8 ms·

Public universities have “really lost our focus”

93 points by taylorbuley 10y ago

squozzer 10y ago
The problem may have an even more basic core problem -- universities in general become ends unto themselves instead of means to an end.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Or when they are means to an end, that end isn't actually education. Neither is the means...
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Well then, please do reveal the mystery!
    - beachstartup 10y ago
      it's supposed to be an exclusive club for privileged upper middle class to upper class kids where they spend years 17-21 polishing themselves and expanding their social networks before heading into cities to get jobs as white collar professionals, attending graduate school, or pursuing a 'pure' career in academia if their families are sufficiently wealthy. that's more or less how it still works at the good private schools, with exceptions at the margin for extremely bright talent from less wealthy family/means. public schools are supposed to break this pattern, but the best ones basically have turned into the same thing (california, michigan, virginia, north carolina, etc.) with their own hierarchy of elite campuses/locations and in-crowd associations (greek, etc.) the entire system breaks down if you treat it as something fundamentally different, or have some invented set of expectations for what you get out of it.
      - sandworm101 10y ago
        Or theye are a place for young adults to learn the reading and reasoning skilks they are no longer taught in highschool. The state of highschool grads these days is pathetic.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      It's become, at least in many departments of many universities, about "culturation" rather than education - about making students fit into a culture of what "liberalism" has become, which is unquestioningly holding "liberal" values. That's not education; it's something between indoctrination and a social club. I put "liberal" in quotes, because real liberalism is much more broad-minded than what's on much of our universities. Real liberalism isn't about making your opponent shut up; instead, it's about recognizing their right to exist and to have their say.
      - lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
        Because outside the university system is such a bastion of broad-mindedness. Turns out meeting a diverse set of people usually leaves people less willing to put with the more insular values they may have grown up with, go figure.
        CountSessine 10y ago
        a diverse set of people Sorry - by diverse set of people are you talking about people who would be inclined to get and would be accepted to receive a liberal arts degree at an elite university?
        AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        Those people would be ethnically diverse, perhaps diverse in terms of nationality, but probably not very diverse at all in terms of viewpoint.
      - zeamaize 10y ago
        Maybe in liberal arts and crafts, but this bullshit doesn't apply to STEM.
        MisterBastahrd 10y ago
        It absolutely applies to STEM. Even moreso. There's a set orthodoxy in STEM that you either accept, or you don't get to graduate in STEM.
- akud 10y ago
  I think the op would like the universities to become ends unto themselves. He specifically complains about university being viewed as a ticket to a career: > At stake, he believes, is a citizenry that sees college not as a place for in-depth learning and inquiry, but as a means to economic security, forcing colleges to conduct themselves more like a business FWIW, I agree with the op's sentiment.
  - pvg 10y ago
    Pretty sure the poster and the person interviewed in the article are different people.
    - akud 10y ago
      Yea, I was using "op" as shorthand.
      - pvg 10y ago
        A shorthand for what? It's already a shorthand and for something else. You are ascribing sentiments to the wrong person, just edit it and fix it.
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    Don't you think that's a romantic notion that people go to college for "in-depth learning and inquiry"? I went to college in order to get a "real" job with a salary and benefits. Oh sure, I had a few cool classes that made me think and be philosophical, but for the most part, I saw college as a means to get ahead and earn more than my peers who didn't go to college. I've also seen first hand how many large corporations won't even interview you unless you have a four year degree. Doesn't matter if its relevant or not (I have a liberal arts degree and am a developer) they just want you to have a college degree. You have to remember a lot of colleges are also prime recruiting grounds for the big SV companies and startups as well. In order to continue to get grant money and other perks from these companies, they are essentially forced to do the will of the companies they are in bed with. While it would be nice to have colleges be truly "higher learning" places, I doubt it will change anytime soon.
Spooky23 10y ago
They have to pursue prestige signaling, because business fetishizes prestige.
danharaj 10y ago
