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Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

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Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#221

Post by thrown_22 »

NLPlatypus wrote: post #216
testfoobar wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets look at stock market returns from when Obamacare passed, March-2010, to today for tech and health insurance stocks: SPY: about 4X QQQ: about 6X GOOGL: about 6X CI: about 9X (Cigna health) ELV: about 10x (formerly Anthem) AAPL: about 19X UNH: about 20X (united healthcare) Health Insurance stocks in the US did better than tech stocks after Obamacare passed. Why?

Perhaps it was revenue from the tens of millions of Americans now getting healthcare? This analysis shows the majority of health insurers becoming less profitable after Obamacare? https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

So you think that a 10% increase in customers should lead to a 500% increase in revenue?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#222

Post by brnaftr361 »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #208
dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

“Cartel”? Nonsense! Provide evidence prestigious universities are colluding on pricing. You can’t because it’s not true.

I have a pretty strong feeling you're being sarcastic.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/01/10/fede...

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#223

Post by thrown_22 »

curious_cat_163 wrote: post #182
ip26 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remembering when I was applying to colleges, it was understood that inexpensive state colleges were probably 'sufficiently good', and cost effective, but it was impossible to grade that statement. Would it be good enough for your goals in life? How can a sixteen year old know? So, people picked the 'best' school they could get into. Not just for the 'experience', but to make sure they got the best education they coul…

This is very insightful. After having gone through it all, do you think if it matters how many doors open for a person based on the college they went? I suppose if someone went to a highly ranked school, it might matter. But being able to get into a highly ranked school is probably because of what the person had (money, life experiences) or what they did (crushed some standardized test). So, in the end, does it actua…

It doesn't matter.

I did physics at a world top 10 university and the course work was basically day care. The vast majority of the 'difficulty' of the subject matter was because the majority of students were bad at algebra. The outcomes would have been better for everyone if we completely ignored first year and just taught people the Knuth Bendix algorithm instead.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#224

Post by regular »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#225

Post by thrown_22 »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #146
Animats wrote: post #119

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…

> 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.

Then they are welcome to stop charging students fees.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#226

Post by walleeee »

snazz wrote: post #113
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.

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.

the canonical brand name university experience in the US these days can hardly be called independent living

a growing portion of the bloat discussed in this thread goes toward increasingly luxurious lodging, amenities and services

generally agree with your broader point, with caveats (e.g., how the credentialism encouraged by the university system might be considered an obstacle to personal and civic development)

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#227

Post by bgro »

I think everyone is in agreement that college admins are the cause of the problem. Does anyone know why colleges keep adding to the admin staff? Presumably, they're adding to the profits. I'm curious how this constant bloat growth is increasing profits though. When we get down to the actual minute specifics... What is happening?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#228

Post by hailwren »

rr808 wrote: post #211
dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

> neither precious nor rare The fact that most people can name the most famous schools seems to imply they are rare. They are perceived as having better outcomes than regular state schools. Do they or dont they? If their grads do get better jobs and end up more successful - then they are genuinely better? People from state Universities end up sitting next to Ivys etc there is no difference - this is what I believe. W…

Median earned income 10 years after enrolling at an Ivy is about 2x the all schools average.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-...

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#229

Post by wheelinsupial »

irowe wrote: post #189
School-Cotton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the local state university cost $7k/yr?

Yeah that does seem a little low. US News and World report has average in-state tuition at $10,423/yr [1] [1]: https://www.usnews.com/object/image/00000183-138c-db49-a3a3-...

Possibly because that's including the flag ship and state school systems (if I'm using that correctly). For example, the Cal State system seems to be in the $6-9k/yr range and the UC system seems to be $13k+/yr. I think this excludes fees, and I think some programs may also cost extra.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#230

Post by nradov »

rr808 wrote: post #211
dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

> neither precious nor rare The fact that most people can name the most famous schools seems to imply they are rare. They are perceived as having better outcomes than regular state schools. Do they or dont they? If their grads do get better jobs and end up more successful - then they are genuinely better? People from state Universities end up sitting next to Ivys etc there is no difference - this is what I believe. W…

Average outcomes in terms of income for the most famous schools are not much better than regular state schools after you control for high school grades and SAT scores.
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