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Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

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Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#31

Post by Nihilartikel »

tomohawk wrote: post #30
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 wa…

A data point of USA exceptionality is that a significant portion of such money that pays employees must necessarily be allocated to the parasitic healthcare complex.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#32

Post by lob_it »

I've passed several articles years back when I used to read forbes about poor conditions for adjunct professors:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/noodleeducation/2015/05/28/more...

The evolution of education has already been diluted (die looted :p).

I just saw a video on California's education system in the middle of the 20th century, compared to where it is today (actually thier ecomony). Not the finest of the bunch in the 21st century.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho...

Economic evolution happens :)

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#33

Post by dave333 »

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.

Tutorials don't really need paid tutors if peer to peer Q+A like a discussion forum is available. Another concept that could improve things is team education - you get marked on your own achievements but also partially on how your whole team does - so you have incentive to help others along.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#34

Post by dave333 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #28
HKH2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Rating and continuous improvement can obviously fix this.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#35

Post by scott00 »

SilverBirch wrote: post #5

This is... strange. The issue of a price would seem to me to be an issue of supply and demand. Yet, this article talks about a weirdly tangential topic. This article seems to put forward the idea that the administration of colleges has become bloated and this has led to higher fees. But that's simply not the causal chain. No one in any administration is thinking "better put that tuition up, and accept the loss in can…

Supply and demand is not driving the price of Harvard. As you point out, there are many more people willing to pay the current price than are admitted. This indicates that the market price is much higher than the current price. In other words, supply and demand factors would allow Harvard to raise prices substantially if they chose to, and something other than supply and demand is determining where within the range of zero and the equilibrium price the price is set. I don't have a strong opinion as to whether administrative costs are the driving factor, but it's certainly much more plausible than supply and demand.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#36

Post by HKH2 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #28
HKH2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I meant talking face to face is way better than Zoom. If you can find a group willing to talk in person about whatever it is you want to study, it should work.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#37

Post by HKH2 »

dave333 wrote: post #33
HKH2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tutorials don't really need paid tutors if peer to peer Q+A like a discussion forum is available. Another concept that could improve things is team education - you get marked on your own achievements but also partially on how your whole team does - so you have incentive to help others along.

Yeah I don't think tutors do all that much if everyone is motivated. What I meant was that conversations in person are often more productive, especially when you're trying to get motivated.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#38

Post by md_ »

There are compelling alternative explanations for the rising cost of education (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease#Educ...).

If the underlying cause were primarily administrative overhead, that should be readily apparent in the (public) budget of any public university. I’m not going to go do Silvergate’s research for him, but I’m surprised he doesn’t cite such a readily available piece of compelling evidence, which at best suggests he’s too lazy to track it down, and at worst that reality does not support his hypothesis.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#40

Post by dave333 »

HKH2 wrote: post #37
dave333 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tutorials don't really need paid tutors if peer to peer Q+A like a discussion forum is available. Another concept that could improve things is team education - you get marked on your own achievements but also partially on how your whole team does - so you have incentive to help others along.

Yeah I don't think tutors do all that much if everyone is motivated. What I meant was that conversations in person are often more productive, especially when you're trying to get motivated.

In a game world motivation can be generated by access to the next room, level, whatever. Or, if you finish your fractions drill problems, you can play XYZ for an hour.
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