Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

Post by ip26 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 1:12 AM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #115

testfoobar wrote: post #110

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…

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…

Post by google234123 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

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.

Post by javajosh » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

pas wrote: post #84

exmadscientist wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The other side to the problem that most commenters here are missing is something that is much easier to see if you are employed by the school (as I used to be). There are dozens of layers of bloat and positions that exist only to make Doing Stuff (for values of Stuff that include both Research and Teaching) as slow as possible. Even getting a door fixed -- to stop the door stuck open alarm going off -- took mult…

wow, this sounds like a very extreme case study. could you detail why it took many days to fix that door?

Post by krapht » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #122

testfoobar wrote: post #110

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…

5. 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. Demand is increasing due to the college wage premium, which keeps widening with no end in sight even despite Covid and online learning. The col…

Post by elteto » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

spijdar wrote: post #123

missedthecue wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to nitpick a tangent, but community colleges, at least where I live, are only 2 year institutions, and don't provide full BS/BA degrees, just Associate degrees, which don't really open the same doors as the Bachelor degrees. I really wish we had 4 year institutions managed like our community colleges, though. I remember my 2 years there much more fondly than I do my time spent at a "real" university.