This is caused by the realigning of university administrative structures along the philosophical lines of neoliberalism [0]. It's hard to find a definition of neoliberalim outside of technical political theory, but I think this source is a good overview and I've seen it cited by academics [1], for example this guy who contextualizes it within academia (some of his writing was accused of being neoliberal ideology) [2]. In short: "Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services, and without any attempt to justify them in terms of their effect on the production of goods and services; and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs." Another source that examines the transformation of public education under the program of neoliberalism is Wendy Davis's Undoing the Demos. Here is a review by a mathematician who contextualizes her account in his own field [3]. It is a particularly touchy subject for me because I am starting to see mathematics departments cut down to size because they are not profitable (the latest one here) [4], and to see something so foundational and culturally important (to me, anyway) stripped away because it is not profitable is horrifying. This is not just the natural course of the world. These transformations of our social institutions are deliberate and engineered. Whether or not you think it's a change for the worse, well, that's up to you. I personally think it will lead to a crisis of capitalist civilization and as a student of history I'm aware of what happened the last time capitalism was in crisis. [0] http://rohcavamaintenant.free.fr/CLE%20USBAICHE/USB%20KEY%20Fahriye/NEOL%C4%B0BERAL%C4%B0ZM/The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20the%20Neo-Liberal%20University.pdf http://rohcavamaintenant.free.fr/CLE%20USBAICHE/USB%20KEY%20... [1] http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.htm... [2] https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/neoliberalism-and-higher-education/ https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/neoliberali... [3] https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/how-to-brand-mathematics/ https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2015/05/08... [4] https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/09/disaster_at_the_leicester_math.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/09/disaster_at_the...
sandworm101 10y ago
Universities chase the rich because thats where the money is. The middle class doesnt have any real money to spend and governments have lost interest in education. (The anti-university rally crys here at hn are no help.) So they build luxury dorms and invest in prestige signalling because that is good busines. That keeps the ball rolling. Free to play games chase thier whales. Drug companies chase boomers. Real estate agents chase elderly widows. And universities chase the sons and daughters of the rich.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Harvard and MIT maybe, but there are thousands of mid range universities catering to middle income kids.
  - gumby 10y ago
    I don't know how well you know MIT, but at least when I was there I got the impression that the majority of undergrads' parents were middle or lower middle class. My high school sent a lot of kids to Harvard and other Ivy League schools and those students were about 1/3 wealthy suburban kids and 2/3 city kids, many of whom paid no tuition at all. At MIT I thought I was unusual for having attended a private school. I think the small number of schools with huge endowments (mostly not huge schools) can afford to be less financially selective. It's the fat part of the bell curve that can't afford to take the same attitude that gives rise to the problems discussed here.
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
There is a great quote from 1906 by J.J. Thomson (discoverer of the electron, that atoms have isotopes, etc.) on the funding of research: "If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do no come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it."
- thebooktocome 10y ago
  This is the job I have now, and believe me, not having to research for a living is so liberating.
- konschubert 10y ago
  Feynman mentions that giving lectures was very liberating to him because it made him feel useful when he wasn't making any progress with the research.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It's a valid POV, but consider all of these advances made without these salarymen. Where would we be in the computer industry is the university of California and others didn't get DARPA and other funding to do their work on Unix. Ditto Bell Labs.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    The old-school research parks like Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, Microsoft Research, etc. actually reinforce the GP's point. The researchers at these places were given a LOT of "leisure time" AKA free reign to choose their projects. Not unlike 20% time in the glory days of Google. A viable counter-point might be the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, AKA where senior scientists like Einstein go to live out their days in leisure without contributing anything of value.
Balgair 10y ago
There is a fair bit to unpack here, so lets go through it, keeping in mind this article is written to help jive up interest for the book: "It’s a cycle in which colleges spend more and more money chasing research projects, building luxury dorms and academic centers to attract wealthy students, and engaging in activities that compel them to compete against each other, rather than focus on their own students." This has to do with federal student loan subsidies. "Families suffer, of course, but the long-term impact transcends that. “The converting of public funding into higher tuition focuses the student on assuring her future income to cover higher costs and debt,” he writes. At stake, he believes, is a citizenry that sees college not as a place for in-depth learning and inquiry, but as a means to economic security, forcing colleges to conduct themselves more like a business, and less like a public good that all students can afford." I think that ship sailed back in the mid 1990's. I really don't know of many students these days that are there to 'just learn', most are there because they know they need to have a diploma to have any realistic chance in the job markets. Again, this issue stems from federally back loans in part. "But I think some of it is just that it was more important to have a kind of a national profile than it was to do really good regional service. Shifting from regional service