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

101–110 of 372 posts

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#101

Post by AlchemistCamp »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #66
School-Cotton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University education in the US is very far from a free market. They’re kinda the worst of both worlds: massively subsidized by the state and federal governments, with very little government oversight.

What man or law or king can stop me from opening a university and getting it accredited? None. Several open every year. All you need is the capital and that’s what we’re all about, baby! And then you can get the same subsidies and low levels of oversight as the big boys!

The supply is still constrained, though. Despite massive population growth and a simultaneous increase in the percentage of people choosing to go to college, new institutions are accredited at a lower rate now than they were in the mid 20th century.

It would be interesting to see the trends in the costs of getting accredited over the decades.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#103

Post by bumby »

kragen wrote: post #95
bumby wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges with quality gain prestige How do you define quality in this sense?

Teaching and research. But mostly research.

What would you advocate as the best metrics across those domains?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#104

Post by i_am_proteus »

aaomidi wrote: post #47
etempleton wrote: post #43

Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t want to go there! The buildings aren’t as nice, the dorms are cramped and drab, there aren’t as many resources, the food sucks, the Wi-Fi is spotty, heck even the website sucks. Why is this? Because they don’t have the human or financial resources to do so. You g…

Then why is this only mainly a US problem?

The students (and families) take on the debt.

The government backs the debt.

The schools get cash.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#105

Post by kragen »

etempleton wrote: post #90
etempleton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way. No, prestige is based on awarenes…

Bonus point: What are the highest regarded colleges in the US? The Ivies(with some notable outliers). What is it that ties them together? An athletic conference.

Yeah, when you hear of someone who's been accepted to Duke deciding to pursue their studies in the NFL instead, give me a call.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#106

Post by kragen »

bumby wrote: post #103
kragen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching and research. But mostly research.

What would you advocate as the best metrics across those domains?

What would you advocate as the best metrics across the domains of literary merit and moral fiber?

It sounds like you need to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#107

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

etempleton wrote: post #70
kragen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…

I respectfully disagree. It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way. No, prestige is based on awarenes…

> What makes Harvard better

Even dropouts make more money after being there, not to put too fine a point on it.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#108

Post by Aerroon »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #107
etempleton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way. No, prestige is based on awarenes…

> What makes Harvard better Even dropouts make more money after being there, not to put too fine a point on it.

That might just be selection bias though. If you only accept the top 1% then even if they don't graduate they're still far above the average person. Ie they're more likely to succeed whether they went to Harvard or not.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#109

Post by vehemenz »

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.

You don't know what you don't know.

A big part of education is studying what you don't necessarily want because it helps inform your intellectual interests.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#110

Post by testfoobar »

In the US, both college education and healthcare have become enormous taxpayer wealth extraction schemes. Everyone has a "right" to education and healthcare, therefore we should subsidize it with taxpayer money. That is as far as the politics go. We have stupidly funded the demand side of the equation to where both education and healthcare are incredibly bloated behemoths capable of absorbing all the money thrown at them. All perfectly justified.

Where the taxpayer money should have gone: on the supply side. For example, the number of UC campuses in California should have doubled as the population doubled. The last UC campus to open was Merced in 2005. Before that was Irvine and Santa Cruz in 1965. And we wonder why tuition keeps increasing? 1) Demand increases with population increase. 2) Demand increase with more people seeking 4 yr degrees. 3) Demand increases with the US subsidizing the ever living shit out of college tuition. 4) Supply stays relatively constant.

Similarly Obamacare drove the demand side by subsidizing health insurance and onboarding millions of new members. It did almost nothing on the supply side - same number of hospital beds and doctors. Insurers and medical groups made a killing as the price of their services grew dramatically.

In both cases, political stability was achieved in shoveling taxpayer money at education and healthcare without increasing competition. This is a very clever way for existing vendors in healthcare and education to soak the government.

Solution: drive prices down by investing in supply of education and healthcare.

Post reply on HN