6 ms·

I just don't get it. Where does the money go? Students pay ridiculous amounts for tuition, while schools try to get away with being as cheap as possible by hiri

I just don't get it. Where does the money go? Students pay ridiculous amounts for tuition, while schools try to get away with being as cheap as possible by hiring adjuncts, using ridiculously cheap food vendors, giving less and less aid, etc. For regular corporations I'd cite shareholders and profitability, but nominally, schools don't have that. Some people cite administration, but I'm not entirely sure of that either. Even the president gets paid maybe 4 million tops, which is 100 students tuition. And schools did just fine 50 years ago with less than a quarter of the tuition. My current theory is that administrators have figured out a way to get money out of the school in some form and are squeezing it like cash cows. Or they're just horribly mismanaging schools.

pyrale 8y ago
In my experience, people in academia were motivated by power. Money can be used for prestige things (such as a football team), or for vanity spending, etc. Sometimes, equipment is bought with no real use cases, sometimes purchases are duplicated because the people using it don't get along well, etc.
- petronic 8y ago
  Most large (and thus expensive) athletic programs are more than self-funding due to ticket sales and alumni donors. The real sucking force is all of the administrative positions that now outnumber educators.
  - Footkerchief 8y ago
    Nope, the vast majority of college athletics programs are unprofitable, even large ones: https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/jim-moran/moran-says-only-20-colleges-make-profit-sports/ https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/j... > There are 346 Division I schools. Of them, 123 are classified as members of the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier of sports competition. These are colleges and universities that are eligible to compete in bowl games and have average attendance of at least 15,000 at their home games. [...] "A total of 20 athletics programs in the FBS reported positive net revenues for the 2013 fiscal year."
    - casefields 8y ago
      Unprofitable if you exclude alumni donations, to which most come calling all the time.
      - baud147258 8y ago
        But then alumni donation don't go to actual education, instead proping up oversized sport dept
Misdicorl 8y ago
I too have this fundamental question. One person I've asked who has some insight into these figures (though it isn't his expertise) claims the difference is quality of life for students. Colleges didn't have excellent athletic facilities (for non-athletes especially), study spaces, counselors, job guidance, tutoring services, academic mentors (the list goes on) 50-100 years ago. A lot of colleges 50-100 years ago look like what (some) community colleges look like now. Minimal services not dedicated to their cause. The only difference is the cause is different- education vs. research.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- wespiser_2018 8y ago
  Yea, it's not only that schools are spending more to attract students, but that there are some greater market forces at play: More people go to college now than ever, the state subsidizes colleges per student less than ever, and the state will subsidize college in a way that lowers price sensitivity. Finally, there is the Baomol Effect, which says that education will continue to rise in cost w/o productivity gains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease It's sort of this perfect storm that is shifting the increasing cost of expanding education on to 18yos. The upside: college degree holders have a 50% plus wage premium, the downside, in 2026, 18 years after the great recession, there will be a 15-20% drop in enrollment of full pay college students which might just burst the bubble. (Fingers crossed here)
mnky9800n 8y ago
All those six figure salary assoc Dean's of nothing with phds in nebulous topics like "leadership" have to get paid somehow.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
The same reasons patients get charged $1000 for a $1 ibuprofen dose while hospitals are still running out of money for running operations?
- floren 8y ago
  Well don't leave me hanging, why is it?
  - apathy 8y ago
    Insane administrative overhead? http://thebullelephant.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Doctors-and-administrators-800x754.png http://thebullelephant.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Doctor...
- arkades 8y ago
  No. Patients get charged $1000 for an ibuprofen based on a particular hospital's calculation at distributing costs across a variety of procedures, staff, and settings. However they distribute those costs, the costs must bear the expenses of physicians (who had to figure out whether you needed an ibuprofen or a cardiac catheterization for that "chest pain" and whose complexity of decision-making and time-cost is not diminished because the answer turned out to be muscle pain rather than cardiac), nurses (who administer the drug, and who aren't one cent cheaper because they were giving you ibuprofen rather than rituximab), attributed cost of auxiliary staff, and facility maintenance costs (it's a lot more expensive per square foot to get your ibuprofen in an emergency room than in a primary care center.) The result is that line-item billing usually looks wonky. That we offer line-item billing is a weirdness from our fee-for-service structure, not an actual recounting of the cost of giving someone ibuprofen. If the ibuprofen was listed as a buck, the 999$ would still have to be shifted onto another line-item. The costs have to be attributed somewhere. And you know what? Everyone should kind of know this already. If you didn't think it required the urgency, staff, equipment etc. of an emergency room, you should've gone to a primary care physician. They would've gotten you that ibuprofen for pennies. That you go to an emergency room indicates there's something else you're paying for besides the ibuprofen. (( On top of that, the expensive price is usually a chargemaster price for negotiating with insurers, not a price intended for human beings to actually pay. The uninsured get fucked by being input into a system that takes for granted that they are a highly uncommon component. ))
rb808 8y ago
Sport is where a bunch goes, coaches get millions a year. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/highest-paid-college-coaches/ https://thebestschools.org/magazine/highest-paid-college-coa...
- harryh 8y ago
  The programs coached by all of the coaches on those lists make more money than they cost. That's not true for all athletic departments. But it is for the big name one where coaches get paid millions.
  - scott_s 8y ago
    I used to think that was the case. It's mostly not, at least in 2014: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running-up-the-bills/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runni...
77pt77 8y ago
> I just don't get it. Where does the money go? Nowadays mostly to pay for a huge class of administrators that mainly manage other administrators and monitor the violation of rules whose creation they themselves promote.
- johntiger1 8y ago
  A self-sustaining bureaucracy!
  - apathy 8y ago
    Just like in medicine
- tejtm 8y ago
  Someone has to administer, grade and maintain of those mandatory "Integrity Booster!" courses and flash based "Digital Security and You! lessons (Sorry your browser is not supported.) Oh yea, who else is going to create that "PDF" that only opens on MS running Adobe?
  - puranjay 8y ago
    I studied for a year in a US university before transferring back to a government run university back in India. My tuition for the latter was about $100/year. The amount of bloat I saw in US universities was unreal. Software that no one used apart from a couple of features, services that served no one in particular, classes that no one wants, and so on. Of course, the infrastructure was markedly better. But I can't say that for quality. Most of my classes were taught by TAs, while my classes in my university back home were often taught by associate or even full professors, several of whom had PhDs from top US/UK universities. And this was at a cheap public university. I can't imagine the kind of bloat a large private US school would have
- seventhtiger 8y ago
  This is repeated often, and it's mostly true. But people imagine clerks sitting in a circle and filing forms to each other. Administrators are filtering applications, organizing the events, marketing the brand, enabling recreation, looking for better food, etc. I'm actually ok with a barebones education, but that's obviously not what people want to see when they're going on campus tours. They judge the value of schools directly by the work of its admin, rather than the teaching staff who they only meet on the first day of class.
georgeecollins 8y ago
I don't know the answer, but one thing to consider is endowments which are pretty amazing in size, bigger than the GDP of many African and Central American nations. (I know that is an apple to oranges comparison, but still.. a lot of $) https://thebestschools.org/features/richest-universities-endowments-generosity-research/ https://thebestschools.org/features/richest-universities-end...
wespiser_2018 8y ago
It's not mismanagement, its basically competition for students by increasing features the only way you can: by lower faculty/student ratio (higher more teachers, not always better), and making the facilities as nice and new as possible. The next problem driving up costs, is that states have lowered funding for higher ed since the great recession, since schools can raise tuition to cover the gap. Overall, it's all these problems combined, plus some demographic on coming demographic shifts, that are driving up the cost of higher ed. It's definitely not mismanagement!