to national profile created competitive costs; you just tend to duplicate a lot of things that other people have. Then later, in the 1990s and 2000s, when you’re starting to compete for blue chip out-of-state students, the arms race in facilities accelerates, and just re-accelerates after 2008." Here he is talking about the US News rankings, something that I remember hearing about while applying to college, but not really ever reading. I don't know what the faculty are seeing and hearing, as I am not one, but are those ranking really that important to prospective students? I was under the impression that they just applied to schools, see what came back, and then chose, though that may have been just me. Many schools have an application fee, but can they really be garnering that much money on the fees as to justify all these amenities? I guess that I am saying that using US News as a scapegoat is ... fishy to me. "Undergraduates and academic graduates students became more of an afterthought at the senior management level. They were kind of the revenue source, in terms of tuition and general funds per capita, but then, after that, they were not at the center of policy. We really lost our focus." Sing it from the mountains, Brother! "Rebuild high-end cognitive skills, so that these folks don’t just go down the street to the machinist shop that’s still open if they lost their factory job. They can be eligible for a whole range of jobs, or build jobs and businesses on their own with these skills." The sentence is a bit confusing, but is he saying that a machinist job is a default one? Wouldn't he just say a barista or a Target checkout person as a default type job? I think that the author's words here may have been somewhat mis-typed. All in all, the author's book adds yet another piece to the jeremiads of countless academics. The core issue, it seems, is the money. We all idealize this gilded age era of Harvard and Teddy Roosevelt, but forget that those were the scions of America, with near limitless credit if not money outright. My father once told me 'if the office is a mess, then the secretary is stealing'. The author may be on to something when it comes to this mess. Perhaps there is a lot of corruption going on that is responsible for this very large issue of funding problems.
diogenescynic 10y ago
A lot of public universities have been hijacked by elite career administrators and they've raised the price of tuition well past what most middle/working class families can afford. Then there are the Universities of California that turn away local citizens so they can charge out of state and foreign students a premium. Meanwhile the local applicants are funneled into less prestigious UCs like Merced and Riverside. It feels like a public resource has been stolen from the public and turned into an institution for the elite. Look at how UC Davis's Chancellor had university police pepper spray peace student protesters, while she sat on the board of Devry, King Abdulaziz University of Saudi Arabia, AND a textbook publisher--clear conflicts of interest. The chancellor then spent university funds to try and hide the search results of her actions. Then after all this, she still leaves with her pension: >Under the settlement, Katehi will remain on administrative leave for a year as chancellor emeritus, receiving her $424,360 annual pay with the promise that she will return as a faculty member. If she should choose not to return for at least a year, she would forfeit the chancellor’s salary payment, Klein said. Her faculty pay would be decided by UC Davis campus officials. The UCs and other public universities are run by crooks.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  Definitely not the case for Berkeley; we've been cutting down on (at least) international student admissions (albeit slowly). Much better than the likes of UMich or such.
  - diogenescynic 10y ago
    Berkeley and UCLA were among first UCs to increase enrollment for foreign students until they got flack for it in recent years and has started to slow down: >The rapid rise in recent years in those students at the two highly selective campuses — to about 30% of the freshmen class — triggered much controversy among legislators and families. However, the problem is still getting worse at other UC campuses: >UC San Diego offered freshman spots to 10,313 students from other states and countries, up from 8,765 last year; Irvine accepted 9,413 of them, up from 6,564. >UC Irvine spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said that there is room on campus for more students but state funding won't accommodate more Californians. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-ln-uc-admit-20150702-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-ln-uc-admit-20150702-sto... And: >Even as the University of California accepted a record number of freshman for fall 2014, admission rates at its most selective campuses reached new lows. Huge increases in the number of applicants, changing admissions processes and a growing emphasis on out-of-state and international students are driving them down. >UCLA’s admission rate, which fell to 18.2 percent from 20.1 percent last year, reflected the school’s growing profile and popularity. Applications surged 7.5 percent to more than 86,000, while admission levels held steady. >The drop was even more stark at UC Berkeley – to 17.3 percent this year from 20.8 percent in 2013 – under a new enrollment process that will see the university accept fewer students and then turn to an expanded wait list to fill any remaining open slots. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article2596255.html#storylink=cpy http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article2596255.ht...
edblarney 10y ago
