151–160 of 372 posts
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…
Stanford 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 res…
Stanford and other top institutions can't really be compared to other schools, students fees are not how these institutions make money. There are massive business arms tying in to fortune 500s, political think tanks, government institutions, etc. It's a whole different game for schools at this level. To understand administrative bloat in the US it's much more instructive to look somewhere like University of Idaho whe…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever been on YouTube?
Yes. I assume there is a point here, but you're not being very forthcoming about it. Is your suggestion that YouTube could function as a way to audit potential college courses? Good idea, except you would already need to know what you're looking for to not be captured by the recommendation algorithm.
We haven't been trapped in a world where the only access to the arcane and the esoteric is held in hand copied, gilded manuscripts, we've even largely transcended the need for libraries.
"Higher education" is, at best, internally conflicted with two very different motives. On one hand it is the arbiter of the gates of the middle class. On the other it operates under the pretense of being the authority of intellect. Frankly my experience with the latter half is a joke, a mixed bag of disinterested people that are just there for the class, some that are disinterested in education in general, some egregiously incompetent at the coursework, and the very few (often none) who are passionate about it. This isn't uniquely on the side of the students, but that of the pedagogues as well. And it is contagious. If anything I'd be willing to bet that it does just enough trauma to people that they put a terminal end to their curiosities.
Anyways, I don't agree, I think the old approach is wrong, I expect it's harmful from the many anecdotes I have. I think it's one of the many coats of lacquer varnishing the piles of shit that these institutions represent to ensure their continuity, and justify their ability to arbitrate so much of the world around us.
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…
Solution. Stop government funding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I'm seeing online Stanford has about 22k students in 2022. 2700 does seem like a large number compared to the student population, and given it seems like it isn't meant to house all the administrative staff, that does seem like a lot. That said, Stanford is private, so I'm not sure they're a good example. Various state universities seem like they would be a more apt target to look at to see what this is lik…
According to the internet: Stanford University has 24,916 employees.Jul 11, 2022
In 2021 15,750 staff members supported teaching, learning, research and core operations at Stanford ...This includes ... 1,603 staff at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory .. Includes clinical educator and research staff.
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…
> The college wage premium is the number one culprit for all these problems . For whatever reason, employers derive enough benefit from college grads to pay them waaaayyy more than high school grads
That may be true. But there's an easy fix: any job requirements that ask for any college degree (e.g. "a 4 year degree" not "a BS in chemical engineering") should be illegal.
Honestly, I don't really understand why they aren't already: they clearly violate the 4/5ths rule. And it's hard for me to believe that some enterprising lawyer hasn't already brought suit under this theory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I'm seeing online Stanford has about 22k students in 2022. 2700 does seem like a large number compared to the student population, and given it seems like it isn't meant to house all the administrative staff, that does seem like a lot. That said, Stanford is private, so I'm not sure they're a good example. Various state universities seem like they would be a more apt target to look at to see what this is lik…
According to the internet: Stanford University has 24,916 employees.Jul 11, 2022
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Right, perhaps it would have been better to say state school.
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…