#287

Post by corpMaverick »

dmix wrote: post #115

In an administrative heavy organization every problem seems to be answered with "how can we add more administrative layers, processes, and backroom deals to satisfy x group (management, media, special interest groups, voters, etc) that something appears to be being done?" rather than asking "looking at all available options what is the best way to resolve this problem (inside and out of government)?". Basically a "Wh…

This is what happens to software development within large corporations. Developers are being managed by a bureaucracy that doesn't have a clue about software development.

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

#288

Post by learc83 »

monocasa wrote: post #247
learc83 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are private high schools that cost tens of thousands of dollars too. The OP was talking as if this was normal. The average student is going going to a state school and paying somewhere near $10k a year for tuition. If you can't get a scholarship and it's not a top 10 school $50k per year probably isn't worth paying.

Most of the public schools around me are ~$10k a semester, not a year.

Where are you? The average cost of tuition + fees for instate students is less than $10k per year.

Even the UC schools in California are close to that.

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

#289

Post by learc83 »

RepressedEmu wrote: post #286
monocasa wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the public schools around me are ~$10k a semester, not a year.

And then with 10-15k for overpriced student housing since most colleges make mandatory for Freshmen and sometimes even Sophomores. Then you might have to pay 1k a year to pay for a parking spot. 2-5k for cafeteria access. Add it all up and you've got 80k-100k(at 4%-9% interest) for four years at a state school. Its not impossible to get out from under but it represents a large delay, especially for degrees with low R…

>most colleges

That's not even close to true.

Most public schools don't have residency requirements. The ones that do normally have waivers that are easy to get.

I've also never heard of a school with a residency requirement for sophomores.

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

#290

Post by Blackstone4 »

phd514 wrote: post #258
arethuza wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also have a degree from a prestigious university where the teaching ranged from mediocre to good. IMO, the quality of the teaching (or lack thereof) was secondary to the fact that the academic bar was set significantly higher than at most other institutions and that I was surrounded by the caliber of classmates who had both the aspiration and capability to excel.

I have to agree. I went to a top 10 UK university which was very much focused on research. The teaching was okay to poor but the level you had to meet to pass the exams was high and I did project work with some of the brightest people I've met who pushed me. I saw some of the work my peers were doing at other universities and it was a walk in the park.
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