He says that this has been happening since the '1970's' - but historically, most Universities were effectively private, or run by the founding charities, i.e. Churches etc.. Queen's University in Kingston Ontario was founded in the early 19th century and run basically by the Presbyterian and United Church until the 1950's - when Ontario reorganized how public Unis would be funded. Which I think is ballpark similar to how things operated in other countries. I'm not making a point for or against - other than to say that this idea of 'government funded directly secular education' was kind of an anomaly in the history of higher education. Worth noting. It'd be nice to have a way to truly judge the merits of research ... so hard ... Even harder in 2016 when everything 'must be measured' ...
- edblarney 10y ago
  Also - to note - only 1/3 of people realistically go on to 'higher education' ... What about the other 2/3s? Those 'with degrees' seem to be doing ok, overall. This without - not so good. Germany has a 'vocational' system that enables/empowers those who don't want to go off and study Math or History, and it seems to work well, though it's very deeply entrenched into industry, into culture - and maybe somewhat unfair as it is kind of 'class perpetuating' ... by the time kids are 14 they are already being slotted into one stream or another (richer parents = more likely to go upstream). I'll never speak out against 'more college' but America actually does put more than anyone else through college, and spends more $ and more $/capita than any other nation. It'd be great to figure out a way to put the other 2/3's into the economy in a meaningful way. Nobody seems to want to speak for them ...
woodandsteel 10y ago
The changes the interviewee described happened in part because the conservative movement has been pushing for them for many decades. From the beginning, modern conservatives have seen the university as a cesspool of atheist marxism. Indeed, one of the founding books of the modern conservative movement was <i>God and Man at Yale</i> by William F. Buckley. So conservatives, especially at the state level, have worked to change the mission of the university from free inquiry to profit-making and supporting corporations, and they have largely succeeded.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I won't disagree about the effects of oversight at the state level - but the system usually isn't changed that much by this. The disciplines have their own literature and mores. I don't think the conservatives have anything to do with it. For one, most of the conservatives I've read work from within the academic system. For another, an original conservative might have been someone like Edmund Burke, who died in 1797. What changed was - there was rather suddenly a lot of money. There was the mandate that "(nearly) everybody needs a degree." When you go from 5% of the population to 50%, things will be different. Take UT Austin - its endowment is sufficient that they need never charge tuition, but they do to keep capacity matched to demand. What's really changed is just galloping careerism. Nothing else is needed to explain this.
  - woodandsteel 10y ago
    I agree that other causes were involved. But as for the need for more money, this happened when conservatives were taking over one state house after another, and a large part of their agenda was cutting state budgets, and one happy consequence of this, from their perspective, is that it forced public universities to become much more like corporations. And when this happened, they did nothing to stop it, and just sat back and smiled. As to conservative academics, ask them and they will tell you American academia is overwhelmingly liberal. It is the conservative politicians who brounght about the change, not the academics. Also one thing the conservative movement did in response is set up a vast network of think tanks to give brainy conservatives alternative employment. And remember, there are two sides to this. On the one side, they force universities to become more like corporations by cutting funds. On the other hand, conservatives are pro-corporate and so are happy that, in order to get the needed cash, they had to do the corporations bidding. As to galloping careerism, that begs the question of why, for the first time in history, ambitious people go into university administration, when that has always been a poor-paying job for people who were basically academics.
gumby 10y ago
The real issue is why public education charges tuition at all. Education through high school is (for now) free. It used to be that a high school diploma was considered perfectly adequate to prepare a student to be a responsible citizen. Society benefited by funding that baseline. Now the mantra is that "college is the new high school" -- if you don't have a postsecondary credential you're essentially unemployable. If that's the case, should't society's calculus extend to the public funding of a solid undergraduate education? It's no different from public funding of preventative care (e.g. inoculations) and fixing the roads.
blisterpeanuts 10y ago
Take an old warehouse, subdivide it, fill it with chairs, whiteboards, and some audiovisual. Hire 20-30 Ph.D.'s, an administrative assistant, and a custodial person or two, and you have an institute of higher learning. Students can live at home and brown bag it. If I had the time and money, I'd start a university on this scale. The modern university in the U.S. has become a bloated monster, with more (and higher paid) administration than faculty, boutiques and fancy dorms, slick marketing departments, billion dollar sports facilities, medical clinics, etc. Ridiculous. Obviously, my little thought experiment is rather simplistic; you're going to want to spend some money on labs for scientific research and instruction, and there's that pesky accreditation hoop to jump through, as well as accounting and legal expenses. But still... we have lost focus. The mega campuses with huge layers of administrative fat do not serve their constituents well.

