151–160 of 248 posts
How is this any different from 20, 30, 40 years ago?? Hint: it's not.
Wages are sticky. Inflation keeps on going up. It's worse.
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So 40% of employees aren't paid by the university system's academic arm, but by the healthcare section. 30% are academic staff, and 30% are support staff.
Even with the cost of medicine going through the roof, college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average. So it's surprising the university would need to spend so much there.
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Yeah but what is the return on investment? The incentive to have a alumni department to increase donations clearly isn’t in the best interests of society.
Society has decided that it doesn't want to support American universities through tax dollars [1] so you can't really blame universities for trying to find any and all other sources of funding. [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
Or monetize research instead of gifting it to large (pharmaceutical) companies?
This isn’t the only way for education to fund itself, and the incentives are not aligned with the mission.
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Pretty much every other country in the world. Europe pays $8/gal or more depending.
People in the US are very spoiled in this regard. In Europe and Asia having a car and being able to afford to drive it is honestly a luxury.
For example, just in India alone you can hitch a ride on a bicycle rickshaw, auto-rickshaw, taxi, bus, train or subway. It's pretty easy to get around anywhere without having to drive, but this is also only possible because labor costs are so absurdly low (and of course, generally not that great for the drivers), with costs for private rides on the first 3 often comparable to public transport costs in the US.
Plus, Europe and Asia are generally more densely populated than the US, so having a car is a status symbol in that it shows that you can afford a safe place to keep a car. Meanwhile, outside of big cities like NYC (where car ownership is similarly a bit of a luxury), people easily have room to safely park one car per family member.
These are all heavily intertwined factors though, just as owning a car isn't as much of a status symbol in less densely populated areas, owning a car is less necessary in more densely populated areas.
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> PhD students by law cannot work more than 20 hours a week. Most have 9 month stipend appointments. Wat. Citation needed.
I can't speak to the "by law" part. But many universities, including two that I have experience with, consider the PhD stipend to be compensation for a part time job (RA/TA), accounting for 20 hours of the student's time, with the idea that the remaining 20 hours are to be devoted to taking classes. And during the summer, when a student may not be taking classes, a student may receive a full 40 hours' worth of compen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but what is the return on investment? The incentive to have a alumni department to increase donations clearly isn’t in the best interests of society.
Society has decided that it doesn't want to support American universities through tax dollars [1] so you can't really blame universities for trying to find any and all other sources of funding. [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society has decided that it doesn't want to support American universities through tax dollars [1] so you can't really blame universities for trying to find any and all other sources of funding. [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
What about tuition? Or monetize research instead of gifting it to large (pharmaceutical) companies? This isn’t the only way for education to fund itself, and the incentives are not aligned with the mission.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but what is the return on investment? The incentive to have a alumni department to increase donations clearly isn’t in the best interests of society.
Society has decided that it doesn't want to support American universities through tax dollars [1] so you can't really blame universities for trying to find any and all other sources of funding. [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
This is hyperbole, the government is spending billions on American Universities in a myriad of different ways. And, many ways of support are not direct. One could argue that the guaranteed student loan programs are a roundabout way of supporting universities through tax dollars as well.
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Where is all this tuition even going to? Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia and yet these colleges are also systematically underpaying PhD students, Teaching Assistants, etc. College Professors don't exactly make the big bucks either. Yet, universities in the US have made put many Americans in lifelong debt. These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant t…
> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in…
Most of these requirements independently make sense, but the sum impact weighs down universities and drives up cost.