6 ms·

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post s

by rfdub 9y ago

I work in post secondary administration, so I think I have some perspective here. Part of the problem, at least in the US & Canada (Where I live) is that post secondary institutions are positioning themselves less and less and places to get an education and more and more as places to go for an "experience." Its no longer enough to provide a quality education, universities now are selling themselves on their facilities, their "student life" and all the other intangibles that are secondary to actual education. This leads to all the administrative bloat we're seeing as now that many schools are functioning more like glorified 4 years spas they have to have departments filled with staff to plan events, throw parties, Snapchat sports games, provide "save spaces," etc. I haven't been in the sector long enough to have a real handle on when or why this shift happened, but from my perspective its the primary driver of the increasing administrative bloat. Schools are competing more on the intangibles, and so they need to invest more into these areas, which means more staff and more overhead. Personally I think the whole university model isn't long for this world though as there are plenty of ways competency can be signaled apart from a fancy foil-stamped piece of paper and eventually when the costs of university education don't provide a positive return over any reasonable time horizon students are going to start looking for alternatives en masse and the market will innovate to meet that demand.

2017Dude 9y ago
Not sure about student party life experience given the recent rise of "no-fault" false rape allegations. Cannot be as careless anymore.
- ams6110 9y ago
  There is a huge new "student ethics" bureaucracy to handle that stuff that never used to exist. In the past, if you got drunk and did something you later regretted, that was your problem, as it is for any adult in the real world.
  - epaulson 9y ago
    That's not true at all. Universities used to be much more involved in student life. Read up on 'In Loco Parentis' in higher education.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      They were involved in a supervisory role. All male or all female dorms, mandatory on-campus housing, curfews, tightly controlled visitation and social events. Now, students get to do whatever they want and are only held to account after the fact. There is a huge ethics bureaucracy with committees conducting hearings, investigations, and various other CYA activities after the shit has hit the fan.
      - jackcosgrove 9y ago
        I think university laxity peaked in the 80s. Starting in the early 90s the PC movement began to police behavior as it had from the 60s on back.
      - scythe 9y ago
        "An ounce of prevention is cheaper than a pound of cure" comes to mind.
  - troc 9y ago
    Exactly and eerily true. At my university there this is a category 2 serious incident; like a fire, flood or epidemic. Any student admitted to emergency medical care due to inebriation, means the Serious Incident Officer is involved. How the SIO is supposed to find out I don't know. I struggle to understand why relatively high-level management or SIO needs to be paid to get involved in what another 'adult' does out side of lectures/labs and campus.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>I haven't been in the sector long enough to have a real handle on when or why this shift happened, but from my perspective its the primary driver of the increasing administrative bloat. Schools are competing more on the intangibles, and so they need to invest more into these areas, which means more staff and more overhead. If I had to actually guess, it probably started around the time they realized that the Millenial matriculation cohort was going to start "running down", resulting in universities having to either reduce their selectivity (which is death for a private uni) or somehow retain their selectivity by attracting more of a limited applicant pool. At the same time, there's a secular trend in cutting per-student funding for state universities. The result is that state schools need to bring in more tuition money (forcing prices up on their end, reducing price competition against over-expensive private schools), while private schools need to retain selectivity (so they compete harder for students who can pay).
ams6110 9y ago
I work at a big state university as well and completely agree. The amount of money spent on luxury dorms, extravagant academic buildings, athletic facilities, student entertainment, and administrative on top of adminstrative staff is stunning. Some of the facility spending, especially in athletics, is paid for by donors and athletics also has revenue from the major sport events, but there is huge spending and bloat on the academic side a well, funded by ever increasing tuition and fees that I just cannot see being sustainable.
wtvanhest 9y ago
This is the view of people who have not really looked at university budgets. "experiences" are cheap compared to headcount. Buildings and experiences are mainly funded by outside donation specifically for the experience or building. People do not often donate to "expand salaries and headcount for faculty and administrators". The result is that students pay for headcount and donors pay for experiences. It isn't just administrative headcount, it is also teaching headcount. If you want a low price, you cannot have a $200,000 a year professor teaching 30 students and doing some research unless the research is funding their salary. We need to lower the cost of colleges in the United States dramatically and that means tough choices, but it won't happen until we reach the point where student loan defaults are so prevalent that the federal gov can no longer subsidize them. We have a crisis on our hands and our politicians are talking about lowering the cost of borrowing by 2%, and making colleges "free". They are not interested in driving down the real cost of an education.