93 points by taylorbuley 10y ago

The problem may have an even more basic core problem -- universities in general become ends unto themselves instead of means to an end.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Or when they are means to an end, that end isn't actually education. Neither is the means...
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Well then, please do reveal the mystery!
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    it's supposed to be an exclusive club for privileged upper middle class to upper class kids where they spend years 17-21 polishing themselves and expanding their social networks before heading into cities to get jobs as white collar professionals, attending graduate school, or pursuing a 'pure' career in academia if their families are sufficiently wealthy. that's more or less how it still works at the good private schools, with exceptions at the margin for extremely bright talent from less wealthy family/means. public schools are supposed to break this pattern, but the best ones basically have turned into the same thing (california, michigan, virginia, north carolina, etc.) with their own hierarchy of elite campuses/locations and in-crowd associations (greek, etc.) the entire system breaks down if you treat it as something fundamentally different, or have some invented set of expectations for what you get out of it.
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      Or theye are a place for young adults to learn the reading and reasoning skilks they are no longer taught in highschool. The state of highschool grads these days is pathetic.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    It's become, at least in many departments of many universities, about "culturation" rather than education - about making students fit into a culture of what "liberalism" has become, which is unquestioningly holding "liberal" values. That's not education; it's something between indoctrination and a social club. I put "liberal" in quotes, because real liberalism is much more broad-minded than what's on much of our universities. Real liberalism isn't about making your opponent shut up; instead, it's about recognizing their right to exist and to have their say.
    - lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
      Because outside the university system is such a bastion of broad-mindedness. Turns out meeting a diverse set of people usually leaves people less willing to put with the more insular values they may have grown up with, go figure.
      - CountSessine 10y ago
        a diverse set of people Sorry - by diverse set of people are you talking about people who would be inclined to get and would be accepted to receive a liberal arts degree at an elite university?
        AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        Those people would be ethnically diverse, perhaps diverse in terms of nationality, but probably not very diverse at all in terms of viewpoint.
    - zeamaize 10y ago
      Maybe in liberal arts and crafts, but this bullshit doesn't apply to STEM.
      - MisterBastahrd 10y ago
        It absolutely applies to STEM. Even moreso. There's a set orthodoxy in STEM that you either accept, or you don't get to graduate in STEM.
akud 10y ago
I think the op would like the universities to become ends unto themselves. He specifically complains about university being viewed as a ticket to a career: > At stake, he believes, is a citizenry that sees college not as a place for in-depth learning and inquiry, but as a means to economic security, forcing colleges to conduct themselves more like a business FWIW, I agree with the op's sentiment.
- pvg 10y ago
  Pretty sure the poster and the person interviewed in the article are different people.
  - akud 10y ago
    Yea, I was using "op" as shorthand.
    - pvg 10y ago
      A shorthand for what? It's already a shorthand and for something else. You are ascribing sentiments to the wrong person, just edit it and fix it.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  Don't you think that's a romantic notion that people go to college for "in-depth learning and inquiry"? I went to college in order to get a "real" job with a salary and benefits. Oh sure, I had a few cool classes that made me think and be philosophical, but for the most part, I saw college as a means to get ahead and earn more than my peers who didn't go to college. I've also seen first hand how many large corporations won't even interview you unless you have a four year degree. Doesn't matter if its relevant or not (I have a liberal arts degree and am a developer) they just want you to have a college degree. You have to remember a lot of colleges are also prime recruiting grounds for the big SV companies and startups as well. In order to continue to get grant money and other perks from these companies, they are essentially forced to do the will of the companies they are in bed with. While it would be nice to have colleges be truly "higher learning" places, I doubt it will change anytime soon.