pyrale 8y ago

In my experience, people in academia were motivated by power. Money can be used for prestige things (such as a football team), or for vanity spending, etc. Sometimes, equipment is bought with no real use cases, sometimes purchases are duplicated because the people using it don't get along well, etc.

petronic 8y ago
Most large (and thus expensive) athletic programs are more than self-funding due to ticket sales and alumni donors. The real sucking force is all of the administrative positions that now outnumber educators.
- Footkerchief 8y ago
  Nope, the vast majority of college athletics programs are unprofitable, even large ones: https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/jim-moran/moran-says-only-20-colleges-make-profit-sports/ https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/j... > There are 346 Division I schools. Of them, 123 are classified as members of the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier of sports competition. These are colleges and universities that are eligible to compete in bowl games and have average attendance of at least 15,000 at their home games. [...] "A total of 20 athletics programs in the FBS reported positive net revenues for the 2013 fiscal year."
  - casefields 8y ago
    Unprofitable if you exclude alumni donations, to which most come calling all the time.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      But then alumni donation don't go to actual education, instead proping up oversized sport dept

Misdicorl 8y ago

I too have this fundamental question. One person I've asked who has some insight into these figures (though it isn't his expertise) claims the difference is quality of life for students. Colleges didn't have excellent athletic facilities (for non-athletes especially), study spaces, counselors, job guidance, tutoring services, academic mentors (the list goes on) 50-100 years ago. A lot of colleges 50-100 years ago look like what (some) community colleges look like now. Minimal services not dedicated to their cause. The only difference is the cause is different- education vs. research.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wespiser_2018 8y ago
Yea, it's not only that schools are spending more to attract students, but that there are some greater market forces at play: More people go to college now than ever, the state subsidizes colleges per student less than ever, and the state will subsidize college in a way that lowers price sensitivity. Finally, there is the Baomol Effect, which says that education will continue to rise in cost w/o productivity gains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease It's sort of this perfect storm that is shifting the increasing cost of expanding education on to 18yos. The upside: college degree holders have a 50% plus wage premium, the downside, in 2026, 18 years after the great recession, there will be a 15-20% drop in enrollment of full pay college students which might just burst the bubble. (Fingers crossed here)

mnky9800n 8y ago

All those six figure salary assoc Dean's of nothing with phds in nebulous topics like "leadership" have to get paid somehow.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

