6 ms·

There is so much waste in universities: bloated admin/it staff , libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, tenure system that doesn't allow y

There is so much waste in universities: bloated admin/it staff , libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, tenure system that doesn't allow you to downsize departments that have no students. Tuition can be reduced, however there is no incentive to do it since students can easily get loans.

erentz 8y ago
Right. It’s become a government backed bubble. Somehow we need to pop it softly. I’m sympathetic to all the current student debt holders and providing relief to them but if we do that without putting and end to these guaranteed loans we’re just perpetuating (and making worse) the problem. Doing something like making community college and trade school level degrees free and leaving everything else to private loans sorta makes sense. (Arguably 80% of university graduates really didn’t need their degree for their job.)
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Why do you think community college and trade school level degrees should be free? It sounds like you think they're less wasteful somehow?
  - maxkwallace 8y ago
    On average, they must be less wasteful simply because their tuition is so much lower. There's lower margins so less room for waste. They are also not a luxury good (college is) so they are more subject to market pressures.
  - skh 8y ago
    Community colleges have lower wages for their permanent faculty compared to universities and 4 year colleges. Community colleges usually have very little in terms of athletics. Athletics at most universities are a huge sink in terms of expenses. Very few universities generate enough money to pay for their athletic departments and none of them as far as I know generate enough money to pay for the buildings and stadiums they use. Community colleges mostly focus on teaching classes and lack the accoutrements that universities generally have.
- orev 8y ago
  People may not have jobs that match their degrees, but in many cases you need a degree to get a job. It’s an HR hurdle you need to clear to prove you can manage your time and eventually reach a goal you set for yourself.
  - lsd5you 8y ago
    But this is a completely zero sum consideration, and as such from a policy point of view it makes no sense to make any allowances for this.
- Coding_Cat 8y ago
  There is a rather simple way of stopping the ever growing tuition bubble, one that is employed in the Netherland, but I feel like it won't be popular in the US: Cap the tuition a college is allowed to charge and restrict them from charging additional fees.
  - ashelmire 8y ago
    Actually, the simplest way to put downward pressure on tuition in the US is to allow the loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy.
    - p1esk 8y ago
      Why?
      - ashelmire 8y ago
        See the other comment: Banks will lend less, to people they think will pay it back. Which means schools will have to charge less, particularly for non-profitable majors.
        prklmn 8y ago
        The govnement is the creditor, not the banks like they would be for a traditional loan.
        ashelmire 8y ago
        Hmm, I didn't realize that federal loans were the overwhelming majority of the student loans (I guess the pseudo-governmental status of Sallie Mae and getting federal loans serviced by banks was a bit confusing). That does complicate matters, and suggests that universities are enjoying the government guarantee of funding to increase costs. Making them dischargeable in bankruptcy would mean the programs would have to change.
    - TrinaryWorksToo 8y ago
- dgzl 8y ago
  Here's an idea for 'slowly popping it': Innovate in trade schools and start convincing high school students to take that path instead of University.
  - ganoushoreilly 8y ago
    Somewhere in the early / mid 90's VO-TECH was changed to being a dirty word. I would even argue that some computer science related programs should take a vo-tech structure.
- adriveatrain 8y ago
  > making community college and trade school level degrees free that's a tax on the non-attendees, why should they pay for your education when it significantly raises your earning potential?
  - nazgulnarsil 8y ago
    potentially because the taxes tend to fall on those who benefit hugely from an educated workforce. Not sure I agree with this argument, but it's worth noting the justification so that it can be discussed seriously rather than more confusing arguments.
skh 8y ago
Tenure does not prevent a department from being downsized. At least not any college I've worked at. The trend is to use untenured labor and I believe over half of all classes are taught using untenured labor.
jumelles 8y ago
Universities waste money in a lot of ways - library funding is not one of them.
- iguy 8y ago
  Well, paying for journals more expensive than sci-hub is largely a waste. And I've seen lots of renovations of libraries which add a lot of pretty luxurious study space... although I'm not sure that was on the library budget.
  - 2snakes 8y ago
    Consider that if noone paid for their journals then Sci-Hub would not exist. Because noone would be able to share their accounts to log in to the content.
    - iguy 8y ago
      Sure, I don't mean that too literally. But the current system seems to syphon huge amounts of money to a few owners, and may well be replaced in the not-too-distant future. Websites do not cost $30/article to run.
spinach 8y ago
Yet, at the same time, they also provide all those jobs. Is bloating and inefficiency all that bad if it provides good jobs and the jobs have a good work/life balance?
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  This is exactly the question that the parable of the broken window answers. http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
  - strainer 8y ago
    I wouldn't say exactly because over-staffing does not entail destruction like window smashing does. Overstaffing entails significant training and break time while on duty. Time to train, break and help other departments is considered a premium quality of creative working environments. Factory style production environments that are goal focused are a special case of keeping workers running, best when its to finish early.
- trophycase 8y ago
  "Creating jobs" is a silly argument. Literally anyone can create jobs if they are useless. Here's a shovel, go dig a hole then fill it back in.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    > Here's a shovel, go dig a hole then fill it back in. That's ... actually how it's done, yes. Besides dam construction the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maschsee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maschsee is a nice example of literal hole digging.
goodells 8y ago
This is spot on. An anecdote from my undergrad studies and living in Madison, WI: the UW has a division of housing, which provides (shoddy) canvas carts to the students to use for moving in/out of the dorms. My student organization happened to "acquire" some of these carts, and when using one I was confronted by none other than the director of housing, who promptly called the police on me. In the end I was happy to return it and he asked the police not to press charges on the condition that I help him walk the cart back to the dorm where it belonged. He told me that people stealing the carts drives him crazy because they cost about $800 each because there's a complicated bidding process to even attempt to sell them to the school! I told him I'd be happy to go to the Home Depot and bang some together if he paid me half that for carts.
- fenwick67 8y ago
  So your org stole carts from the university, then when you got caught, you proceeded to complain about how expensive they are?
  - goodells 8y ago
    We were dumb kids, and it's a story. The director was quite nice and we were making conversation on what would otherwise have been a boring walk across campus. He was clearly appalled at how expensive they are as well, but I got the impression even he didn't have much agency to change it.
- Casseres 8y ago
  > there's a complicated bidding process to even attempt to sell them to the school! Did he mean complicated process for the school to buy them, or was he making them and selling them to the school himself?
  - goodells 8y ago
    My understanding is that there was a bidding process wherein the school would publish a request for proposal and companies would win the contract through it. I'm sure such an approach would be valid in other contexts, but in this case it just speaks to the unnecessary bureaucracy surrounding the procurement of something that could realistically be bought off the shelf.
blattimwind 8y ago
> There is so much waste in universities I agree, but you can hardly force low-performing students to quit and pursue apprenticeship instead?
AznHisoka 8y ago
As well as mandatory courses that have little to no practical value when you get a job..
twblalock 8y ago
Universities in other first-world countries also have bloated administrations, libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, and tenure. However, they do not have the affordability problem that universities have in the US, so those things must not be the cause. The real difference is government funding for universities. No country in the world has made higher education affordable to the masses without high levels of government funding -- the US used to do this and stopped, with predictable results.
drdeadringer 8y ago
> libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads I appreciate both sides of this and I'm not sure where I currently am on the issue. Libraries do purge from their shelves, and probably should as time progresses. It is interesting to me the figuring on what to purge, for obvious reasons. Likewise for what new material "should" be taken in to [re]fill the shelves. Similarly, I once purchased a ~50-year-old book about "future" rocket science from a used book store. The clerk actually asked for clarification, "You understand this book is 50 years old, right?" ... yes I do, please take my money. This makes me wonder where libraries dispose of their discarded stock if not some gigantic shredder or similar.