- zippergz 9y ago
  On the research point, why are research and teaching commingled? Both are important, but it seems that they require very different skillsets. Would we be better off filling universities primarily with people who love teaching, and are great at it, and having some other kind of institution (or some separate division of universities) do the research? Is this heresy?
  - jackcosgrove 9y ago
    No, it's the difference between a liberal arts college and a university.
  - joatmon-snoo 9y ago
    In large part it's an unfortunate consequence of how academia works; but I think in large part, what you're asking for is happening: the proportion of instructors who are lecturers and adjuncts, rather than tenure-track/tenured professors, has steadily increased over the years [1]. Meanwhile, tenure-track/tenured professors tend to focus primarily on teaching upper-level classes, which suits them infinitely better. The students they get are much more knowledgeable, which frees profs from worrying too much about background knowledge; by sheer virtue of selection bias, students that aren't interested have been filtered out; and the material is much closer to the work the profs themselves actually do. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever-shrinking-role-of-tenured-college-professors-in-1-chart/274849/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-eve...
zippergz 9y ago
I think there's somewhat of a vicious cycle at work. Someone paying $50k/yr. wants more than classes in a run down building, and then a threadbare dorm to sleep in. That's a ton of money, and I don't think it's ridiculous for people to expect a pretty darned nice experience (inside and outside the classroom for that). But of course, providing those facilities and experiences costs a lot, so tuition increases. And with the increased tuition, so too increase expectations, and the cycle repeats. I'm not saying it's right, but it's what I've observed.
- justadeveloper2 9y ago
  So you don't think the financialization of higher education has played a significant role?
Chathamization 9y ago
Yep; this is the same problem people talk about when they talk about bundling. Not interested in a gym membership? It doesn't matter, your tuition is still going to go to subsidize the gym at the university. It's also worth pointing out how colleges end up benefiting from having captive customers. It's usually more difficult for a 17-18 year old to rent a place off campus and commute, and many schools even have policies against that. And a social environment is encouraged in dorms and dining halls, so students who aren't buying stuff from the "company store" end up at a loss. Whether or not the school is good at managing housing and food is often immaterial.
cycomachead 9y ago
I think it makes sense why people compete on experiences. Can you really differentiate how much you're learning between the top 50 (or even 300) schools? It really depends on personal motivation. And in terms of non-educational successes, the school name alone often provides the value, and since it's virtually impossible get an exact value, schools compete on other factors. Combined with the fact students are more and more willing to go further away from home to get a degree, you need to offer something more than education. Going to a good school (and doing the work) will be challenging regardless of where it is, and I think most people realize this at some level -- so you look for the place that will make you happy otherwise. Slogging through finals week anywhere is tough, but it's hell if you also hate the school you're at and wish you were somewhere else. As far as the "university model" -- it's got problems, definitely. But the value of the top schools has always been the name. Consider that graduates of top schools are so overrepresented in the highest levels of both the public and private sector, it will be hard to break the cycle of top-down everyone buying into the idea of a 4 year degree. It will probably happen at some point, but it seems slow going. The biggest schools (especially R1-level unis) fare much better in terms of providing funding and aid to students, so they aren't always as cost prohibitive as many for profit schools are (where the vast majority of student loan debt is tied up).
blackkettle 9y ago
There area a number of comments in this thread similar to yours on the topic of university as an 'experience'. I started my undergrad degree in 1999, and I think that was very much the case at that time as well. It was the same for the dorm community that is mentioned as another reason in other comments. All of that was pretty similar then, and this was when UC tuition was still very, very reasonable. The main difference, maybe, was that at that time the experience was less controlled, and less managed. The dorm I lived in first year was run by fourth year undergrads and grad students, and their responsibility was basically to make sure that no one was opening vodka bottles in the common room, or setting off smoke detectors with bongs or puking in the elevator. They were compensated with free or heavily reduced room and board. The experience was less controlled and less micro managed across all aspects of university life at that time, and even more so prior. My admittedly unsubstantiated viewpoint is that the proliferation of control mechanisms, and transition of traditionally subsidized experience management to formal salaried roles is a big contributor to the unnecessary increase in bureaucracy, and it has a negative long term effect on learning from both the academic and the 'experience' side of things.
kps 9y ago
I don't think that's it. Simultaneously, health care has seen the same massive growth of administration and shift of money away from the actual service (professors/physicians).
visarga 9y ago
> Schools are competing more on the intangibles Because you can share course videos, but you can't share intangibles.
velobro 9y ago
You lost me at "provide safe places" because it's apparent what kind of bias you have

