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Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

theguardian.com

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Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#41

Post by greglindahl »

Animats wrote: post #17

Stanford is building a new "campus" in Redwood City. 35 acres. 2,700 people on site. None are students. None are faculty. No teaching or research will occur there. It's all administrators .[1] "School of Medicine administration; Stanford Libraries and University Archives; the major administrative units of Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; University Human Resources; Residential & Dining Enterprises;…

Yeah, who needs the Library and Archives? The book conservation lab is one of the things in the RWC location, that's clearly overhead that's totally not needed! Buckminster Fuller's models? Let 'em molder.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#42

Post by bllguo »

asdfjklasdfjkl wrote: post #18
gmarx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume the primary purpose of college/university is to teach. No. In America anyway, it is mostly a credential. The prestige and exclusiveness of your uni serves as a marker of intelligence in a society in which it can be legally treacherous to give potential employees IQ tests. I will agree that for a significant minority of students the learning and learning to teach oneself are important. I doubt the top unive…

It's difficult to design an education system without the following property, but nonetheless I find it an unfortunate one: You do better at university when you already know the material, not when you use the university to learn the material. Your well-being (tied directly to gpa) depends on you not making mistakes during your coursework. I don't know about you, but mistakes are how I learn.

very interesting point. For me the best way to learn was to do problem sets and be able to immediately check and fix my answers - to have the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them in a low stakes environment.

I had a few classes where the professor provided both a list of recommended problems in the text, as well as an answer key. The grading was solely off of tests. Circumvents the cheating problem and tries to avoid punishing you for making mistakes while learning.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#43

Post by praxulus »

extrapickles wrote: post #39
mnm1 wrote: post #6

Yes. This is why I refuse to donate to my alma mater anymore. Tuition has nearly tripled in in fourteen years while they are still teaching the same number of students with roughly the same or fewer full time faculty. There's something seriously wrong with that and this is a huge symptom of it. Until they get their shit together, they need less money coming in, not more. This is supposed to be a nonprofit institution…

When student loans were able to be discharged in bankruptcy, it was popular to declare bankruptcy on graduation. By the time they saved up enough for a down payment on a house, the bankruptcy will have fallen off the records, so effectively they got a free education (not the ideal mechanism for doing so, better to give people free education upfront). Maybe there is a middle ground where student debt is not easily dis…

All student loans should be subject to income-based repayment. They can still be very difficult/impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, but you shouldn't have to make significant payments on them unless you're actually making decent money.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#44

Post by ams6110 »

2017Dude wrote: post #34
rfdub wrote: post #29

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post secondary institutions are positioning themselves less and less and places to get an education and more and more as places to go for an "experience." Its no longer enough to provide a quality education, universities now are selling themselves on their facilitie…

Not sure about student party life experience given the recent rise of "no-fault" false rape allegations. Cannot be as careless anymore.

There is a huge new "student ethics" bureaucracy to handle that stuff that never used to exist. In the past, if you got drunk and did something you later regretted, that was your problem, as it is for any adult in the real world.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#45

Post by mc32 »

maxerickson wrote: post #37
zaphos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about UK Universities. Stanford is not broke. http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances

It can still be the case that they are spending excessively on administrators. They can easily use any potential savings by adjusting the way their scholarships taper off versus income.

Apparently over the years they have reduced administration, at least in some areas. Maybe now they are just slightly less bloated.

That said, some of the boat may have to do with government oversight for their research grants.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#46

Post by rifung »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #9

Extremely unpopular opinion: Let's cut both the extra admin, and excess tenured professors. In fact, the entire tenure system should be completely upended. At my alma mater there were a lot of professors who didn't have enough students sign up for their classes, or their field of study was phased out, or reduced. Instead they sat around doing "research" and when they were forced to teach, quite a few openly expressed…

Isn't research a large part of what universities are for though?

I don't want to argue that tenure is the best system but it exists for a reason: so that those who have proved themselves can pursue research which is longer term and carries more risk. I don't think it makes sense to get rid of it without a proper replacement.

University is pretty much the only place where people can do truly long term research. The only exception I can think of is Microsoft Research and, besides being only limited to CS, I believe they've recently taken a turn to trying to align more with products.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#47

Post by wtvanhest »

rfdub wrote: post #29

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post secondary institutions are positioning themselves less and less and places to get an education and more and more as places to go for an "experience." Its no longer enough to provide a quality education, universities now are selling themselves on their facilitie…

This is the view of people who have not really looked at university budgets. "experiences" are cheap compared to headcount. Buildings and experiences are mainly funded by outside donation specifically for the experience or building. People do not often donate to "expand salaries and headcount for faculty and administrators".

The result is that students pay for headcount and donors pay for experiences. It isn't just administrative headcount, it is also teaching headcount. If you want a low price, you cannot have a $200,000 a year professor teaching 30 students and doing some research unless the research is funding their salary.

We need to lower the cost of colleges in the United States dramatically and that means tough choices, but it won't happen until we reach the point where student loan defaults are so prevalent that the federal gov can no longer subsidize them.

We have a crisis on our hands and our politicians are talking about lowering the cost of borrowing by 2%, and making colleges "free". They are not interested in driving down the real cost of an education.

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#48

Post by bitJericho »

extrapickles wrote: post #39
mnm1 wrote: post #6

Yes. This is why I refuse to donate to my alma mater anymore. Tuition has nearly tripled in in fourteen years while they are still teaching the same number of students with roughly the same or fewer full time faculty. There's something seriously wrong with that and this is a huge symptom of it. Until they get their shit together, they need less money coming in, not more. This is supposed to be a nonprofit institution…

When student loans were able to be discharged in bankruptcy, it was popular to declare bankruptcy on graduation. By the time they saved up enough for a down payment on a house, the bankruptcy will have fallen off the records, so effectively they got a free education (not the ideal mechanism for doing so, better to give people free education upfront). Maybe there is a middle ground where student debt is not easily dis…

Really? Source?

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#49

Post by bllguo »

chriskanan wrote: post #22
Overtonwindow wrote: post #9

Extremely unpopular opinion: Let's cut both the extra admin, and excess tenured professors. In fact, the entire tenure system should be completely upended. At my alma mater there were a lot of professors who didn't have enough students sign up for their classes, or their field of study was phased out, or reduced. Instead they sat around doing "research" and when they were forced to teach, quite a few openly expressed…

As a tenure-track professor, obviously I'm biased, but tenure doesn't mean you don't have to work. Professors still have to pull their weight around the university and department. If nobody takes their classes or they aren't bringing in research dollars, that would be a problem that would be brought up in their performance appraisals. The vast majority of tenured professors make about 1/2 to 1/4 of what their value i…

Hmm, on the other hand it seems like a waste of time for professors to have to compile 100-200 page reports like that. Surely there are simpler heuristics for identifying egregiously lazy profs

Re: Universities are broke – let’s cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching

#50

Post by ams6110 »

Finnucane wrote: post #20
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that admin costs are too high. However I think most of the tuition growth is due to decreases in state and federal funding.

That's true for state schools, where subsidies have been cut almost universally.

Look at any state university org chart from 30 years ago compared to today. The difference will be striking. Yes state subsidies are down, but administrative growth has also been accelerating.
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