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You're missing the forest for the trees. What are ''the true costs of school''? Someone who loves to teach sitting in a classroom teaching. It can be dirt ch

You're missing the forest for the trees. What are ''the true costs of school''? Someone who loves to teach sitting in a classroom teaching. It can be dirt cheap or it can be very expensive. Supply and demand sorts out the details. As more money flowed into the system, administration bloated and became its own entrenched interest group, with very little connection to actual education.[1] Does the UC system need 500 administrators making >$500k year each?[2] As it stands, college for most of my friends was a 4 year social safari interrupted by infrequent periods of intense cramming in between high school and joining the work force. Do you think the average 18-21 year old at a state school is a scholar passionately indulging their love of learning? Almost all education is self education at the end of the day. As soon as we solve for the credentialing/pedigree/signaling problem, online education will destroy a huge amount of offline education and rightly so. As for the mortgage interest deduction, how wouldn't it boost housing prices? It effectively lowers the mortage rate by your marginal tax bracket which is close to 50% in California. So instead of a 3.5% 30 year rate I'm now below 2%. Cheaper money stimulates borrowing. It doesn't matter how low NIMBYism pushes supply in the face of overwhelming demand, each individual still has a maximum price they can pay, and subsidized interest rates raise that price point. [1] http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/09/senior-administrators-now-officially.html http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/09/senior-administrators-... [2] http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-201...

derefr 10y ago
> As it stands, college for most of my friends was a 4 year social safari And that's what costs money, insofar as it raises people's social class and gives them connections. Learning is a trivial cost in comparison, and can be ignored in the calculation; it's something you effectively get "for free" with the price of admission to the social-class-higher-than-yours practicum that is university. Note that community colleges, which have just as much "learning" but no potential for class-raising, don't have spiralling costs. Community college costs what learning costs.
- GauntletWizard 10y ago
  And yet, despite more and more people getting an education, class stratification getting worse in one of the common talking points. How do you explain that?
  - derefr 10y ago
    The people who are now "getting a [university] education" who previously weren't, are people already in the social upper-middle class, going to upper-middle class universities where they just end up enculturating further to the class they're already in. People in the upper-middle class will only experience social-class mobility by going to an upper-class university (e.g. one of the Ivies, and even then only certain programs that haven't already been flooded by other upper-middle class entrants.) Meanwhile, very few people in the lower-middle class go to university; they "get an education" by going to a trade-school or to community college, thus also avoiding enculturation. And people truly in the lower class (e.g. immigrant agricultural workers) don't even consider higher education to be an option, despite government student loan programs being aimed at them (with the explicit goal of enculturation!) more than anyone else. Generally, though, mobility between any two classes becomes more difficult as the size-ratio between the source and destination class increases, because every place an individual could go to attempt to immerse themselves in the destination class, is already full of other people of the source class attempting the same thing. The previous mobility from lower-middle to upper-middle class has created a bulging upper-middle, which has killed the ability for people to become upper class. (Though it's easier than ever to enculturate to the upper-middle class, this being basically what happens by default when anyone with a lower-middle-class background finds themselves spending a lot of time on the internet—the internet [outside of own-class-reflecting echo chambers like Facebook] being a universally-accessible upper-middle-class microcosm.)
    - kilbuz 10y ago
      Have you written a book or research publications on this topic? I've always wanted an update to Fussell's 'Class' for the internet generations, and this post is as close to that as I've seen. If you know others who have written on the topic, please list them here. Thank you.
specialist 10y ago
Supply and demand sorts out the details. Maybe. I place more weight on incentives. Design of the markets. Checks and balances. Transparency and accountability. need 500 administrators...? The insufferable waste I witnessed in higher ed is no different than any where else I've worked. Biggest factors are scale and bureaucracies. As terrible as higher ed is, I'm certain I don't want it to become more business like, assembly line efficient. Whatever magic is to be found in higher ed is because its weird, chaotic, diverse. As for the mortgage interest deduction, how wouldn't it boost housing prices? Second order effect.
- KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  And one of the most magical things about US higher ed is that it just swallowed 400,000 loans funded by taxpayers without as much as a burp.
  - hiram112 10y ago
    Spot on. It's becoming increasingly clear that the student debt bubble will blow up, no differently than the housing bubble. And just like the housing bubble, the clever ones are going to end up getting Uncle Sugar to pay off their loans, while a large majority will end up 'doing the right thing' to their own disadvantage. Of course, the big banks and financial entities that own these loans will come out just fine. Then we can move on to the next staple to financialize, perhaps unborn generations since there's not much left.
  - specialist 10y ago
    Higher ed already got their money. The banks got stuffed.
slg 10y ago
According to you second link, the UC system has a budget of $27 billion. You could fire all those administrators making over $500k and you wouldn't even save 1% of the annual budget. Is administrative bloat a problem? Sure. But blaming it for the tuition increases we have seen is like blaming the national debt on inefficiencies in the EPA.
- ploxiln 10y ago
  That particular statistic is used for effect, and the article admits it's not the biggest problem: > While big paychecks for those in UC's senior management group — including the president, the chancellors and other top administrators — attract the most attention, they comprise less than 1% of the $27-billion budget, officials say. > It is the next layer of well-paid administrators that has grown most significantly over the last two decades. From 2004 to 2014, the management and senior professionals ranks swelled by 60%, to about 10,000, UC data show. There are indirectly related tidbits all over the article and I couldn't find what I'd really like to see: a histogram of administration salaries and another of faculty salaries. Anyway, here's another unrelated but interesting tidbit from that article: > Efficiency experts brought in to assess the UC Berkeley bureaucracy a few years ago concluded it was top-heavy. Bain & Co. consultants tallied 11 layers of management between the chancellor and front-line employees, suggesting that the organization had too many bosses. More than half of all managers — about 1,000 — had three or fewer direct reports, and 471 were in charge of exactly one person each. Isn't it funny that they had to hire top-dollar big-name consultants to find out they have way too many middle managers ... some of these managers should have the time to figure out how many layers of management there are and how silly some of them are. But then again, of course they didn't: more managers results in more politics results in less effective management.
  - slg 10y ago
    Bloat increasing is natural for any growing bureaucracy and the UC system is certainly growing. The article cites enrollment has grown by 77,000 students over the last 15 years. That works out to almost a 50% growth rate (although it was a longer time period than the admin growth rate used). So a 60% growth in middle managers doesn't seem completely unreasonable. I am sure there is plenty of waste there, but once again it isn't nearly enough to explain the type of tuition increases that have happened over recent decades.
greeneggs 10y ago
> Does the UC system need 500 administrators making >$500k year each? This statistic is incorrect. In 2014, there were 445 UC employees making >$500K/year each. This includes everybody, not just administrators. You can get a list of them all here [1]. I didn't go through the whole list, but from sampling a few random pages, I'd guess that there are <20 administrators making >$500K. They are mostly medical school professors, some athletic coaches, and, e.g., the Chief Investment Officer. There are also some CFOs and Executive Deans, and maybe I missed something, so feel free to correct me. [1] https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/
- newjersey 10y ago
  I think UC would still do well to publicly announce a pay cap. Maybe $1M and say nobody makes above that amount. Once the superstars are limited to $1M, I think others will fall in line as well. Don't like it? Quit.
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    just stay in new jersey. we don't want our schools losing more professors to USC and Stanford.
    - newjersey 10y ago
      I'm sorry but there's no other way. The cost of education has to come down and that means professors, coaches, and administrators have to pay themselves less. We're already cutting cost at the lower end of the spectrum with adjuncts. Why not do the same at the top? On second thought $1M is actually too high. It should be lower. Probably a cap of $750k is fairer. DJ
      - dpark 10y ago
        Professors already make less in academia than they would typically make in the industry. I don't think the best of them would stick around if they were handed a 20% pay cut. Similarly for administrators and coaches, meaningful pay cuts would just push many of them out the door to greener pastures. The cure for high tuition is unlikely to come just from cutting salaries.
CyberDildonics 10y ago
Pretty much spot on I think. There is a mentality I see in a lot of young people that they think they need someone to teach them. If people can get over this and use something like an interactive and visual web page they can learn much faster and easier than through a lecture or through books.

