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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

#71

Post by leggomylibro »

forkLding wrote: post #3

I have actually had an idea related to the sort of debt had to be taken by American university students for their academics. Why not use a mixture of blended learning and Coursera, where students pay not just professors but also industry folk for cutting-edge knowledge but also open up a marketplace for Youtube tutorial people to do physical workshops in their cities that can be charged and move onto a sort of Airbnb…

Coursera is maybe not a great example - they don't even vet their courses before starting to sell them, and they won't necessarily offer refunds if you want to drop a disappointing course partway through. It's full of courses with two weeks of 'intro' material which references the exciting things which will (not) be taught in future weeks, and it seems more like a diploma mill or collection of half-baked blog posts than any sort of real education. I've had overwhelmingly negative experiences with them.

EdX is a quality platform, though, and MOOCs in general could fill that role.

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

#72

Post by jackcosgrove »

zippergz wrote: post #64
wtvanhest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

On the research point, why are research and teaching commingled? Both are important, but it seems that they require very different skillsets. Would we be better off filling universities primarily with people who love teaching, and are great at it, and having some other kind of institution (or some separate division of universities) do the research? Is this heresy?

No, it's the difference between a liberal arts college and a university.

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

#73

Post by joatmon-snoo »

zippergz wrote: post #64
wtvanhest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

On the research point, why are research and teaching commingled? Both are important, but it seems that they require very different skillsets. Would we be better off filling universities primarily with people who love teaching, and are great at it, and having some other kind of institution (or some separate division of universities) do the research? Is this heresy?

In large part it's an unfortunate consequence of how academia works; but I think in large part, what you're asking for is happening: the proportion of instructors who are lecturers and adjuncts, rather than tenure-track/tenured professors, has steadily increased over the years [1].

Meanwhile, tenure-track/tenured professors tend to focus primarily on teaching upper-level classes, which suits them infinitely better. The students they get are much more knowledgeable, which frees profs from worrying too much about background knowledge; by sheer virtue of selection bias, students that aren't interested have been filtered out; and the material is much closer to the work the profs themselves actually do.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-eve...

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

#74

Post by melling »

postnihilism wrote: post #61
maxerickson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe, but using one of the most successful and wealthy institutions in the world as an example of ineffective bloat isn't useful for the overall argument. "This workout routine is a waste of time and effort. See, look at Usain Bolt doing it."

With the cost of education in the US being so expensive and the constant call for student loan forgiveness ($1 trillion), it might be worth looking into the extra cost. I’m sure Stanford isn’t unique.

The cost of a university education has far outpaced inflation. Harvard cost $2,600 in 1970.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/16/why-college-costs-are-so-hig...

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

#75

Post by lutorm »

ams6110 wrote: post #53
Overtonwindow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MY favorite are the exorbitant salaries paid to sports faculty, even when the sports program is loses money.

The universities that have highly paid coaches are the ones with premier, highly successful programs and earn way more from ticket sales, broadcast revenues, and merchandise than the coach is paid. It's like any other business (and it most definitely is a business), you need to pay well to attract the best talent.

If this article (https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-ma...) is any guide, the money made by the athletic department mostly goes to the athletic department and not to funding anything else useful.

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

#76

Post by secabeen »

fav_collector wrote: post #33
muninn_ wrote: post #5

We can't cut the pointless admin for public schools because we need to comply with government regulations. Not making a judgement call here, but it's there.

What government regulations are relevant in this case?

OMB Circular A-21 is a good example of a significant set of regulations on universities use of federal grant money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMB_Circular_A-21

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

#77

Post by jackcosgrove »

ams6110 wrote: post #63
epaulson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. Universities used to be much more involved in student life. Read up on 'In Loco Parentis' in higher education.

They were involved in a supervisory role. All male or all female dorms, mandatory on-campus housing, curfews, tightly controlled visitation and social events. Now, students get to do whatever they want and are only held to account after the fact. There is a huge ethics bureaucracy with committees conducting hearings, investigations, and various other CYA activities after the shit has hit the fan.

I think university laxity peaked in the 80s. Starting in the early 90s the PC movement began to police behavior as it had from the 60s on back.

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

#78

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

>The vast majority of tenured professors make about 1/2 to 1/4 of what their value is in industry, and at research institutions most work 60+ hours per week. On average, I work far harder now than I did as a PhD student or when I was in industry.

You should probably join an academic unionization movement.

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

#80

Post by ams6110 »

greglindahl wrote: post #41
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.

Today, a library fits on a hard drive.
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