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Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

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Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#41

Post by Manuel_D »

abeppu wrote: post #22
johnny99k wrote: post #2

When you have students taking out Federal loans, the University getting paid with virtually no risk, and they don't if the student can get a job or pay off the loan, they have no incentive to curb spending. The federal government need to force these universities to take the risk and loan out money directly.

I think the federal government just needs to have a 'fitness standard' for schools to be eligible to receive federal loan dollars. Like, >80% of tuition dollars must be spent on instruction staff, instruction-specific facilities that serve students, students must be able to opt-out of substantial non-instruction services (e.g. dorms, recreational facilities), etc. If you want to build a new building that doesn't have…

In theory, that's what accreditation is supposed to represent: a set of standards to ensure students are educated to a certain minimum bar for a given major.

However, the cynical reality is that university is as much about signalling competence relative to the rest of the population as it is about learning. Fun fact: Stanford's computer science program is not accredited. The department explained that it's a mountain of paperwork to get accredited and it wouldn't benefit Stanford at all because it's already so prestigious.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#42

Post by vxNsr »

sohex wrote: post #17
endominus wrote: post #8

There's a common belief that education is being underfunded in the United States, that the problem with schools is that they lack the budget to improve their learning outcomes. Statistically speaking, total spending on education had increased year on year, accounting for inflation, per student, since the 1970s. Conversely, test scores have remained relatively stagnant (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/consid…

Is total spending per student really sufficient as a means of tracking whether enough is being spent though? I'd imagine that the costs per student have risen a greater rate since the 70s than spending has. Between things like needing to pay for computers and IT infrastructure, accommodation programs for those with special needs, and so on it seems to me that it's actually remarkable in someways that test scores have…

I’ve yet to see any real correlation between increasing technology in the classroom and increasing learning. In general technology in the classroom is a hindrance to real education. It turns out most people learn better writing by hand and interacting in person vs staring at a screen.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#43

Post by vxNsr »

mlyle wrote: post #28
WalterBright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are not necessary for K-12 education. They're more likely a hindrance.

Students getting experience doing computer things is nice. And there's things that are awesome to demonstrate with simulations. Spending a huge fraction of your educational day on them is dumb and ripe for abuse. This is a potential silver lining of the whole LLM thing: computers being used for writing assignments, etc, may become untenable.

I had a teacher 15 years ago who didn’t trust us not to have family members edit our work to the point where it was no longer our work so he only gave in class writing assignments. Homework was always research or reading.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#44

Post by rahimnathwani »

rayiner wrote: post #9

It’s worth understanding the trade offs countries like France make to offer near free university education: https://voices.uchicago.edu/euchicago/the-problem-with-frenc...

I couldn't take that article seriously after reading this paragraph:

  The French state spends 6,700 euros per public student per year, but up to thirteen thousand euros can be spent per student enrolled in Grandes Écoles, despite their only accounting for five percent of total students. Thus, though they only teach five percent of French students, these Grandes Écoles receive 30 percent of the government’s education budget.
(I read the paragraph after this as well, but it made even less sense, as it was suggesting the low fees paid by French students, of the order of hundreds of dollars per year, were somehow related to the quality of education, when it's simply because the vast majority of the cost is paid for by the state.)

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#45

Post by ssivark »

haldujai wrote: post #32
WalterBright wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More regulation to micromanage things is never going to work. For example, what if you've got an opportunity to hire Feynman, but he expects 9%? Maybe you'll skirt the 8% requirement by giving him a company car to use. Nobody is smart enough to write a regulation that can't be gamed.

Regulating administrative overhead as a single line item with a fixed percentage is micromanaging?

Yes, because somebody might innovate an education model where administrative salaries are 90% of the cost but students learn well, and earn well. An 8% cap would close off such avenues for progress.

In general (going back to basic cybernetics/control theory), it’s better to regulate outcomes (what you actually want) rather than inputs, unless you’re sure you have the correct model of the system. So it’s much better to make collages share the risk, rather than the government footing the risk and instituting regulations and processes.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#46

Post by haldujai »

echelon wrote: post #15
johnny99k wrote: post #2

When you have students taking out Federal loans, the University getting paid with virtually no risk, and they don't if the student can get a job or pay off the loan, they have no incentive to curb spending. The federal government need to force these universities to take the risk and loan out money directly.

