8 ms·

I never went to college, I'm too dumb, poor, and undisciplined, but whenever I would visit friends at UCI, UCLA, UCR, etc, I would often be shocked at how nice

by Inconel 10y ago

I never went to college, I'm too dumb, poor, and undisciplined, but whenever I would visit friends at UCI, UCLA, UCR, etc, I would often be shocked at how nice many of the housing and general facilities were. Even the dorms, which I had always imagined as being run down were actually very pleasant. Some of the common facilities were down right luxurious, I imagine some high end resorts would be jealous. I certainly don't think students should be living and studying in squalor or unsafe conditions but I wonder how much of the increased costs in education are a result of the kind of spending that goes into some of these facilities. Have universities, particularly public universities, always spent this lavishly on their campuses or is this a more recent thing? And have any studies been done on how much of the increased costs are due to increased administration numbers and nicer buildings?

kristianc 10y ago
In the U.K. certainly we have the problem certainly that developers are building 'luxury' student accommodation to serve wealthy foreign students - with universities then outsourcing their accommodation to them. Part of this is economics. It's easy to build and subsidize accommodation knowing that you can make the subsidy back on private hire conference guests if you're an Oxford or Cambridge. Less so if you're Bath or Coventry. Students who used to have reasonable, subsidized accommodation now have a choice between the relatively unregulated and unsubsidized private rental market and these overpriced palaces with flat screen TVs etc.
- pjc50 10y ago
  > with flat screen TVs All TVs are flatscreen. The TV license costs more than a TV. I'm sure the new student accomodation is overpriced, but that's market effects not the presence of TVs. The real culprit is the government trying to run universities as profit centres. The policy isn't "joined-up": we're probably going to see further crackdowns on student visas at the same time as European funding is withdrawn. I'm waiting for the first redbrick university to go bankrupt..
- SixSigma 10y ago
  At my University they spun off their accommodation, which is perfectly adequate, into a separate company. Then the private sector came in and built slightly better accommodation and charge slightly more. The town is filling up with student accommodation and we're entering the Pork Cycle [1] as rooms go unfilled. The spun-off housing suffering worst of all, and without money to invest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  > flat screen TVs When was the last time you saw a CRT?
  - kristianc 10y ago
    My room at uni certainly didn't come pre-equipped with a TV of any kind.
saboot 10y ago
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... "All of those trends add to the cost of college, but not by that much. At most, about a quarter of the increase in college tuition since 2000 can be attributed to rising faculty salaries, improved amenities and administrative bloat. By comparison, the decline in state support accounts for about three-quarters of the rising cost of college."
- dave_sullivan 10y ago
  To be fair, that doesn't say anything about the relative efficiency of university spending. It says: a) they've increased their spending on amenities and salaries by about 25% b) they're taking in less money than before (apparently they're receiving 3x less money than they are increasing the budget? So budget increase is 25% of extra costs while funding decrease is 75%?) I suppose it depends what metric we should be judging by. If university generates measurable value for the public (it probably does; having lots of smart people walking around isn't necessarily a bad thing), the next question is "how much money must be spent per unit of said public good?" Of course, no one can really agree on the goal of university or any metrics by which to judge (other than you have to go if you care about your future!), so it's kind of fubar. I'd be willing to bet that they could get away with spending less money. I've been saying this for a while, but sooner or later student debt will lead to a major re-balancing of balance sheets. I'm a big believer in learning for free via the internet; if you have internet access, you've got everything you need to learn anything and contact anybody. Let the university system die a natural death and let's massively lower the cost and expand the reach of education.
  - saboot 10y ago
    I had a longer response until I read that you are happy to let universities die off. I agree that MOOCs are great for several fields, but everything is not computer science. Even many engineering fields need the physical lab space to get the most impactful learning done. We are seeing many alternatives to universities arise, which are great, but I REALLY don't see how that translates into letting the world's best higher education system decay into disrepair.
RA_Fisher 10y ago
They are resorts. Louisiana State University where I went is prototypical. The easy way to see this is the case is to compare undergrad housing facilities with immigrant family housing. Guess which one is dilapidated on American campuses?
nicholas73 10y ago
