Even in Canada it’s getting worse. I finished undergrad in 2010. Back then I paid about $3000CAD per term. Someone in my program I met recently is paying $4800. The program is the same. Admin keeps growing.
Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
111–120 of 372 posts
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#112There 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 compe…
> 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.
Why do you assume these influences to be mutually exclusive? Upward price pressure for unnecessary bureaucratic positions does not invalidate the problems with those positions, but rather exacerbates them.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#113Education 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.
One of the most valuable parts of the in-person college experience is learning to live independently, exposing yourself to a much wider variety of people, and taking personal risks in a semi-controlled environment. You spend only around 20% of your waking hours in the classroom anyway, if that, but the rest of the time in the college environment is still very educational.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#114In 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…
"Drive the price down by increasing seats and then fostering competition between schools."
The seats have increased dramatically.
You won't be able to create efficient competition. The value shoppers already go to state schools. The other people are looking for a specific "quality" or just plain emotion (my family went here, this school is prestigious, etc).
Supply isn't the real issue in most disciplines. The problem is the demand side individuals making economically dumb choices (sometimes semi-forced by the larger societal situation).
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#115In 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…
Schools compete not on price but on other factors. That's why they want to build massively expensive campuses and elaborate facilities, because that is what students base their decisions on. If schools competed on price, everyone would be going to state colleges c̶o̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶l̶e̶g̶e̶.
I'm not sure how you compel schools to compete on price, because the consumers don't care about price. They'd rather get they "good college experience" for $50k a year than the "sufficiently good education" for $7k a year, even though both options are available to choose.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#116Double 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…
My university education was cheap and world class. Look overseas to see how badly America is doing.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#117Double 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…
"Why? Because human brains are broken. We connate price with prestige and prestige with quality."
Agree. Part of what is enabling this is all the easy money to pay that tuition.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#118Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#119Stanford has now reached the point that they recently built an entire 35-acre campus just for administrators.[1] This is completely separate from the main campus and miles away.
"The campus provides workspace for about 2,700 employees (including three of the university’s eight vice presidents) working in critical areas such as the School of Medicine administration, libraries and archives, business affairs, human resources, development and Land, Buildings & Real Estate. Stanford will be the city’s third-largest employer in Redwood City."
Amenities:
* Cardinal Café -- Located on the first floor of Cardinal Hall, serving globally- and regionally-inspired cuisine for breakfast and lunch.
* Recreation & Wellness Center -- The 28,000 square foot facility includes a six-lane rooftop pool, indoor basketball court, state-of-the-art fitness equipment, locker rooms, showers and an outdoor fitness courtyard.
* Stanford Transportation
* Digital Media Production Studio
* Wellness and Lactation Rooms
* Dry Cleaning
* Pine Cone Children's Center
* Stanford Catering & Conferences
* Stanford Federal Credit Union
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 .
Ha! As a matter of fact I’m re-reading it at the moment.
But as a former reliability engineer, i bristle as Persig’s claim that quality can’t be defined.