Spooky23 10y ago

They have to pursue prestige signaling, because business fetishizes prestige.

danharaj 10y ago

This is caused by the realigning of university administrative structures along the philosophical lines of neoliberalism [0]. It's hard to find a definition of neoliberalim outside of technical political theory, but I think this source is a good overview and I've seen it cited by academics [1], for example this guy who contextualizes it within academia (some of his writing was accused of being neoliberal ideology) [2]. In short: "Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services, and without any attempt to justify them in terms of their effect on the production of goods and services; and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs." Another source that examines the transformation of public education under the program of neoliberalism is Wendy Davis's Undoing the Demos. Here is a review by a mathematician who contextualizes her account in his own field [3]. It is a particularly touchy subject for me because I am starting to see mathematics departments cut down to size because they are not profitable (the latest one here) [4], and to see something so foundational and culturally important (to me, anyway) stripped away because it is not profitable is horrifying. This is not just the natural course of the world. These transformations of our social institutions are deliberate and engineered. Whether or not you think it's a change for the worse, well, that's up to you. I personally think it will lead to a crisis of capitalist civilization and as a student of history I'm aware of what happened the last time capitalism was in crisis. [0] http://rohcavamaintenant.free.fr/CLE%20USBAICHE/USB%20KEY%20Fahriye/NEOL%C4%B0BERAL%C4%B0ZM/The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20the%20Neo-Liberal%20University.pdf http://rohcavamaintenant.free.fr/CLE%20USBAICHE/USB%20KEY%20... [1] http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.htm... [2] https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/neoliberalism-and-higher-education/ https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/neoliberali... [3] https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/how-to-brand-mathematics/ https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2015/05/08... [4] https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/09/disaster_at_the_leicester_math.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/09/disaster_at_the...

sandworm101 10y ago

Universities chase the rich because thats where the money is. The middle class doesnt have any real money to spend and governments have lost interest in education. (The anti-university rally crys here at hn are no help.) So they build luxury dorms and invest in prestige signalling because that is good busines. That keeps the ball rolling. Free to play games chase thier whales. Drug companies chase boomers. Real estate agents chase elderly widows. And universities chase the sons and daughters of the rich.

freehunter 10y ago
Harvard and MIT maybe, but there are thousands of mid range universities catering to middle income kids.
- gumby 10y ago
  I don't know how well you know MIT, but at least when I was there I got the impression that the majority of undergrads' parents were middle or lower middle class. My high school sent a lot of kids to Harvard and other Ivy League schools and those students were about 1/3 wealthy suburban kids and 2/3 city kids, many of whom paid no tuition at all. At MIT I thought I was unusual for having attended a private school. I think the small number of schools with huge endowments (mostly not huge schools) can afford to be less financially selective. It's the fat part of the bell curve that can't afford to take the same attitude that gives rise to the problems discussed here.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

There is a great quote from 1906 by J.J. Thomson (discoverer of the electron, that atoms have isotopes, etc.) on the funding of research: "If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do no come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it."

thebooktocome 10y ago
This is the job I have now, and believe me, not having to research for a living is so liberating.
konschubert 10y ago
Feynman mentions that giving lectures was very liberating to him because it made him feel useful when he wasn't making any progress with the research.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's a valid POV, but consider all of these advances made without these salarymen. Where would we be in the computer industry is the university of California and others didn't get DARPA and other funding to do their work on Unix. Ditto Bell Labs.
- kobeya 10y ago
  The old-school research parks like Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, Microsoft Research, etc. actually reinforce the GP's point. The researchers at these places were given a LOT of "leisure time" AKA free reign to choose their projects. Not unlike 20% time in the glory days of Google. A viable counter-point might be the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, AKA where senior scientists like Einstein go to live out their days in leisure without contributing anything of value.