UC tuition is still very low compared to most colleges, and I actually thought they charged too much for campus housing for what you could get renting in the area (like paying single room price for a double room). Their meal plans are also a profit center for them too.
lordnacho 10y ago
This is quite surprising to me. I studied in the UK, and for three years my room was literally in a disused brothel. I kid you not, it was a rumour when I went there, and it turned up on Wikipedia one day. Not an unhealthy room, no mould or leaks, but nothing like a hotel room. The college actually owned a hotel, so I guess they could have decked it out that way, but they were sensible not to spend money where it wasn't needed. My brother's just finished at Columbia, and he was living in a slum apartment in NYC. Not nice at all. Has someone got pics of these amazing college facilities?
- manarth 10y ago
  I studied in the UK When was this? The accommodation in The Young Ones [1] isn't too far a cry from the sorts of student accommodation you'd find in the 80s and 90s, and a disused brothel would fit right into that picture. It seems to me (anecdata), that shortly after tuition fees were introduced (1998/1999), the trend for better (and correspondingly more expensive) student accommodation began, kicking off development of purpose-build accommodation. There's some interesting numbers in a real-estate report from GVA [2], which shows a reduction in university-owned student halls, and an increase in privately-owned purpose-built student halls. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series) [2] http://www.gva.co.uk/research/student-housing-market-overview-autumn-2012/ http://www.gva.co.uk/research/student-housing-market-overvie... [PDF]
  - lordnacho 10y ago
    Turn of the millenium. Some of my friends in London were indeed living like in The Young Ones.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
IIRC, studies show that the quality of the facilities has a massively outsized impact on school choice for students. Students should be choosing based on quality of education and cost, but both of these metrics are difficult to fully understand and internalize for the average 18 year old. But nice facilities are easy to see and judge.
- manarth 10y ago
  nice facilities are easy to see and judge. And (in theory) this would make a good proxy for judging the other aspects: if the university has pride in providing good quality accommodation for their students, than you could assume that they provide similarly good quality education, library services, etc. There is also an argument that the accommodation has a direct impact on students' education: if students are worrying about dodgy landlords, ongoing issues with heating or mould or leaking pipes, then they'd lose potential study-time in having to address the issues, have less mental capacity to channel to their education, and have an environment less suited to studying. So good quality accommodation is a net asset for educational services, but in some places the cost is substantially higher than the private-sector rental market.
edent 10y ago
Because paying customers demand better services. In the UK, I went to university in the first year that students were charged direct tuition fees. My dorm was modelled on a Swedish prison, had a single plug socket per room, and two toilets between 20 of us. The kitchen was barely big enough for 6 people, and couldn't support more than 4 people cooking at once. That wretched hall was demolished and replaced by something a lot nicer - because when students are paying thousands of pounds per year, they expect something a little more salubrious for their cash. The same was true of teaching. I remember a bunch of us complaining about the poor quality of lectures from one particular professor. The head of our department was genuinely shocked when I said "I don't think I'm receiving value for money". Students were now expecting a guarantee of quality for the debt they accumulated. Better facilities cost money - but capitalism demands that students (as rational consumers) should seek value for money. If you have a choice between UCLA and NYU - it makes sense for your to spend your money on something that is attractive to you. A truly rational student might forgo comfort in exchange for excellent teaching. But I suspect the majority will spend their money on something which looks nice, rather than is actually effective.
- funkyy 10y ago
  Let's not fall into the extremes. We can have nice, cheap dorm. Either prison-like dorm, or all inclusive Spanish coast dorm should be not a standard.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  This is an excellent point. When you go deep into debt to go to college, you want the experience to be as nice as possible. Not to mention that as states push their public colleges and universities to be more businesslike and rely more on tuition, they are doing so, by making themselves more appealing to a broader range of customers. The flip side of this is that student loans are guaranteed by the federal government, and when tuition goes up, so does loan availability. If financing is guaranteed no matter the cost, then no one should be shocked when customers lose their price sensitivity. It's also important to keep in mind that the graduates coming out of college in the time period mentioned have entered the most challenging job market for new job seekers in 70 years. It's hardly fair to expect them to be able to live up to promises they made in the mid 2000s when everyone running the economy promised it was in great shape, while those same people were building the house of cards that collapsed on the millenial generation. There's lots of blame to go around, but very little of it should land on the students who took out these loans.
