Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 29, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #62

jerf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, if you're going to fall back on that perspective, Real Life (TM) has all those things too, and it will continue to do so, for essentially free. There will be clusters of that sort of thing somewhere, just as there are "retirement communities" and "bedroom communities" and such. Universities certainly aren't bringing anywhere near enough value for their marginal improvement on those matters vs. what wo…

The counterpoint to your argument is that if it is so easy to create those types of communities for much less money than what universities are charging, why hasn't it happened? I would guess that it's a combination of 1. not being as easy as it seems and 2. network effects. Because of the latter, you would basically have to persuade a large number of students to make the switch at the same time for them to feel as if…

Post by Ididntdothis » Fri, May 29, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

chriskanan wrote: post #98

Ididntdothis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same at a neighboring city. They want to lay off workers due to COVID while they have doubled administrative staff over the last few years. And none of the administrators is going to get laid off. The plan is to have parks being cleaned by unpaid volunteers instead of city staff.

There was a post a day or two ago about how remote work makes it harder for people to value employees except as utilities, whereas if they work closely they value them more. Top administrators are in charge of who gets cut, and they probably interact with other admins the most or rely on them personally for some task, so they are most sensitive to laying them off versus park staff (or faculty) who they don't interact…

Post by yoyohello13 » Fri, May 29, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #10

This is just the straw that is popping the college bubble. My Alma mater has 15 administrators who make 2-3x more than the President did when I graduated. The President makes $5 million+. The VP/Dean of HR makes > $1 million. Administrators took a 5% pay cut. Lots of professors are furloughed or laid off. The school did all kinds of shenanigans to hang onto as much tuition/board/food money as they could. Students are…

Post by peter303 » Fri, May 29, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #28

The reason there is such a large premium for on-campus education versus online universities is because on-campus education is an experience as much as it is a service. If you're only interested in mastering the content, then online learning may be the place for you. That's why we see so many people pursuing online courses for their master's degrees and when they return to school later in life. They just want the cont…

Post by tengbretson » Fri, May 29, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

adminprof wrote: post #72

mdszy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, why won't anyone think of the poor administrators who get paid obnoxious salaries for doing effectively none of the labor that goes into providing an education for the students.

While in general I agree that there are too many administrators at many universities, this type of argument is ineffective without pointing out exactly which administrators. And I find that once you try to do that, no one agrees which administrators should be cut. Do you want to cut the administrators responsible for diversity and inclusion? Or the administrators responsible for tech transfer? Or the Dean of the Coll…