Balgair 10y ago

There is a fair bit to unpack here, so lets go through it, keeping in mind this article is written to help jive up interest for the book: "It’s a cycle in which colleges spend more and more money chasing research projects, building luxury dorms and academic centers to attract wealthy students, and engaging in activities that compel them to compete against each other, rather than focus on their own students." This has to do with federal student loan subsidies. "Families suffer, of course, but the long-term impact transcends that. “The converting of public funding into higher tuition focuses the student on assuring her future income to cover higher costs and debt,” he writes. At stake, he believes, is a citizenry that sees college not as a place for in-depth learning and inquiry, but as a means to economic security, forcing colleges to conduct themselves more like a business, and less like a public good that all students can afford." I think that ship sailed back in the mid 1990's. I really don't know of many students these days that are there to 'just learn', most are there because they know they need to have a diploma to have any realistic chance in the job markets. Again, this issue stems from federally back loans in part. "But I think some of it is just that it was more important to have a kind of a national profile than it was to do really good regional service. Shifting from regional service to national profile created competitive costs; you just tend to duplicate a lot of things that other people have. Then later, in the 1990s and 2000s, when you’re starting to compete for blue chip out-of-state students, the arms race in facilities accelerates, and just re-accelerates after 2008." Here he is talking about the US News rankings, something that I remember hearing about while applying to college, but not really ever reading. I don't know what the faculty are seeing and hearing, as I am not one, but are those ranking really that important to prospective students? I was under the impression that they just applied to schools, see what came back, and then chose, though that may have been just me. Many schools have an application fee, but can they really be garnering that much money on the fees as to justify all these amenities? I guess that I am saying that using US News as a scapegoat is ... fishy to me. "Undergraduates and academic graduates students became more of an afterthought at the senior management level. They were kind of the revenue source, in terms of tuition and general funds per capita, but then, after that, they were not at the center of policy. We really lost our focus." Sing it from the mountains, Brother! "Rebuild high-end cognitive skills, so that these folks don’t just go down the street to the machinist shop that’s still open if they lost their factory job. They can be eligible for a whole range of jobs, or build jobs and businesses on their own with these skills." The sentence is a bit confusing, but is he saying that a machinist job is a default one? Wouldn't he just say a barista or a Target checkout person as a default type job? I think that the author's words here may have been somewhat mis-typed. All in all, the author's book adds yet another piece to the jeremiads of countless academics. The core issue, it seems, is the money. We all idealize this gilded age era of Harvard and Teddy Roosevelt, but forget that those were the scions of America, with near limitless credit if not money outright. My father once told me 'if the office is a mess, then the secretary is stealing'. The author may be on to something when it comes to this mess. Perhaps there is a lot of corruption going on that is responsible for this very large issue of funding problems.

diogenescynic 10y ago

A lot of public universities have been hijacked by elite career administrators and they've raised the price of tuition well past what most middle/working class families can afford. Then there are the Universities of California that turn away local citizens so they can charge out of state and foreign students a premium. Meanwhile the local applicants are funneled into less prestigious UCs like Merced and Riverside. It feels like a public resource has been stolen from the public and turned into an institution for the elite. Look at how UC Davis's Chancellor had university police pepper spray peace student protesters, while she sat on the board of Devry, King Abdulaziz University of Saudi Arabia, AND a textbook publisher--clear conflicts of interest. The chancellor then spent university funds to try and hide the search results of her actions. Then after all this, she still leaves with her pension: >Under the settlement, Katehi will remain on administrative leave for a year as chancellor emeritus, receiving her $424,360 annual pay with the promise that she will return as a faculty member. If she should choose not to return for at least a year, she would forfeit the chancellor’s salary payment, Klein said. Her faculty pay would be decided by UC Davis campus officials. The UCs and other public universities are run by crooks.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Definitely not the case for Berkeley; we've been cutting down on (at least) international student admissions (albeit slowly). Much better than the likes of UMich or such.
- diogenescynic 10y ago
  Berkeley and UCLA were among first UCs to increase enrollment for foreign students until they got flack for it in recent years and has started to slow down: >The rapid rise in recent years in those students at the two highly selective campuses — to about 30% of the freshmen class — triggered much controversy among legislators and families. However, the problem is still getting worse at other UC campuses: >UC San Diego offered freshman spots to 10,313 students from other states and countries, up from 8,765 last year; Irvine accepted 9,413 of them, up from 6,564. >UC Irvine spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said that there is room on campus for more students but state funding won't accommodate more Californians. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-ln-uc-admit-20150702-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-ln-uc-admit-20150702-sto... And: >Even as the University of California accepted a record number of freshman for fall 2014, admission rates at its most selective campuses reached new lows. Huge increases in the number of applicants, changing admissions processes and a growing emphasis on out-of-state and international students are driving them down. >UCLA’s admission rate, which fell to 18.2 percent from 20.1 percent last year, reflected the school’s growing profile and popularity. Applications surged 7.5 percent to more than 86,000, while admission levels held steady. >The drop was even more stark at UC Berkeley – to 17.3 percent this year from 20.8 percent in 2013 – under a new enrollment process that will see the university accept fewer students and then turn to an expanded wait list to fill any remaining open slots. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article2596255.html#storylink=cpy http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article2596255.ht...