erentz 8y ago

Right. It’s become a government backed bubble. Somehow we need to pop it softly. I’m sympathetic to all the current student debt holders and providing relief to them but if we do that without putting and end to these guaranteed loans we’re just perpetuating (and making worse) the problem. Doing something like making community college and trade school level degrees free and leaving everything else to private loans sorta makes sense. (Arguably 80% of university graduates really didn’t need their degree for their job.)

chrisseaton 8y ago
Why do you think community college and trade school level degrees should be free? It sounds like you think they're less wasteful somehow?
- maxkwallace 8y ago
  On average, they must be less wasteful simply because their tuition is so much lower. There's lower margins so less room for waste. They are also not a luxury good (college is) so they are more subject to market pressures.
- skh 8y ago
  Community colleges have lower wages for their permanent faculty compared to universities and 4 year colleges. Community colleges usually have very little in terms of athletics. Athletics at most universities are a huge sink in terms of expenses. Very few universities generate enough money to pay for their athletic departments and none of them as far as I know generate enough money to pay for the buildings and stadiums they use. Community colleges mostly focus on teaching classes and lack the accoutrements that universities generally have.
orev 8y ago
People may not have jobs that match their degrees, but in many cases you need a degree to get a job. It’s an HR hurdle you need to clear to prove you can manage your time and eventually reach a goal you set for yourself.
- lsd5you 8y ago
  But this is a completely zero sum consideration, and as such from a policy point of view it makes no sense to make any allowances for this.
Coding_Cat 8y ago
There is a rather simple way of stopping the ever growing tuition bubble, one that is employed in the Netherland, but I feel like it won't be popular in the US: Cap the tuition a college is allowed to charge and restrict them from charging additional fees.
- ashelmire 8y ago
  Actually, the simplest way to put downward pressure on tuition in the US is to allow the loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy.
  - p1esk 8y ago
    Why?
    - ashelmire 8y ago
      See the other comment: Banks will lend less, to people they think will pay it back. Which means schools will have to charge less, particularly for non-profitable majors.
      - prklmn 8y ago
        The govnement is the creditor, not the banks like they would be for a traditional loan.
        ashelmire 8y ago
        Hmm, I didn't realize that federal loans were the overwhelming majority of the student loans (I guess the pseudo-governmental status of Sallie Mae and getting federal loans serviced by banks was a bit confusing). That does complicate matters, and suggests that universities are enjoying the government guarantee of funding to increase costs. Making them dischargeable in bankruptcy would mean the programs would have to change.
  - TrinaryWorksToo 8y ago
dgzl 8y ago
Here's an idea for 'slowly popping it': Innovate in trade schools and start convincing high school students to take that path instead of University.
- ganoushoreilly 8y ago
  Somewhere in the early / mid 90's VO-TECH was changed to being a dirty word. I would even argue that some computer science related programs should take a vo-tech structure.
adriveatrain 8y ago
> making community college and trade school level degrees free that's a tax on the non-attendees, why should they pay for your education when it significantly raises your earning potential?
- nazgulnarsil 8y ago
  potentially because the taxes tend to fall on those who benefit hugely from an educated workforce. Not sure I agree with this argument, but it's worth noting the justification so that it can be discussed seriously rather than more confusing arguments.