by rfdub 9y ago

2017Dude 9y ago

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

ams6110 9y ago
There is a huge new "student ethics" bureaucracy to handle that stuff that never used to exist. In the past, if you got drunk and did something you later regretted, that was your problem, as it is for any adult in the real world.
- epaulson 9y ago
  That's not true at all. Universities used to be much more involved in student life. Read up on 'In Loco Parentis' in higher education.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    They were involved in a supervisory role. All male or all female dorms, mandatory on-campus housing, curfews, tightly controlled visitation and social events. Now, students get to do whatever they want and are only held to account after the fact. There is a huge ethics bureaucracy with committees conducting hearings, investigations, and various other CYA activities after the shit has hit the fan.
    - jackcosgrove 9y ago
      I think university laxity peaked in the 80s. Starting in the early 90s the PC movement began to police behavior as it had from the 60s on back.
    - scythe 9y ago
      "An ounce of prevention is cheaper than a pound of cure" comes to mind.
- troc 9y ago
  Exactly and eerily true. At my university there this is a category 2 serious incident; like a fire, flood or epidemic. Any student admitted to emergency medical care due to inebriation, means the Serious Incident Officer is involved. How the SIO is supposed to find out I don't know. I struggle to understand why relatively high-level management or SIO needs to be paid to get involved in what another 'adult' does out side of lectures/labs and campus.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>I haven't been in the sector long enough to have a real handle on when or why this shift happened, but from my perspective its the primary driver of the increasing administrative bloat. Schools are competing more on the intangibles, and so they need to invest more into these areas, which means more staff and more overhead. If I had to actually guess, it probably started around the time they realized that the Millenial matriculation cohort was going to start "running down", resulting in universities having to either reduce their selectivity (which is death for a private uni) or somehow retain their selectivity by attracting more of a limited applicant pool. At the same time, there's a secular trend in cutting per-student funding for state universities. The result is that state schools need to bring in more tuition money (forcing prices up on their end, reducing price competition against over-expensive private schools), while private schools need to retain selectivity (so they compete harder for students who can pay).

ams6110 9y ago

I work at a big state university as well and completely agree. The amount of money spent on luxury dorms, extravagant academic buildings, athletic facilities, student entertainment, and administrative on top of adminstrative staff is stunning. Some of the facility spending, especially in athletics, is paid for by donors and athletics also has revenue from the major sport events, but there is huge spending and bloat on the academic side a well, funded by ever increasing tuition and fees that I just cannot see being sustainable.

wtvanhest 9y ago

This is the view of people who have not really looked at university budgets. "experiences" are cheap compared to headcount. Buildings and experiences are mainly funded by outside donation specifically for the experience or building. People do not often donate to "expand salaries and headcount for faculty and administrators". The result is that students pay for headcount and donors pay for experiences. It isn't just administrative headcount, it is also teaching headcount. If you want a low price, you cannot have a $200,000 a year professor teaching 30 students and doing some research unless the research is funding their salary. We need to lower the cost of colleges in the United States dramatically and that means tough choices, but it won't happen until we reach the point where student loan defaults are so prevalent that the federal gov can no longer subsidize them. We have a crisis on our hands and our politicians are talking about lowering the cost of borrowing by 2%, and making colleges "free". They are not interested in driving down the real cost of an education.