edblarney 10y ago

He says that this has been happening since the '1970's' - but historically, most Universities were effectively private, or run by the founding charities, i.e. Churches etc.. Queen's University in Kingston Ontario was founded in the early 19th century and run basically by the Presbyterian and United Church until the 1950's - when Ontario reorganized how public Unis would be funded. Which I think is ballpark similar to how things operated in other countries. I'm not making a point for or against - other than to say that this idea of 'government funded directly secular education' was kind of an anomaly in the history of higher education. Worth noting. It'd be nice to have a way to truly judge the merits of research ... so hard ... Even harder in 2016 when everything 'must be measured' ...

edblarney 10y ago
Also - to note - only 1/3 of people realistically go on to 'higher education' ... What about the other 2/3s? Those 'with degrees' seem to be doing ok, overall. This without - not so good. Germany has a 'vocational' system that enables/empowers those who don't want to go off and study Math or History, and it seems to work well, though it's very deeply entrenched into industry, into culture - and maybe somewhat unfair as it is kind of 'class perpetuating' ... by the time kids are 14 they are already being slotted into one stream or another (richer parents = more likely to go upstream). I'll never speak out against 'more college' but America actually does put more than anyone else through college, and spends more $ and more $/capita than any other nation. It'd be great to figure out a way to put the other 2/3's into the economy in a meaningful way. Nobody seems to want to speak for them ...

woodandsteel 10y ago

The changes the interviewee described happened in part because the conservative movement has been pushing for them for many decades. From the beginning, modern conservatives have seen the university as a cesspool of atheist marxism. Indeed, one of the founding books of the modern conservative movement was <i>God and Man at Yale</i> by William F. Buckley. So conservatives, especially at the state level, have worked to change the mission of the university from free inquiry to profit-making and supporting corporations, and they have largely succeeded.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I won't disagree about the effects of oversight at the state level - but the system usually isn't changed that much by this. The disciplines have their own literature and mores. I don't think the conservatives have anything to do with it. For one, most of the conservatives I've read work from within the academic system. For another, an original conservative might have been someone like Edmund Burke, who died in 1797. What changed was - there was rather suddenly a lot of money. There was the mandate that "(nearly) everybody needs a degree." When you go from 5% of the population to 50%, things will be different. Take UT Austin - its endowment is sufficient that they need never charge tuition, but they do to keep capacity matched to demand. What's really changed is just galloping careerism. Nothing else is needed to explain this.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  I agree that other causes were involved. But as for the need for more money, this happened when conservatives were taking over one state house after another, and a large part of their agenda was cutting state budgets, and one happy consequence of this, from their perspective, is that it forced public universities to become much more like corporations. And when this happened, they did nothing to stop it, and just sat back and smiled. As to conservative academics, ask them and they will tell you American academia is overwhelmingly liberal. It is the conservative politicians who brounght about the change, not the academics. Also one thing the conservative movement did in response is set up a vast network of think tanks to give brainy conservatives alternative employment. And remember, there are two sides to this. On the one side, they force universities to become more like corporations by cutting funds. On the other hand, conservatives are pro-corporate and so are happy that, in order to get the needed cash, they had to do the corporations bidding. As to galloping careerism, that begs the question of why, for the first time in history, ambitious people go into university administration, when that has always been a poor-paying job for people who were basically academics.

gumby 10y ago

The real issue is why public education charges tuition at all. Education through high school is (for now) free. It used to be that a high school diploma was considered perfectly adequate to prepare a student to be a responsible citizen. Society benefited by funding that baseline. Now the mantra is that "college is the new high school" -- if you don't have a postsecondary credential you're essentially unemployable. If that's the case, should't society's calculus extend to the public funding of a solid undergraduate education? It's no different from public funding of preventative care (e.g. inoculations) and fixing the roads.

blisterpeanuts 10y ago

Take an old warehouse, subdivide it, fill it with chairs, whiteboards, and some audiovisual. Hire 20-30 Ph.D.'s, an administrative assistant, and a custodial person or two, and you have an institute of higher learning. Students can live at home and brown bag it. If I had the time and money, I'd start a university on this scale. The modern university in the U.S. has become a bloated monster, with more (and higher paid) administration than faculty, boutiques and fancy dorms, slick marketing departments, billion dollar sports facilities, medical clinics, etc. Ridiculous. Obviously, my little thought experiment is rather simplistic; you're going to want to spend some money on labs for scientific research and instruction, and there's that pesky accreditation hoop to jump through, as well as accounting and legal expenses. But still... we have lost focus. The mega campuses with huge layers of administrative fat do not serve their constituents well.