The same reasons patients get charged $1000 for a $1 ibuprofen dose while hospitals are still running out of money for running operations?

floren 8y ago
Well don't leave me hanging, why is it?
- apathy 8y ago
  Insane administrative overhead? http://thebullelephant.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Doctors-and-administrators-800x754.png http://thebullelephant.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Doctor...
arkades 8y ago
No. Patients get charged $1000 for an ibuprofen based on a particular hospital's calculation at distributing costs across a variety of procedures, staff, and settings. However they distribute those costs, the costs must bear the expenses of physicians (who had to figure out whether you needed an ibuprofen or a cardiac catheterization for that "chest pain" and whose complexity of decision-making and time-cost is not diminished because the answer turned out to be muscle pain rather than cardiac), nurses (who administer the drug, and who aren't one cent cheaper because they were giving you ibuprofen rather than rituximab), attributed cost of auxiliary staff, and facility maintenance costs (it's a lot more expensive per square foot to get your ibuprofen in an emergency room than in a primary care center.) The result is that line-item billing usually looks wonky. That we offer line-item billing is a weirdness from our fee-for-service structure, not an actual recounting of the cost of giving someone ibuprofen. If the ibuprofen was listed as a buck, the 999$ would still have to be shifted onto another line-item. The costs have to be attributed somewhere. And you know what? Everyone should kind of know this already. If you didn't think it required the urgency, staff, equipment etc. of an emergency room, you should've gone to a primary care physician. They would've gotten you that ibuprofen for pennies. That you go to an emergency room indicates there's something else you're paying for besides the ibuprofen. (( On top of that, the expensive price is usually a chargemaster price for negotiating with insurers, not a price intended for human beings to actually pay. The uninsured get fucked by being input into a system that takes for granted that they are a highly uncommon component. ))

rb808 8y ago

Sport is where a bunch goes, coaches get millions a year. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/highest-paid-college-coaches/ https://thebestschools.org/magazine/highest-paid-college-coa...

harryh 8y ago
The programs coached by all of the coaches on those lists make more money than they cost. That's not true for all athletic departments. But it is for the big name one where coaches get paid millions.
- scott_s 8y ago
  I used to think that was the case. It's mostly not, at least in 2014: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running-up-the-bills/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runni...

77pt77 8y ago

> I just don't get it. Where does the money go? Nowadays mostly to pay for a huge class of administrators that mainly manage other administrators and monitor the violation of rules whose creation they themselves promote.

johntiger1 8y ago
A self-sustaining bureaucracy!
- apathy 8y ago
  Just like in medicine
tejtm 8y ago
Someone has to administer, grade and maintain of those mandatory "Integrity Booster!" courses and flash based "Digital Security and You! lessons (Sorry your browser is not supported.) Oh yea, who else is going to create that "PDF" that only opens on MS running Adobe?
- puranjay 8y ago
  I studied for a year in a US university before transferring back to a government run university back in India. My tuition for the latter was about $100/year. The amount of bloat I saw in US universities was unreal. Software that no one used apart from a couple of features, services that served no one in particular, classes that no one wants, and so on. Of course, the infrastructure was markedly better. But I can't say that for quality. Most of my classes were taught by TAs, while my classes in my university back home were often taught by associate or even full professors, several of whom had PhDs from top US/UK universities. And this was at a cheap public university. I can't imagine the kind of bloat a large private US school would have
seventhtiger 8y ago
This is repeated often, and it's mostly true. But people imagine clerks sitting in a circle and filing forms to each other. Administrators are filtering applications, organizing the events, marketing the brand, enabling recreation, looking for better food, etc. I'm actually ok with a barebones education, but that's obviously not what people want to see when they're going on campus tours. They judge the value of schools directly by the work of its admin, rather than the teaching staff who they only meet on the first day of class.

georgeecollins 8y ago

I don't know the answer, but one thing to consider is endowments which are pretty amazing in size, bigger than the GDP of many African and Central American nations. (I know that is an apple to oranges comparison, but still.. a lot of $) https://thebestschools.org/features/richest-universities-endowments-generosity-research/ https://thebestschools.org/features/richest-universities-end...

wespiser_2018 8y ago

It's not mismanagement, its basically competition for students by increasing features the only way you can: by lower faculty/student ratio (higher more teachers, not always better), and making the facilities as nice and new as possible. The next problem driving up costs, is that states have lowered funding for higher ed since the great recession, since schools can raise tuition to cover the gap. Overall, it's all these problems combined, plus some demographic on coming demographic shifts, that are driving up the cost of higher ed. It's definitely not mismanagement!