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Interesting that there is no mention here of the drastically inflated number of administrators in colleges as compared to say 30 years ago. “literally nobody k

Interesting that there is no mention here of the drastically inflated number of administrators in colleges as compared to say 30 years ago. “literally nobody knows who these people are or what they are doing” https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureaucrats-and-buildings-the-case-for-why-college-is-so-expensive/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureau...

golemiprague 7y ago
It is fake jobs for women who didn't study anything useful and this phenomena is spilling into the rest of the economy. We hoped that the influx of women to higher education will help the economy but it is only a burden, the return on the money we spend on their education is abysmal, it hurts the whole economy and is part of the reason this debt crisis was created in the first place. Women almost don't start new businesses and they don't create jobs. Most innovations, technical jobs, dangerous jobs, physical jobs and creative jobs are done by men. Women fill up mostly secretarial roles with fancy names in the private sector. Those roles don't really need any education and it is a total waste of 3 or 4 years just to signal secretarial capabilities to employers. Armies around the world can figure this out with half a day test and can teach those jobs in 3 months max. The rest of the women work in care taking type of jobs in the public sector, funded mainly by our taxes. We wouldn't need those jobs had those women stayed at home and took care of their kids, their elders, their house and gardens. The education system is a good example of industry overrun by over educated women that is deteriorating and stagnating because there are not enough men to push it forward. So I think the first step we need to take is limit higher studies only for women who are exceptional and are willing to actually study and work in something productive. That's in itself will reduce the amount of people in the system and will solve a lot of the financial issues. There are also many men who don't have to be there, but the numbers are much lower.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
This is the crazy thing about discussions like cost of education or health care. Where does the f....ing money go? Nobody seems to know or care.
- ummonk 7y ago
  Yup. And in healthcare most of the focus is on Pharma (which is certainly profitable and gouging Americans but is a small piece of the pie) and insurance companies (which don’t even make much profits), but not on hospitals which constitute around 70% of healthcare costs.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    “which don’t even make much profits” You don’t have to make profit to waste a lot of money.
- blang 7y ago
  I think the answer to both tends to be "administration costs"
chadcmulligan 7y ago
Administrators remind me of the old lady who swallowed the fly, administrators to administrate the administrators, eventually they'll swallow the horse, maybe
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Teacher salaries are the biggest factor in price increases. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bloat-does-not-explain-the-rising-cost-of-education.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  This doesn’t work for all Systems. From the UC system for examples, administrative salaries increased 13x while tenure faculty salaries increased 1.6x, but faculty growth is less then the growth of student body, from 1964-2015.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  Hasn't there been a large increase in non-tenured faculty, teaching assistants, etc?
- romwell 7y ago
  I call shenanigans, and yes, I've gone to the source[0] the article cites. First off, the source doesn't even claim that. They measure total expenses on instruction. The instructors might be getting a shitty pay (most do), but the expenses could be high if the instructor:student ratio is high enough. Secondly, I highly question their data and methodology. The only relevant data to support the claim you made is in Figure 14. That figure does not explain how the expenses on "instructors" are tallied. To start, the universities have purely teaching faculty and research faculty that also teach. The latter can be highly salaried, but also bring a lot of money to the university in the form of research grants, which actually pay the high salaries. Thus research spending and instructional spending are likely mixed in Figure 14. (It is a well-known fact that most of instruction is down by adjunct faculty at slave wages). Going further, I don't see a distinction between undergraduate and graduate instruction. A graduate seminar, say, on tropical varieties for non-archimedean analytic spaces that exactly 5 students are enrolled in because it's something they need for their research can be formally listed as a class, but this 1:5 instructor-to-student ratio is not something a typical undergraduate student will ever see. Furthermore, whether the TA's (grad students) are counted in such ratios is unclear. Now, let's look at the data[1]. From 1970 to 2009, the instructors' salaries have seen a modest increase (about $4K/year) after adjusting for inflation[4], less than 6%. However, the cost of attendance has more than doubled, inflation adjusted[2]. For the claim in Figure 14 to hold any water, we should expect to see the student:instructor ratio drop by a factor of more than 2 since the 70's. This simply did not happen[3]. The FTE student-instructor ratio, on the average, stayed at about 16-17. Therefore, the Figure 14 that the book[0] includes without references to sources, can't be right. The data I cited suggests that the tuition costs would be half of what they are today if they were tied to instructors' salaries. However, the costs have more than doubled. (Everyone who would like to dispute this is welcome to dig into the statistics). [0] https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/helland-tabarrok_why-are-the-prices-so-damn-high_v1.pdf https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/helland-tabarrok_why-a... [1]https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_267.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_267.asp [2]https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp [3] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012001.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012001.pdf - page 377 [4] Inflation calculator: https://www.officialdata.org/1976-dollars-in-2006?amount=924 https://www.officialdata.org/1976-dollars-in-2006?amount=924
RickJWagner 7y ago
They are yesterday's grad students, of course. Higher education is a ponzi scheme, from books to peer review to administration.

