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Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

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Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#271

Post by techdragon »

robomartin wrote: post #250
JamesBarney wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying but the evidence that Obamacare ballooned healthcare expenses isn't there. Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. For instance I couldn't have started a startup without it, and it's much easier to hire contract workers because of it.

> Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. Sure. On my back, and that of countless others. It's fucking highway robbery. Before Obamacare we had excellent health insurance with excellent coverage, doctors and low deductibles for $650 per month. When we were shoved into Obamacare, our rate TRIPLED to $1,800 per month. Today we are paying nearly $2,300 per month. This is equivalent t…

My genuinely overkill for my needs private health insurance as someone living in Australia where theres a public health care system that looks after everyone... costs less than half your pre-obamacare insurance, factoring in the exchange rate.

I cant fathom why the majority of Americans are ok with their weird sociopathic Job = Health Insurance based system. While not as nearly unanimous as the metric system, well funded Public Health Care to a level where most people don't need health insurance to cover an emergency hospital visit for say a broken leg... is basically what everyone else around the world in other countries considers a normal and good thing...

In essence... You were already getting ripped off, now you're getting ripped off even more.

In England, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, etc, etc, etc... The treatment for your child would likely have cost you nothing, or nearly nothing. The fact it cost you over $10,000 is not entirely the Obama's fault, it's the collective fault of nearly a century of American citizens who have accepted the status quo and not pressed for any sort of change prior to Obama promising to change it single handedly, since that worked about as well as most people watching from other developed countries with modern socially supported public health care expected it to... it was a best case train wreck because of health care industry self interested lobbying efforts from pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospital management companies, all the companies... not because it was a bad idea to stop the fright train that is employer provided health care in the USA. They just managed to convince them to stop the metaphorical train in such a way they could profit even more, and thus cost everyone including the government even more money...

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#272

Post by graeme »

projektfu wrote: post #234
graeme wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suspiciou…

Yes, and teachers can grade some assignments electronically with a click. But generally speaking admin work has not kept up with the productivity of manufacturing positions.

In fact given that the numbers of admin staff per student and per graduate has increased, you could credibly argue admin productivity has declined.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#273

Post by throwaway2037 »

ohnonotyouagain wrote: post #152
Hermitian909 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also, the top institutions also offer substantial need-based aid, so the top-line tuition number is really only applicable to households with income over ~$200-$250K. At Harvard a family with $150K income will pay $15K, see https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet I think this is typical across the Ivies. That's basically in-state tuition at UMass https://www.umass.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admi…

Great find. You missed the best part: >

That means for income For readers not familiar with US university system: This will not include "room & board" (housing & food).

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#274

Post by imtringued »

testfoobar wrote: post #180
narrator wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American solution to something being too expensive is to spend twice as much money on it.

This solution certainly appears to apply to healthcare, education and public infrastructure. I believe the reason is that since we print the global reserve currency, we can always borrow money at the Federal level and spend more.

That makes no sense. Why would you squander an opportunity like that on corruption?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#275

Post by lotsofpulp »

csa wrote: post #219
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?

> Health Insurance stocks in the US did better than tech stocks after Obamacare passed. Why? Is this a genuine question or is it rhetorical? I can’t really tell these days. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5145008/ Short answer is that insurance companies were “limited” to 20% profits and 80% expenses by ACA. Smarter insurance companies realized quickly that they not only had zero incentives to cut costs,…

You can easily see that all the health insurance companies’ profit margins are in the 5% range, which is not a lot.

It is a competitive business without a lot of pricing power. But what it will do is provide consistent, reliable returns. And since more people are getting more healthcare, the magnitude of the profits will obviously be higher, hence the increase in stock price.

Basically, the market caps now reflects what are essentially utilities that earn ~5% profit margin on huge revenues. This was not clear in the early ACA days, but investors have obviously warmed up to them.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#277

Post by imtringued »

nradov wrote: post #240
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 essentiall…

This reminds me of a doctor that did ten thousand heart surgeries and quit because people kept coming back for their second or third bypass. It's pointless because you're not addressing the source of the problem.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#278

Post by lotsofpulp »

thrown_22 wrote: post #221
NLPlatypus wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It would depend on the cost of healthcare being delivered to those customers.

Considering that an out of pocket maximum did not exist prior to affordable care act, and insurers were allowed to deny people with pre existing conditions, I would expect drastically higher spending on new insureds because they would finally start getting healthcare.

Now the insurance company has to pay the hundreds of thousands and millions per NICU/hemophiliacs/cancer patients etc, so why wouldn’t their expenses go drastically higher?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#279

Post by thrown_22 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #278
thrown_22 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It would depend on the cost of healthcare being delivered to those customers. Considering that an out of pocket maximum did not exist prior to affordable care act, and insurers were allowed to deny people with pre existing conditions, I would expect drastically higher spending on new insureds because they would finally start getting healthcare. Now the insurance company has to pay the hundreds of thousands and millio…

That's profit, not revenue.

I'm asking why their revenue for increased exponentially for having 10% more clients.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#280

Post by lotsofpulp »

robomartin wrote: post #250
JamesBarney wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying but the evidence that Obamacare ballooned healthcare expenses isn't there. Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. For instance I couldn't have started a startup without it, and it's much easier to hire contract workers because of it.

> Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. Sure. On my back, and that of countless others. It's fucking highway robbery. Before Obamacare we had excellent health insurance with excellent coverage, doctors and low deductibles for $650 per month. When we were shoved into Obamacare, our rate TRIPLED to $1,800 per month. Today we are paying nearly $2,300 per month. This is equivalent t…

>Sure. On my back, and that of countless others.

Yes, that was the point. People who could not afford healthcare, are now receiving it. Hence people who can afford to pay for others to get healthcare, have to pay for others to get healthcare.

>However, doing it by causing serious financial harm to likely millions of families is not right, at all.

There was never going to be a way to redistribute wealth without taking to from those who have it or to give it to those who do not.

>Here's an example: One of my kids ended-up in the hospital with myocarditis due to the Covid vaccine. That cost us over TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, cash.

And you are insured for amounts that go over the out of pocket maximum, which is legally around $17k for families. So if you need a $500k heart surgery tomorrow, you only have to spend a maximum of $17k.

Obviously, the price of healthcare is a problem, and the only way to fix that is to lower demand (let people die) and increase supply (more doctors, more taxpayer funded R&D into medicines that go into public domain, and tort reform).

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