ourmandave 10y ago
Well, there's these stats. The highest-paid public employee in 39 US states is either a football or men's basketball coach http://www.businessinsider.com/us-states-highest-paid-public-employee-college-coach-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-states-highest-paid-public... But it doesn't say how much their salaries are compared to the overall budget or how much the team facilities cost.
- samsolomon 10y ago
  That is not surprising at all. I think it probably should be the case. Football at any SEC school or basketball at Duke generate a significant amount of money for the school—sometimes in the hundreds of millions. This revenue may subsidizes other sports programs entirely. http://www.cheatsheet.com/sports/the-5-most-valuable-college-football-teams-in-2015.html/?a=viewall http://www.cheatsheet.com/sports/the-5-most-valuable-college... If schools want to generate revenue from their sports programs, then winning is very important. What's the key to winning? Hiring the best coaches. Edit: There is a Forbes article with more information and teams, I just hate linking to Forbes.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    And as people continue cutting the cord and ESPN will actually have to start charging what people will pay for sports coverage, that money will disappear.
kalleboo 10y ago
It's always seemed weird to me how in some countries the student housing is actually owned and run by the university. I studied in Sweden where there was student housing run by a non-profit foundation (cheaply priced and well-maintained, they renovated it my second year there). Some people chose to live in the student housing, others chose to live in private or public housing. Many stayed with their parents to save on costs (I commuted by bus+train for 45 minutes a day until I scored a student housing room).
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  "until I scored a student housing room" Is there a waiting list?
  - widforss 10y ago
    That's how you get to rent anything at all in Sweden. Every company has their own waiting list that you sign up for. You get one point per day you're on the list. When you are interested in an apartment you apply for it, and if you are the one with most points you get it. It's all very structured.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Yes. Priority is given to people who live further away. Since I lived within commuting distance, it took 3 months for me to get a room.
a2tech 10y ago
Disclaimer: I work for a large and pretty prestigious University that has been undergoing major work in the last decade to update facilities and add buildings. Almost all of the building budget has been paid for through our endowment and donations from wealthy families so all the building activity hasn't really touched our bottom line at all. However, year after year the state has cut our funding which has directly led to the rise in tuition. The University already runs as lean as possible with staff-our total compensation is a joke (even factoring in generous retirement bonuses) because of this many years long death by a thousand cuts that the federal and state government has pushed on us. EVERYONE has to justify their jobs every year-and this includes faculty. If a faculty member isn't publishing, teaching, and doing community outreach on behalf of the University they won't be getting tenured.
- dforrestwilson1 10y ago
  If the state is cutting your funding year after year it sounds like they aren't getting a good ROI from the university via well trained employees or prospering companies? What state are we talking about if you don't mind?
  - a2tech 10y ago
    The state is cutting all education funding bit by bit. Its a problem nationwide-and the worst part is that here in Michigan its not even 'that bad' compared to other states. Public universities across the country are struggling. Its become so bad that there has been talk about our University giving up its public status and going private. It'd free us from a lot of state rules and the funding from the state has gotten so minimal that the loss of it isn't the deciding factor any longer about going private.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    States don't cut funding to colleges because of careful consideration of the empirical evidence, they cut funding to colleges because of ideology.
- ensignavenger 10y ago
devwastaken 10y ago
>I would often be shocked at how nice many of the housing and general facilities were. UMD would like to disagree. The facilities look nice on the outside, but on the inside they just stick two students into a space smaller than the average apartment living room. Bathrooms are floor shared, no kitchen appliances, laundry is in another building. No AC. $700 per-student. The commercial housing right next to the college, which is the highest cost/quality in the area, is $1400 for two bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, balcony, a full gym, pool, laundry, its a nice living.