golemiprague 7y ago

It is fake jobs for women who didn't study anything useful and this phenomena is spilling into the rest of the economy. We hoped that the influx of women to higher education will help the economy but it is only a burden, the return on the money we spend on their education is abysmal, it hurts the whole economy and is part of the reason this debt crisis was created in the first place. Women almost don't start new businesses and they don't create jobs. Most innovations, technical jobs, dangerous jobs, physical jobs and creative jobs are done by men. Women fill up mostly secretarial roles with fancy names in the private sector. Those roles don't really need any education and it is a total waste of 3 or 4 years just to signal secretarial capabilities to employers. Armies around the world can figure this out with half a day test and can teach those jobs in 3 months max. The rest of the women work in care taking type of jobs in the public sector, funded mainly by our taxes. We wouldn't need those jobs had those women stayed at home and took care of their kids, their elders, their house and gardens. The education system is a good example of industry overrun by over educated women that is deteriorating and stagnating because there are not enough men to push it forward. So I think the first step we need to take is limit higher studies only for women who are exceptional and are willing to actually study and work in something productive. That's in itself will reduce the amount of people in the system and will solve a lot of the financial issues. There are also many men who don't have to be there, but the numbers are much lower.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

This is the crazy thing about discussions like cost of education or health care. Where does the f....ing money go? Nobody seems to know or care.

ummonk 7y ago
Yup. And in healthcare most of the focus is on Pharma (which is certainly profitable and gouging Americans but is a small piece of the pie) and insurance companies (which don’t even make much profits), but not on hospitals which constitute around 70% of healthcare costs.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  “which don’t even make much profits” You don’t have to make profit to waste a lot of money.
blang 7y ago
I think the answer to both tends to be "administration costs"

chadcmulligan 7y ago

Administrators remind me of the old lady who swallowed the fly, administrators to administrate the administrators, eventually they'll swallow the horse, maybe

bryanlarsen 7y ago

Teacher salaries are the biggest factor in price increases. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bloat-does-not-explain-the-rising-cost-of-education.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
This doesn’t work for all Systems. From the UC system for examples, administrative salaries increased 13x while tenure faculty salaries increased 1.6x, but faculty growth is less then the growth of student body, from 1964-2015.
PorterDuff 7y ago
Hasn't there been a large increase in non-tenured faculty, teaching assistants, etc?
romwell 7y ago
I call shenanigans, and yes, I've gone to the source[0] the article cites. First off, the source doesn't even claim that. They measure total expenses on instruction. The instructors might be getting a shitty pay (most do), but the expenses could be high if the instructor:student ratio is high enough. Secondly, I highly question their data and methodology. The only relevant data to support the claim you made is in Figure 14. That figure does not explain how the expenses on "instructors" are tallied. To start, the universities have purely teaching faculty and research faculty that also teach. The latter can be highly salaried, but also bring a lot of money to the university in the form of research grants, which actually pay the high salaries. Thus research spending and instructional spending are likely mixed in Figure 14. (It is a well-known fact that most of instruction is down by adjunct faculty at slave wages). Going further, I don't see a distinction between undergraduate and graduate instruction. A graduate seminar, say, on tropical varieties for non-archimedean analytic spaces that exactly 5 students are enrolled in because it's something they need for their research can be formally listed as a class, but this 1:5 instructor-to-student ratio is not something a typical undergraduate student will ever see. Furthermore, whether the TA's (grad students) are counted in such ratios is unclear. Now, let's look at the data[1]. From 1970 to 2009, the instructors' salaries have seen a modest increase (about $4K/year) after adjusting for inflation[4], less than 6%. However, the cost of attendance has more than doubled, inflation adjusted[2]. For the claim in Figure 14 to hold any water, we should expect to see the student:instructor ratio drop by a factor of more than 2 since the 70's. This simply did not happen[3]. The FTE student-instructor ratio, on the average, stayed at about 16-17. Therefore, the Figure 14 that the book[0] includes without references to sources, can't be right. The data I cited suggests that the tuition costs would be half of what they are today if they were tied to instructors' salaries. However, the costs have more than doubled. (Everyone who would like to dispute this is welcome to dig into the statistics). [0] https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/helland-tabarrok_why-are-the-prices-so-damn-high_v1.pdf https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/helland-tabarrok_why-a... [1]https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_267.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_267.asp [2]https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp [3] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012001.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012001.pdf - page 377 [4] Inflation calculator: https://www.officialdata.org/1976-dollars-in-2006?amount=924 https://www.officialdata.org/1976-dollars-in-2006?amount=924

RickJWagner 7y ago

They are yesterday's grad students, of course. Higher education is a ponzi scheme, from books to peer review to administration.