derefr 10y ago

> As it stands, college for most of my friends was a 4 year social safari And that's what costs money, insofar as it raises people's social class and gives them connections. Learning is a trivial cost in comparison, and can be ignored in the calculation; it's something you effectively get "for free" with the price of admission to the social-class-higher-than-yours practicum that is university. Note that community colleges, which have just as much "learning" but no potential for class-raising, don't have spiralling costs. Community college costs what learning costs.

GauntletWizard 10y ago
And yet, despite more and more people getting an education, class stratification getting worse in one of the common talking points. How do you explain that?
- derefr 10y ago
  The people who are now "getting a [university] education" who previously weren't, are people already in the social upper-middle class, going to upper-middle class universities where they just end up enculturating further to the class they're already in. People in the upper-middle class will only experience social-class mobility by going to an upper-class university (e.g. one of the Ivies, and even then only certain programs that haven't already been flooded by other upper-middle class entrants.) Meanwhile, very few people in the lower-middle class go to university; they "get an education" by going to a trade-school or to community college, thus also avoiding enculturation. And people truly in the lower class (e.g. immigrant agricultural workers) don't even consider higher education to be an option, despite government student loan programs being aimed at them (with the explicit goal of enculturation!) more than anyone else. Generally, though, mobility between any two classes becomes more difficult as the size-ratio between the source and destination class increases, because every place an individual could go to attempt to immerse themselves in the destination class, is already full of other people of the source class attempting the same thing. The previous mobility from lower-middle to upper-middle class has created a bulging upper-middle, which has killed the ability for people to become upper class. (Though it's easier than ever to enculturate to the upper-middle class, this being basically what happens by default when anyone with a lower-middle-class background finds themselves spending a lot of time on the internet—the internet [outside of own-class-reflecting echo chambers like Facebook] being a universally-accessible upper-middle-class microcosm.)
  - kilbuz 10y ago
    Have you written a book or research publications on this topic? I've always wanted an update to Fussell's 'Class' for the internet generations, and this post is as close to that as I've seen. If you know others who have written on the topic, please list them here. Thank you.