It's all about risk. Currently the loans don't factor in the associated risks, and therefore are unlimited streams of funny money. The expected value of the degree, the cost of the degree program, chance of graduation, chance of employment, student risk factors (grades, attendance), etc. are important, yet not considered. When pricing is artificially kept independent of the underlying risk model, it leads to the kind…

> Basically, just STEM, nursing, radiology, etc.

So "Basically, STEM or STEM-adjacent"? (depending how consider nursing)

> The expected value of the degree

To society or the individual? Calculated how?

> If you want an art school history major, you need a real loan.

So only rich people are allowed to be educated in the humanities unless you're willing to get what will be a very expensive and likely cost-prohibitive private loan? This seems like a step backwards.

> A healthy medium might be to allow federal loans to continue for only programs with an expected value in four years that exceeds that of the degree program cost plus loan interest plus double the cost of living

So basically only engineers? This wouldn't apply to anyone getting a graduate degree or even most other professions. A mathematician from MIT entering academia wouldn't meet this calculation. Neither would almost all physicians, even if you ignore years spent in residency, unless they're moving somewhere with a very low COL.

Respectfully, as someone with a humanities undergraduate and two graduate STEM degrees, I find your proposition incredibly shortsighted and fails to consider the individual and societal value of non-STEM degrees beyond direct salary.

I would argue my undergraduate degree has provided me far more value, financial and otherwise, than either of my other degrees.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#47

Post by WalterBright »

haldujai wrote: post #32
WalterBright wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More regulation to micromanage things is never going to work. For example, what if you've got an opportunity to hire Feynman, but he expects 9%? Maybe you'll skirt the 8% requirement by giving him a company car to use. Nobody is smart enough to write a regulation that can't be gamed.

Regulating administrative overhead as a single line item with a fixed percentage is micromanaging?

Yup. You'll have to include regulating what an administrator is. And what their duties are. And so on.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#48

Post by haldujai »

WalterBright wrote: post #47
haldujai wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating administrative overhead as a single line item with a fixed percentage is micromanaging?

Yup. You'll have to include regulating what an administrator is. And what their duties are. And so on.

Public universities already label and report on administrative staff and overhead.

I'm not sure that I would call this micromanaging.

https://www.usnews.com/education/articles/one-culprit-in-ris...

https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-in-califor...

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#49

Post by s1artibartfast »

drewda wrote: post #40
s1artibartfast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that they're not competing for students, they're competing for Prestige. Most universities have a wait list a mile long, so they're not going to run out of students. However, very few colleges want to be the university that produces an adequate education with extremely low cost. They all want to be the most prestigious University, costs be damned. If you want to get a sense of the differences, community…

> Most universities have a wait list a mile long, so they're not going to run out of students. Have a look at the stats at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_305.40.a... Add up the percentages and you'll see that only 7% of American undergrad institutions accept fewer than 50% of their applications. That means half of colleges and universities take at least half of everyone who applies. Not much of a…

Thanks for the interesting data.

I was thinking mostly of the most competitive universities, which tend to be the ones with highest tuition. Few people are concerned the high cost of community colleges and related student debt.

It would be fascinating to see a scatter plot of college tuition vs acceptance rate.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#50

Post by dv_dt »

WalterBright wrote: post #27
dv_dt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also help to require administrative salaries to be below a certain percentage in order to qualify to accept federal loan money. (I would think 8% or lower).

More regulation to micromanage things is never going to work. For example, what if you've got an opportunity to hire Feynman, but he expects 9%? Maybe you'll skirt the 8% requirement by giving him a company car to use. Nobody is smart enough to write a regulation that can't be gamed.

If Feynman were available it would be a colossal waste for him to be administrative.

Many regulations work fine - not regulating is what is breaking civilization down all the world and economy right now.

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