zippergz 9y ago
On the research point, why are research and teaching commingled? Both are important, but it seems that they require very different skillsets. Would we be better off filling universities primarily with people who love teaching, and are great at it, and having some other kind of institution (or some separate division of universities) do the research? Is this heresy?
- jackcosgrove 9y ago
  No, it's the difference between a liberal arts college and a university.
- joatmon-snoo 9y ago
  In large part it's an unfortunate consequence of how academia works; but I think in large part, what you're asking for is happening: the proportion of instructors who are lecturers and adjuncts, rather than tenure-track/tenured professors, has steadily increased over the years [1]. Meanwhile, tenure-track/tenured professors tend to focus primarily on teaching upper-level classes, which suits them infinitely better. The students they get are much more knowledgeable, which frees profs from worrying too much about background knowledge; by sheer virtue of selection bias, students that aren't interested have been filtered out; and the material is much closer to the work the profs themselves actually do. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever-shrinking-role-of-tenured-college-professors-in-1-chart/274849/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-eve...

zippergz 9y ago

I think there's somewhat of a vicious cycle at work. Someone paying $50k/yr. wants more than classes in a run down building, and then a threadbare dorm to sleep in. That's a ton of money, and I don't think it's ridiculous for people to expect a pretty darned nice experience (inside and outside the classroom for that). But of course, providing those facilities and experiences costs a lot, so tuition increases. And with the increased tuition, so too increase expectations, and the cycle repeats. I'm not saying it's right, but it's what I've observed.

justadeveloper2 9y ago
So you don't think the financialization of higher education has played a significant role?

Chathamization 9y ago

Yep; this is the same problem people talk about when they talk about bundling. Not interested in a gym membership? It doesn't matter, your tuition is still going to go to subsidize the gym at the university. It's also worth pointing out how colleges end up benefiting from having captive customers. It's usually more difficult for a 17-18 year old to rent a place off campus and commute, and many schools even have policies against that. And a social environment is encouraged in dorms and dining halls, so students who aren't buying stuff from the "company store" end up at a loss. Whether or not the school is good at managing housing and food is often immaterial.

cycomachead 9y ago

I think it makes sense why people compete on experiences. Can you really differentiate how much you're learning between the top 50 (or even 300) schools? It really depends on personal motivation. And in terms of non-educational successes, the school name alone often provides the value, and since it's virtually impossible get an exact value, schools compete on other factors. Combined with the fact students are more and more willing to go further away from home to get a degree, you need to offer something more than education. Going to a good school (and doing the work) will be challenging regardless of where it is, and I think most people realize this at some level -- so you look for the place that will make you happy otherwise. Slogging through finals week anywhere is tough, but it's hell if you also hate the school you're at and wish you were somewhere else. As far as the "university model" -- it's got problems, definitely. But the value of the top schools has always been the name. Consider that graduates of top schools are so overrepresented in the highest levels of both the public and private sector, it will be hard to break the cycle of top-down everyone buying into the idea of a 4 year degree. It will probably happen at some point, but it seems slow going. The biggest schools (especially R1-level unis) fare much better in terms of providing funding and aid to students, so they aren't always as cost prohibitive as many for profit schools are (where the vast majority of student loan debt is tied up).

blackkettle 9y ago

There area a number of comments in this thread similar to yours on the topic of university as an 'experience'. I started my undergrad degree in 1999, and I think that was very much the case at that time as well. It was the same for the dorm community that is mentioned as another reason in other comments. All of that was pretty similar then, and this was when UC tuition was still very, very reasonable. The main difference, maybe, was that at that time the experience was less controlled, and less managed. The dorm I lived in first year was run by fourth year undergrads and grad students, and their responsibility was basically to make sure that no one was opening vodka bottles in the common room, or setting off smoke detectors with bongs or puking in the elevator. They were compensated with free or heavily reduced room and board. The experience was less controlled and less micro managed across all aspects of university life at that time, and even more so prior. My admittedly unsubstantiated viewpoint is that the proliferation of control mechanisms, and transition of traditionally subsidized experience management to formal salaried roles is a big contributor to the unnecessary increase in bureaucracy, and it has a negative long term effect on learning from both the academic and the 'experience' side of things.

kps 9y ago

I don't think that's it. Simultaneously, health care has seen the same massive growth of administration and shift of money away from the actual service (professors/physicians).

visarga 9y ago

> Schools are competing more on the intangibles Because you can share course videos, but you can't share intangibles.

velobro 9y ago

You lost me at "provide safe places" because it's apparent what kind of bias you have