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Tuition, especially at private colleges, is totally out of control. But class sizes are up, not down. And the number of full professors is not growing. So where
by marcoperaza 9y ago
Tuition, especially at private colleges, is totally out of control. But class sizes are up, not down. And the number of full professors is not growing. So where is the money going?
To an explosive growth of administrative staff. My alma mater has almost one employee per student. There are many dozens of administrative departments, each with multiple deans and assistant deans and staff, and sometimes subdivisions each with their own layer of bureaucracy. OPAL, for example, has a subdivision for each kind of minority on campus, each with its own assistant dean and staff. You can look at the list of departments: http://home.dartmouth.edu/administrative-offices http://home.dartmouth.edu/administrative-offices . Keep in mind that this is a very small college, with about 4000 undergrads and 2000 grad students.
This monstrous growth is entirely a product of the last 30 to 40 years and is almost entirely responsible for the astronomic increases in tuition, currently $60,000. Even worse, the college claims that its actual cost per student is double that, with the shortfall made up from the endowment. There is NO legitimate reason that a college education should cost over $100,000 per year.
The government needs to stop writing a blank check to these colleges in the form of unlimited loans for their students. The government needs to set a much lower cap on the number of loans it will give to each student per year. The colleges will accuse the party in power of trying to deny students the right to an education, but they will eventually surrender and start cutting the bloat.
- akkat 9y agoWhat's the reason for that. I know administrative staff like that that are getting paid, but what would the current one decide to hire more staff? Unless there was some benefit the staff would prefer to keep the money for themselves rather than hire more people.
- marcoperaza 9y agoIt is a law of bureaucracy that it always grows absent some constraining force. A few reasons come to mind: 1. Have a problem or a new political goal? Make a committee, open a new office, etc. This is how bureaucracies see the world. 2. Unproductive employees? You can't fire them because of HR policies and unionization, and more importantly, because there's no constraining force creating a culture of efficiency. So just hire more employees. 3. No one who rises to lead an organization then campaigns to diminish it in size. Everyone thinks they are important and that their work is important. Having more people working under you makes you more important. Having fewer makes you less important. These are problems in for-profit organizations, but the market provides a constraining force. An inefficient company won't be able to compete with a more efficient one and will eventually go out of business. Also, shareholders will demand that expenses are cut so profits, and dividends or share price, goes up.
- vkou 9y agoAmericans colleges expect you to fully insert yourself into college life, and for you to fully insert them into your life. It's like having a parent, except you have to pay them. They expect everyone to live on campus - so they have to play landlord, mayor, community organizer and mediator, mom and dad, chef and waiter, stadium and opera house, convenience store and urgent care clinic... Now, which of these do you think are among a college's core competencies? Which of these services are provided in a cost-efficient manner?
- marcoperaza 9y agoThey also have a monopoly on providing those services to students, so no incentive to keep costs down.