by Inconel 10y ago

kristianc 10y ago

In the U.K. certainly we have the problem certainly that developers are building 'luxury' student accommodation to serve wealthy foreign students - with universities then outsourcing their accommodation to them. Part of this is economics. It's easy to build and subsidize accommodation knowing that you can make the subsidy back on private hire conference guests if you're an Oxford or Cambridge. Less so if you're Bath or Coventry. Students who used to have reasonable, subsidized accommodation now have a choice between the relatively unregulated and unsubsidized private rental market and these overpriced palaces with flat screen TVs etc.

pjc50 10y ago
> with flat screen TVs All TVs are flatscreen. The TV license costs more than a TV. I'm sure the new student accomodation is overpriced, but that's market effects not the presence of TVs. The real culprit is the government trying to run universities as profit centres. The policy isn't "joined-up": we're probably going to see further crackdowns on student visas at the same time as European funding is withdrawn. I'm waiting for the first redbrick university to go bankrupt..
SixSigma 10y ago
At my University they spun off their accommodation, which is perfectly adequate, into a separate company. Then the private sector came in and built slightly better accommodation and charge slightly more. The town is filling up with student accommodation and we're entering the Pork Cycle [1] as rooms go unfilled. The spun-off housing suffering worst of all, and without money to invest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
> flat screen TVs When was the last time you saw a CRT?
- kristianc 10y ago
  My room at uni certainly didn't come pre-equipped with a TV of any kind.

saboot 10y ago

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... "All of those trends add to the cost of college, but not by that much. At most, about a quarter of the increase in college tuition since 2000 can be attributed to rising faculty salaries, improved amenities and administrative bloat. By comparison, the decline in state support accounts for about three-quarters of the rising cost of college."

dave_sullivan 10y ago
To be fair, that doesn't say anything about the relative efficiency of university spending. It says: a) they've increased their spending on amenities and salaries by about 25% b) they're taking in less money than before (apparently they're receiving 3x less money than they are increasing the budget? So budget increase is 25% of extra costs while funding decrease is 75%?) I suppose it depends what metric we should be judging by. If university generates measurable value for the public (it probably does; having lots of smart people walking around isn't necessarily a bad thing), the next question is "how much money must be spent per unit of said public good?" Of course, no one can really agree on the goal of university or any metrics by which to judge (other than you have to go if you care about your future!), so it's kind of fubar. I'd be willing to bet that they could get away with spending less money. I've been saying this for a while, but sooner or later student debt will lead to a major re-balancing of balance sheets. I'm a big believer in learning for free via the internet; if you have internet access, you've got everything you need to learn anything and contact anybody. Let the university system die a natural death and let's massively lower the cost and expand the reach of education.
- saboot 10y ago
  I had a longer response until I read that you are happy to let universities die off. I agree that MOOCs are great for several fields, but everything is not computer science. Even many engineering fields need the physical lab space to get the most impactful learning done. We are seeing many alternatives to universities arise, which are great, but I REALLY don't see how that translates into letting the world's best higher education system decay into disrepair.