specialist 10y ago

Supply and demand sorts out the details. Maybe. I place more weight on incentives. Design of the markets. Checks and balances. Transparency and accountability. need 500 administrators...? The insufferable waste I witnessed in higher ed is no different than any where else I've worked. Biggest factors are scale and bureaucracies. As terrible as higher ed is, I'm certain I don't want it to become more business like, assembly line efficient. Whatever magic is to be found in higher ed is because its weird, chaotic, diverse. As for the mortgage interest deduction, how wouldn't it boost housing prices? Second order effect.

KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
And one of the most magical things about US higher ed is that it just swallowed 400,000 loans funded by taxpayers without as much as a burp.
- hiram112 10y ago
  Spot on. It's becoming increasingly clear that the student debt bubble will blow up, no differently than the housing bubble. And just like the housing bubble, the clever ones are going to end up getting Uncle Sugar to pay off their loans, while a large majority will end up 'doing the right thing' to their own disadvantage. Of course, the big banks and financial entities that own these loans will come out just fine. Then we can move on to the next staple to financialize, perhaps unborn generations since there's not much left.
- specialist 10y ago
  Higher ed already got their money. The banks got stuffed.

slg 10y ago

According to you second link, the UC system has a budget of $27 billion. You could fire all those administrators making over $500k and you wouldn't even save 1% of the annual budget. Is administrative bloat a problem? Sure. But blaming it for the tuition increases we have seen is like blaming the national debt on inefficiencies in the EPA.

ploxiln 10y ago
That particular statistic is used for effect, and the article admits it's not the biggest problem: > While big paychecks for those in UC's senior management group — including the president, the chancellors and other top administrators — attract the most attention, they comprise less than 1% of the $27-billion budget, officials say. > It is the next layer of well-paid administrators that has grown most significantly over the last two decades. From 2004 to 2014, the management and senior professionals ranks swelled by 60%, to about 10,000, UC data show. There are indirectly related tidbits all over the article and I couldn't find what I'd really like to see: a histogram of administration salaries and another of faculty salaries. Anyway, here's another unrelated but interesting tidbit from that article: > Efficiency experts brought in to assess the UC Berkeley bureaucracy a few years ago concluded it was top-heavy. Bain & Co. consultants tallied 11 layers of management between the chancellor and front-line employees, suggesting that the organization had too many bosses. More than half of all managers — about 1,000 — had three or fewer direct reports, and 471 were in charge of exactly one person each. Isn't it funny that they had to hire top-dollar big-name consultants to find out they have way too many middle managers ... some of these managers should have the time to figure out how many layers of management there are and how silly some of them are. But then again, of course they didn't: more managers results in more politics results in less effective management.
- slg 10y ago
  Bloat increasing is natural for any growing bureaucracy and the UC system is certainly growing. The article cites enrollment has grown by 77,000 students over the last 15 years. That works out to almost a 50% growth rate (although it was a longer time period than the admin growth rate used). So a 60% growth in middle managers doesn't seem completely unreasonable. I am sure there is plenty of waste there, but once again it isn't nearly enough to explain the type of tuition increases that have happened over recent decades.

greeneggs 10y ago

> Does the UC system need 500 administrators making >$500k year each? This statistic is incorrect. In 2014, there were 445 UC employees making >$500K/year each. This includes everybody, not just administrators. You can get a list of them all here [1]. I didn't go through the whole list, but from sampling a few random pages, I'd guess that there are <20 administrators making >$500K. They are mostly medical school professors, some athletic coaches, and, e.g., the Chief Investment Officer. There are also some CFOs and Executive Deans, and maybe I missed something, so feel free to correct me. [1] https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/

newjersey 10y ago
I think UC would still do well to publicly announce a pay cap. Maybe $1M and say nobody makes above that amount. Once the superstars are limited to $1M, I think others will fall in line as well. Don't like it? Quit.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  just stay in new jersey. we don't want our schools losing more professors to USC and Stanford.
  - newjersey 10y ago
    I'm sorry but there's no other way. The cost of education has to come down and that means professors, coaches, and administrators have to pay themselves less. We're already cutting cost at the lower end of the spectrum with adjuncts. Why not do the same at the top? On second thought $1M is actually too high. It should be lower. Probably a cap of $750k is fairer. DJ
    - dpark 10y ago
      Professors already make less in academia than they would typically make in the industry. I don't think the best of them would stick around if they were handed a 20% pay cut. Similarly for administrators and coaches, meaningful pay cuts would just push many of them out the door to greener pastures. The cure for high tuition is unlikely to come just from cutting salaries.

CyberDildonics 10y ago

Pretty much spot on I think. There is a mentality I see in a lot of young people that they think they need someone to teach them. If people can get over this and use something like an interactive and visual web page they can learn much faster and easier than through a lecture or through books.