Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

quillette.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 372 posts

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#21

Post by bsder »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

Imo it is the bloated general education requirements, squeezing as much money from students as possible. It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s. I believe if these classes were optional, they would not survive in the curriculum. University should not be in the business of propping up classes that no one wants, or professors who don’t have classes to teach.

> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s.

In STEM? Certainly not.

Calculus I/II/III(vector)/IV(linera algebra) Physics I/II Chem I/II

That's two whole semesters just getting the basics. You've only got 8 courses left.

In EE, that gets you: Circuits I/II, Digital I, Data Structures I, Computer Arch I, Signals & Systems, Electrostatics, Electrodynamics,

You're out of courses, and you haven't even gotten outside of the minimal major basics--and no labs either.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#22

Post by HKH2 »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #2

Given that this is quillette one would think they would be hesitant to question the wise and steady hand of the free market. Surely the rationally-acting rational actors at all of these institutions are acting rationally in accordance with rationality? After all, we live in a time when any "entrepreneur" can affix his name to a suburban sprawl wasteland strip mall storefront, open a University, and get accredited by…

I didn't realize that guaranteed loans and government subsidies are part of the free market.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#23

Post by School-Cotton »

feet wrote: post #15
notacoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s Only if you assume that the purpose of a bachelor's is to provide job training in one specific profession. Not so much if you believe in the value of a well-rounded education, for people who are likely to change careers multiple times, maybe also be civic leaders, etc. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the debate between these two visions has been going on for centuri…

Good thing 2 year associates and vocational training is a thing. Is the OP complaining that bachelors are not those?

No. They’re complaining that they’re not a deep study of a particular academic field, like they are in most countries.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#24

Post by birdyrooster »

ericmcer wrote: post #16
notacoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s Only if you assume that the purpose of a bachelor's is to provide job training in one specific profession. Not so much if you believe in the value of a well-rounded education, for people who are likely to change careers multiple times, maybe also be civic leaders, etc. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the debate between these two visions has been going on for centuri…

I thought elementary/middle/high school was for general purpose and moral education while college was for specialization. I guess you could argue that the amount of general purpose knowledge you need nowadays has increased but I agree with OP that ~50% of your college education being unrelated to your specialization seems unnecessary.

It's the reason I could never finish my degree. Imagine getting motivated to do something you know is a waste of your time for your given goal. It was a total mismatch of what I needed versus what the institution provided. ADHD makes this torture to endure.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#25

Post by HKH2 »

dave333 wrote: post #18

Education should be recast as a sort of MMORPG instead of a physical campus. Would be 100th or 1000th the cost and achieve 80% of the results. Kahn Academy and the like are a start.

Lectures could be, but tutorials are nowhere near as good online.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#26

Post by erdos4d »

Administration is one component but another is student life/amenities. Lots of schools borrow to keep up in the arms race for new swanky dorms, gyms, aquatic centers, climbing centers, you name it. Then they need dough, so they shake down their clients, the students. Oftentimes standards are viewed as less important than continuing the student loans that pay for the school's loans. Going back to simpler times when you got a little bullshit dorm room or shacked up in a greek house and made your own fun might be an answer here too. But I agree that admin bloat is real and most of these positions seem to be some mix of bullshit job or student entertainment coordinator.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#27

Post by lazyasciiart »

School-Cotton wrote: post #19
notacoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s Only if you assume that the purpose of a bachelor's is to provide job training in one specific profession. Not so much if you believe in the value of a well-rounded education, for people who are likely to change careers multiple times, maybe also be civic leaders, etc. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the debate between these two visions has been going on for centuri…

Somehow practically every country besides the US manages to give people a general education in secondary school, and reserves universities for deep study of one subject. Consequently, their bachelors degrees usually take less time. Do you think university graduates in France, for example, are less “well-rounded” than those in the US?

With their mandatory PE through college? How could they be?!

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#28

Post by cuteboy19 »

HKH2 wrote: post #25
dave333 wrote: post #18

Education should be recast as a sort of MMORPG instead of a physical campus. Would be 100th or 1000th the cost and achieve 80% of the results. Kahn Academy and the like are a start.

Lectures could be, but tutorials are nowhere near as good online.

Rather the issue is that there is a lot of garbage tutorials out there. It takes a lot of effort the find out the correct tutorials

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#29

Post by kxyvr »

gaoshan wrote: post #17

States cut funding to public schools, costs rise to accommodate those cuts which spills over into every part of the education market. At the same time schools increase spending on non-academic upgrades to appeal to prospective students bringing higher costs (and more administrators). I think that may account for the bulk of the increases.

To add to this, Pew has an article that talks about a variety of topics including funding of higher education:

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...

If you look at Figure 4, within the last 10 years, and for the first time ever, the amount of federal money flowing into state universities exceeded state money. There are all sorts of consequences for this. Mostly, I mention this to echo that state contributions to higher education have gone down consistently and the editorial's assertion that the high cost of a university education can be reduced to a bloated administration is a simplified argument of a complex issue that is likely made in bad faith.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#30

Post by tomohawk »

gaoshan wrote: post #17

States cut funding to public schools, costs rise to accommodate those cuts which spills over into every part of the education market. At the same time schools increase spending on non-academic upgrades to appeal to prospective students bringing higher costs (and more administrators). I think that may account for the bulk of the increases.

Can you provide any evidence of these cuts?

> In 2018, the United States spent $14,400 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 34 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $10,800 (in constant 2020 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $35,100 per FTE student, which was double the average of OECD countries ($17,600).

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

How much spending is enough?

Post reply on HN