RA_Fisher 10y ago

They are resorts. Louisiana State University where I went is prototypical. The easy way to see this is the case is to compare undergrad housing facilities with immigrant family housing. Guess which one is dilapidated on American campuses?

nicholas73 10y ago

UC tuition is still very low compared to most colleges, and I actually thought they charged too much for campus housing for what you could get renting in the area (like paying single room price for a double room). Their meal plans are also a profit center for them too.

lordnacho 10y ago

This is quite surprising to me. I studied in the UK, and for three years my room was literally in a disused brothel. I kid you not, it was a rumour when I went there, and it turned up on Wikipedia one day. Not an unhealthy room, no mould or leaks, but nothing like a hotel room. The college actually owned a hotel, so I guess they could have decked it out that way, but they were sensible not to spend money where it wasn't needed. My brother's just finished at Columbia, and he was living in a slum apartment in NYC. Not nice at all. Has someone got pics of these amazing college facilities?

manarth 10y ago
I studied in the UK When was this? The accommodation in The Young Ones [1] isn't too far a cry from the sorts of student accommodation you'd find in the 80s and 90s, and a disused brothel would fit right into that picture. It seems to me (anecdata), that shortly after tuition fees were introduced (1998/1999), the trend for better (and correspondingly more expensive) student accommodation began, kicking off development of purpose-build accommodation. There's some interesting numbers in a real-estate report from GVA [2], which shows a reduction in university-owned student halls, and an increase in privately-owned purpose-built student halls. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series) [2] http://www.gva.co.uk/research/student-housing-market-overview-autumn-2012/ http://www.gva.co.uk/research/student-housing-market-overvie... [PDF]
- lordnacho 10y ago
  Turn of the millenium. Some of my friends in London were indeed living like in The Young Ones.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

IIRC, studies show that the quality of the facilities has a massively outsized impact on school choice for students. Students should be choosing based on quality of education and cost, but both of these metrics are difficult to fully understand and internalize for the average 18 year old. But nice facilities are easy to see and judge.

manarth 10y ago
nice facilities are easy to see and judge. And (in theory) this would make a good proxy for judging the other aspects: if the university has pride in providing good quality accommodation for their students, than you could assume that they provide similarly good quality education, library services, etc. There is also an argument that the accommodation has a direct impact on students' education: if students are worrying about dodgy landlords, ongoing issues with heating or mould or leaking pipes, then they'd lose potential study-time in having to address the issues, have less mental capacity to channel to their education, and have an environment less suited to studying. So good quality accommodation is a net asset for educational services, but in some places the cost is substantially higher than the private-sector rental market.

edent 10y ago

Because paying customers demand better services. In the UK, I went to university in the first year that students were charged direct tuition fees. My dorm was modelled on a Swedish prison, had a single plug socket per room, and two toilets between 20 of us. The kitchen was barely big enough for 6 people, and couldn't support more than 4 people cooking at once. That wretched hall was demolished and replaced by something a lot nicer - because when students are paying thousands of pounds per year, they expect something a little more salubrious for their cash. The same was true of teaching. I remember a bunch of us complaining about the poor quality of lectures from one particular professor. The head of our department was genuinely shocked when I said "I don't think I'm receiving value for money". Students were now expecting a guarantee of quality for the debt they accumulated. Better facilities cost money - but capitalism demands that students (as rational consumers) should seek value for money. If you have a choice between UCLA and NYU - it makes sense for your to spend your money on something that is attractive to you. A truly rational student might forgo comfort in exchange for excellent teaching. But I suspect the majority will spend their money on something which looks nice, rather than is actually effective.

funkyy 10y ago
Let's not fall into the extremes. We can have nice, cheap dorm. Either prison-like dorm, or all inclusive Spanish coast dorm should be not a standard.
skywhopper 10y ago
This is an excellent point. When you go deep into debt to go to college, you want the experience to be as nice as possible. Not to mention that as states push their public colleges and universities to be more businesslike and rely more on tuition, they are doing so, by making themselves more appealing to a broader range of customers. The flip side of this is that student loans are guaranteed by the federal government, and when tuition goes up, so does loan availability. If financing is guaranteed no matter the cost, then no one should be shocked when customers lose their price sensitivity. It's also important to keep in mind that the graduates coming out of college in the time period mentioned have entered the most challenging job market for new job seekers in 70 years. It's hardly fair to expect them to be able to live up to promises they made in the mid 2000s when everyone running the economy promised it was in great shape, while those same people were building the house of cards that collapsed on the millenial generation. There's lots of blame to go around, but very little of it should land on the students who took out these loans.