skh 8y ago

Tenure does not prevent a department from being downsized. At least not any college I've worked at. The trend is to use untenured labor and I believe over half of all classes are taught using untenured labor.

jumelles 8y ago

Universities waste money in a lot of ways - library funding is not one of them.

iguy 8y ago
Well, paying for journals more expensive than sci-hub is largely a waste. And I've seen lots of renovations of libraries which add a lot of pretty luxurious study space... although I'm not sure that was on the library budget.
- 2snakes 8y ago
  Consider that if noone paid for their journals then Sci-Hub would not exist. Because noone would be able to share their accounts to log in to the content.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Sure, I don't mean that too literally. But the current system seems to syphon huge amounts of money to a few owners, and may well be replaced in the not-too-distant future. Websites do not cost $30/article to run.

spinach 8y ago

Yet, at the same time, they also provide all those jobs. Is bloating and inefficiency all that bad if it provides good jobs and the jobs have a good work/life balance?

bradleyjg 8y ago
This is exactly the question that the parable of the broken window answers. http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
- strainer 8y ago
  I wouldn't say exactly because over-staffing does not entail destruction like window smashing does. Overstaffing entails significant training and break time while on duty. Time to train, break and help other departments is considered a premium quality of creative working environments. Factory style production environments that are goal focused are a special case of keeping workers running, best when its to finish early.
trophycase 8y ago
"Creating jobs" is a silly argument. Literally anyone can create jobs if they are useless. Here's a shovel, go dig a hole then fill it back in.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  > Here's a shovel, go dig a hole then fill it back in. That's ... actually how it's done, yes. Besides dam construction the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maschsee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maschsee is a nice example of literal hole digging.

goodells 8y ago

This is spot on. An anecdote from my undergrad studies and living in Madison, WI: the UW has a division of housing, which provides (shoddy) canvas carts to the students to use for moving in/out of the dorms. My student organization happened to "acquire" some of these carts, and when using one I was confronted by none other than the director of housing, who promptly called the police on me. In the end I was happy to return it and he asked the police not to press charges on the condition that I help him walk the cart back to the dorm where it belonged. He told me that people stealing the carts drives him crazy because they cost about $800 each because there's a complicated bidding process to even attempt to sell them to the school! I told him I'd be happy to go to the Home Depot and bang some together if he paid me half that for carts.

fenwick67 8y ago
So your org stole carts from the university, then when you got caught, you proceeded to complain about how expensive they are?
- goodells 8y ago
  We were dumb kids, and it's a story. The director was quite nice and we were making conversation on what would otherwise have been a boring walk across campus. He was clearly appalled at how expensive they are as well, but I got the impression even he didn't have much agency to change it.
Casseres 8y ago
> there's a complicated bidding process to even attempt to sell them to the school! Did he mean complicated process for the school to buy them, or was he making them and selling them to the school himself?
- goodells 8y ago
  My understanding is that there was a bidding process wherein the school would publish a request for proposal and companies would win the contract through it. I'm sure such an approach would be valid in other contexts, but in this case it just speaks to the unnecessary bureaucracy surrounding the procurement of something that could realistically be bought off the shelf.

blattimwind 8y ago

> There is so much waste in universities I agree, but you can hardly force low-performing students to quit and pursue apprenticeship instead?

AznHisoka 8y ago

As well as mandatory courses that have little to no practical value when you get a job..

twblalock 8y ago

Universities in other first-world countries also have bloated administrations, libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, and tenure. However, they do not have the affordability problem that universities have in the US, so those things must not be the cause. The real difference is government funding for universities. No country in the world has made higher education affordable to the masses without high levels of government funding -- the US used to do this and stopped, with predictable results.

drdeadringer 8y ago

> libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads I appreciate both sides of this and I'm not sure where I currently am on the issue. Libraries do purge from their shelves, and probably should as time progresses. It is interesting to me the figuring on what to purge, for obvious reasons. Likewise for what new material "should" be taken in to [re]fill the shelves. Similarly, I once purchased a ~50-year-old book about "future" rocket science from a used book store. The clerk actually asked for clarification, "You understand this book is 50 years old, right?" ... yes I do, please take my money. This makes me wonder where libraries dispose of their discarded stock if not some gigantic shredder or similar.