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Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

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Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#71

Post by Nicholas_C »

jjoonathan wrote: post #21
tammer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

I took a look at CMU's financials and it definitely looks like the money is going towards salaries. They don't offer a breakdown between the different kinds of salaries, naturally. Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...

>Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information?

All government employee salaries in the state of Texas are public info [0], I used to check out how much my professors made. And how much my dad made. You can see salaries by employer as well. I'm not sure where to find historical salary data but it has to exist somewhere.

[0] http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee...

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#72

Post by dustcoin »

cheepin wrote: post #6
soup10 wrote: post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

Research, Sports, executive salaries. There are a lot of costs besides teacher's salaries.

I doubt executive salaries make up a significant portion of any school's budget. Overpaid non-executive administrators are a much larger cost in aggregate, because there are so many of them.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#73

Post by justizin »

dnautics wrote: post #70
esrauch wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually better for students that they can't default on their loans? I usually hear it the opposite way, that even after bankruptcy proceedings you still have your student loan debt following you around.

non-dischargeability was probably a 'good intention' gone horribly wrong. Because on the plus side, the student's APRs are lower because the lender can be guaranteed to own a portion of the student's labor for the specified term unless they die. And because the higher educational institutes really ought to be entitled to continue extracting their students' value.

the problem is that higher education is the only product aside from used cars in the US which can be sold without an implied warranty of merchantability.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#74

Post by justizin »

programmarchy wrote: post #42
jonhinson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Common Core, a set of standards that can voluntarily be adopted by states, equivalent to regulation?

Sorry, I was thinking about No Child Left Behind, which was an Act of Congress. You're right -- Common Core is implemented differently. From what I know, it was mainly drafted up by testing corporations, but has the support of the Obama administration. Since the federal government has levers and dials it can use (i.e. fines, penalties, withholding grants, etc.) then it seems to me like the end result will be the same…

No Child Left Behind is anti-productive. How anyone could believe an education initiative by a president who thinks captain crunch discovered america in 1975 could be of any value is beyond me.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#75

Post by sogen »

tammer wrote: post #17
soup10 wrote: post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

sounds like education in Mexico

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#76

Post by jmckib »

Jtsummers wrote: post #67
jmckib wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed" School vouchers are a great alternative to public schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher

My primary issue with school vouchers is the poor state of private schools, at least here in GA (outside of the major cities like Atlanta and Savannah). The Catholic schools are decent to good, but often are only K-8. There are few private secular schools. The rest of the private schools are very conservative "Christian Academy" types whose education leaves their students complete morons in some fields (math, science…

I bet that if we switched to vouchers then you'd see a lot of new private schools catering to a wider audience. It also might be reasonable to exclude private schools with religious instruction from the voucher program.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#77

Post by rdtsc »

jmckib wrote: post #63
rdtsc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate. > Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoen…

> As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed" School vouchers are a great alternative to public schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher

> School vouchers are a great alternative to public schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher

Are there universities on the voucher system?

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#78

Post by jhalstead »

jjoonathan wrote: post #21
tammer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

I took a look at CMU's financials and it definitely looks like the money is going towards salaries. They don't offer a breakdown between the different kinds of salaries, naturally. Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...

Here's [1] data for all the public universities in IL.

[1] http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/PA96266/search.aspx

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#79

Post by noonespecial »

soup10 wrote: post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

The problem is simple. Teachers teach because they want to teach, administrators "administrate" for the money. And that's where it goes.

The market won't work right for teachers because some of them would do it for free if they had some other way to eat. To fix it will take more than administration. It will take leadership.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#80

Post by jerf »

goldfeld wrote: post #2

These basal, fundamental flaws in the educational system give me pause to awe, and a gut feeling the US is gonna get trampled many times over by the likes of China within some decades. So little regulation and such harsh capitalism is eating its heart out bit by bit. I guess what keeps America bright at this point is a legacy from the past century, that's slowly eroding, and the brain drain sucked chiefly out of Asia…

Are you sure this is the defense you want to muster? Universities are basically where liberalism/progressivism comes from. It is where it is in its strongest power. Government money everywhere; tuition, research grants, special projects, tax breaks. Administrative staff benevolently administrating massive diversity programs of every kind. 90%+ of the staff are progressives/liberals. Not being progressive/liberal can be pretty much reason to be drummed out. It is the very beating heart of the anti-"capitalist" regime, the blueprint by which they would remake the rest of the world.

And it's still under assault by "little regulation" and "harsh capitalism"? If it's so frail in the real world, then pack it in; the philosophy has no hope of success. It will never find any more fertile ground than it has there. If you don't like the result of decades of liberalism/progressivism's control, perhaps it's time to find a new governing philosophy.

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