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Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

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Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#231

Post by rr808 »

hailwren wrote: post #228
rr808 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

Yeah a median of $110k isn't that amazing. Could just be because they're mostly in the NE. Also against "all schools" isn't really comparing good state schools which I'd like to see.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#232

Post by nradov »

rdtwo wrote: post #212
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The accrediting system is a cartel of sorts. It keeps supply low by keeping competition low. It’s not a perfect cartel but none of our modern ones are. They just seem to capture large chunks of the market enough so that most people are forced to work with em.

That's not a real cartel. Several new colleges have achieved accreditation in recent years. There is some paperwork and expense involved but it's not a huge obstacle for any legitimate school.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#233

Post by biztos »

hailwren wrote: post #228
rr808 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

I don’t know how you’d track this statistically, but my experience has been that not just the pay but the quality of job is much higher for graduates of elite universities, and like pay this just feeds back into itself.

All the people I know who went to Stanford got very nice, “cushy” jobs straight out of college. Most of the people I know who went to state schools had to bust their asses for years at much less pleasant work before they worked their way up to the nicer jobs.

The head start you get from an elite school in the US, in things that have nothing to do with education per se, can not be overstated.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#234

Post by projektfu »

graeme wrote: post #56
md_ wrote: post #38

There 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…

The admin staff are also subject to Baumol's cost disease.

Some are, some aren't. If some function required the same ratio of admin to students to perform, it would be. But many things have been made more productive. Most schools have fully automated the course selection process except for the academic advisor. Schools can take advantage of automations in admissions, bursar, financial aid, etc.

I think Baumol's cost disease explains a lot of the increase. I find it suspicious that it's not mentioned in TFA. But there are other drivers, of which much higher student expectations play a part. A school patterned after a typical university in the 60s would have some charm but probably students would not enjoy the Spartan living environment or the lack of support services.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#235

Post by HKH2 »

rocket_surgeron wrote: post #62
HKH2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize that guaranteed loans and government subsidies are part of the free market.

If every player gets them, they could be.

No, they could not; that is either wealth redistribution or pointless.

You can't make risk disappear magically.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#236

Post by Animats »

mattkrause wrote: post #170
ip26 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25,000 employees, that seems insane. They are approaching a 1:1 staff:student ratio.

Eh, that number is misleading. SLAC National Accelerator, a National Lab that Stanford happens to run, employs about 1,600 people. They don't necessarily need to interact with students; other national labs are run by corporations (e.g., Sandia is run by Honeywell). Stanford has a massive medical system, including an adult and children's hospital. They are teaching hospitals, and so part of the point is to train medic…

None of that is at Ark B in Redwood City. That location is entirely administration.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#237

Post by s1artibartfast »

hmmmmmm111 wrote: post #210
capitalsigma wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken classes at a number of institutions of varying rigor. My experience is that less well ranked schools just do not expect the same quantity and quality of academic work as more prestigious schools, and the students at these schools are not interested in changing that. It's especially striking in math, where I saw e.g. cross listed masters level courses start off with a disclaimer that we won't be writing any…

This is a misconception. In western Europe and Asia all college education is more rigorous than American college. And yet I don’t have the overall impression that the international bachelor’s people I know got something correlated out of the difference in rigor. It would be as obvious as the difference in rigor itself. It’s not.

The rigor drives the signal. Biggest one is rigor of acceptance screening. It is about measuring and screening students, not educating them.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#238

Post by CamperBob2 »

HKH2 wrote: post #25
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.

Lectures could be, but tutorials are nowhere near as good online.

They will be. The distinction between lectures and tutorials will blur once every student has what amounts to their own personal professor/TA.

"Hey Siri, could you go back over step 3 for me? Where did you get the X-squared term in the denominator?"

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#239

Post by zamfi »

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…

Your overall point, about limited supply / increasing demand, is not wrong. However —

> For example, the number of UC campuses in California should have doubled as the population doubled.

Maybe. But the number of students at UC campuses in California has doubled since 1965 — even though the number of campuses hasn’t.

I think the issue is that demand has more than doubled as the population of California has doubled—because college is more of a requirement than ever.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#240

Post by nradov »

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…

We have a shortage of doctors because Congress has refused to fund more residency program slots. This has held down Medicare costs, but as the population ages appointment wait times are increasing and existing doctors are burning out from excessive work.

https://savegme.org/

While more healthcare supply is definitely needed, this is ultimately a bottomless pit. Patients with complex chronic conditions have essentially infinite demand for healthcare services. The majority of those chronic conditions are caused by lifestyle issues including overeating, lack of exercise, and substance abuse. As a society there has to be a limit to what percentage of our GDP that we devote to healthcare.

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