ourmandave 10y ago

Well, there's these stats. The highest-paid public employee in 39 US states is either a football or men's basketball coach http://www.businessinsider.com/us-states-highest-paid-public-employee-college-coach-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-states-highest-paid-public... But it doesn't say how much their salaries are compared to the overall budget or how much the team facilities cost.

samsolomon 10y ago
That is not surprising at all. I think it probably should be the case. Football at any SEC school or basketball at Duke generate a significant amount of money for the school—sometimes in the hundreds of millions. This revenue may subsidizes other sports programs entirely. http://www.cheatsheet.com/sports/the-5-most-valuable-college-football-teams-in-2015.html/?a=viewall http://www.cheatsheet.com/sports/the-5-most-valuable-college... If schools want to generate revenue from their sports programs, then winning is very important. What's the key to winning? Hiring the best coaches. Edit: There is a Forbes article with more information and teams, I just hate linking to Forbes.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  And as people continue cutting the cord and ESPN will actually have to start charging what people will pay for sports coverage, that money will disappear.

kalleboo 10y ago

It's always seemed weird to me how in some countries the student housing is actually owned and run by the university. I studied in Sweden where there was student housing run by a non-profit foundation (cheaply priced and well-maintained, they renovated it my second year there). Some people chose to live in the student housing, others chose to live in private or public housing. Many stayed with their parents to save on costs (I commuted by bus+train for 45 minutes a day until I scored a student housing room).

DigitalJack 10y ago
"until I scored a student housing room" Is there a waiting list?
- widforss 10y ago
  That's how you get to rent anything at all in Sweden. Every company has their own waiting list that you sign up for. You get one point per day you're on the list. When you are interested in an apartment you apply for it, and if you are the one with most points you get it. It's all very structured.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Yes. Priority is given to people who live further away. Since I lived within commuting distance, it took 3 months for me to get a room.

a2tech 10y ago

Disclaimer: I work for a large and pretty prestigious University that has been undergoing major work in the last decade to update facilities and add buildings. Almost all of the building budget has been paid for through our endowment and donations from wealthy families so all the building activity hasn't really touched our bottom line at all. However, year after year the state has cut our funding which has directly led to the rise in tuition. The University already runs as lean as possible with staff-our total compensation is a joke (even factoring in generous retirement bonuses) because of this many years long death by a thousand cuts that the federal and state government has pushed on us. EVERYONE has to justify their jobs every year-and this includes faculty. If a faculty member isn't publishing, teaching, and doing community outreach on behalf of the University they won't be getting tenured.

dforrestwilson1 10y ago
If the state is cutting your funding year after year it sounds like they aren't getting a good ROI from the university via well trained employees or prospering companies? What state are we talking about if you don't mind?
- a2tech 10y ago
  The state is cutting all education funding bit by bit. Its a problem nationwide-and the worst part is that here in Michigan its not even 'that bad' compared to other states. Public universities across the country are struggling. Its become so bad that there has been talk about our University giving up its public status and going private. It'd free us from a lot of state rules and the funding from the state has gotten so minimal that the loss of it isn't the deciding factor any longer about going private.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  States don't cut funding to colleges because of careful consideration of the empirical evidence, they cut funding to colleges because of ideology.
ensignavenger 10y ago

devwastaken 10y ago

>I would often be shocked at how nice many of the housing and general facilities were. UMD would like to disagree. The facilities look nice on the outside, but on the inside they just stick two students into a space smaller than the average apartment living room. Bathrooms are floor shared, no kitchen appliances, laundry is in another building. No AC. $700 per-student. The commercial housing right next to the college, which is the highest cost/quality in the area, is $1400 for two bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, balcony, a full gym, pool, laundry, its a nice living.