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One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then tur

One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then turn around and having tuition costs that having been rising at rates so far above inflation. Student debt is a major issue in the US and the ever increasing costs of tuition are a MAJOR culprit in pushing this crisis. Where are these costs coming from? How can you politically espouse free college while ratcheting up tuition costs?

Finnucane 7y ago
I work at one local university, and my wife works at another. One thing we've definitely noticed (and this is a widespread problem) is that the administration is becoming more top-heavy. There are cutbacks in faculty, support, and teaching staff, more reliance on adjuncts (academic temps, basically), and so on, while central administration grows. Expensive new buildings contribute, but less than people suppose. But that is a tangential problem, in that wealthy donors want to give big gifts for vanity projects rather than to, say, scholarship funds.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Ahh, the iron law of bureaucracy at work. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
- wtvanhest 7y ago
  Yes, admin is a problem, but its not just admin. If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Colleges need dramatic, across the board cost cutting including professors, admins etc. Colleges are in for a world of pain in the next 50 years.
  - Finnucane 7y ago
    >If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Also, how much of your funding comes from unsavory sources like Jeffrey Epstein and the Saudi government.
  - Bjartr 7y ago
    Why shouldn't a professor make 150k? I mean, from a societal point of view.
    - ahi 7y ago
      How much of that is skimming off what the grad students do? ...who get a poverty wage adjunct position
    - wtvanhest 7y ago
      If that is what they are earning without burdening thousands of students with unsustainable debt over their careers than I'd argue nothing is wrong with it. For example if the salary is 100% from NIH grants and the prof makes 500k, more power to them. If the prof makes 100k and all their salary is funded by student loans, then they should decide whether their livelihood is worth the externalities they are creating. Its a moral choice
      - lazypenguin 7y ago
        150k/year. Let’s assume the professor teaches 4 units per semester and maybe 2 in the summer (or research or some equivalent). Comes out to 15k/unit. Let’s say 15 students per unit just to represent smaller classes comes to $1k/unit/student/year. Each unit is like 3hrs/week for 12 weeks on average. So comes out to something like $28/hr. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Average course load for a student is like 6 units a semester so using the back-of-the napkin math above it should cost roughly $6k/per semester for students to have a full course load of $150k professors. $12k/year + other expenses is a far cry away from $100k that is being charged.
        wtvanhest 7y ago
        $12k a year is completely unacceptable. Other costs are also unacceptable. Colleges charge $500+/month for shared rooms. And require freshman to stay in them. Nevermind the fact that your math misses several major cost categories like building maintenance, fringe benefits for professors (+30% of salaries at least). In your hypothetical example, students are paying $20k/year before getting ripped off on the cost of the dorm and meal plan. If a prof is making 150k, class sizes need to be 300+ and they need to teach 1,000 kids a semester
- haberman 7y ago
  Do colleges make their budgets public? When a program is taking too long to run the first step is to profile. What does the data say on college costs? > But that is a tangential problem, in that wealthy donors want to give big gifts for vanity projects rather than to, say, scholarship funds. In the past I've felt quite motivated to give to scholarship funds. It resonates a lot if you yourself relied on scholarships to go to college. But I feel somewhat more cynical about this since I've seen costs spiraling out of control. The actual price of college can have anything bundled in there. I want to support students, but I feel less good about supporting ballooning costs that are twice inflation when I haven't heard a good reason for this.
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    Certainly public colleges have public budgets.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Alex Tabarrok disagrees: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bloat-does-not-explain-the-rising-cost-of-education.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...
  - Finnucane 7y ago
    That data is only for public universities.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Arguably those are the only ones we should care about -- they're getting our state tax funds. Private Uni's are, well, private. They can charge what they want, and if the average Pell Grant or other DoE loans aren't enough that's not the Uni's problem.
- moduspol 7y ago
  I worked for five years at a private university a few years ago, and my experience is similar, although to add a little: It never felt like a plan or conspiracy to make administration costs bigger. It's just very easy to do when you have more money coming in, year after year. In another economic environment, you'd get a "hard no" because the money isn't there. But when there is, expenditures become just another bargaining chip. Maybe you get your seventh librarian this year, and I get my fifth network guy next year. New buildings (as you stated) aren't as big of a contributor as expected due to the convoluted role of donations, grants, etc. But another big factor for those buildings is that we were getting loans for them, too, and those were based on (big surprise) long term forecasts presuming this gravy train is going to keep on chugging for the next 30+ years. And even then we were getting projections of our "debt capacity" and always riding that line, so it's debt on top of debt all the way down. I don't know about big schools, but for a smaller one like ours, there was no visible bad faith. These kind of things just happen when you can keep bringing in more and more money and so can your competitors.
  - supahfly_remix 7y ago
    Are the people who actually teach the classes (professors who teach and TAs) getting raises matching the tuition raises in your school? Or, is all of the money diverted to administration?
    - moduspol 7y ago
      I wasn't in a position to be explicitly told, although I did at one point see an anonymized list of faculty salaries and they did not seem unreasonable (only one in six figures). This school is about 40 minutes away from a city with an international airport. I think "diverted" is perhaps a strong word here. The way administrators see it, the administration is necessary to even reach the point where faculty can teach classes, and provides a significant role in empowering them to do so. And there's some validity to it. Besides, students' expectations with regards to faculty haven't changed nearly as much over the last ~20 years when compared to administrative departments. Students absolutely expect good WiFi, good Internet speeds, Google Apps-quality e-mail, and that's just tech stuff. Colleges are implicitly competing with other colleges with things like on-campus events, residence halls, modern cafeterias, online course registration, athletics... all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of money involved in these expectations that has outpaced the faculty side. But it's cyclical. We pump money into those things to keep retention up because we need to because the other schools are doing it.
- o09rdk 7y ago
  Former tenured professor. I think your impression is generally spot-on although there's nuances and it's more complicated than that. In general, universities are suffering from many of the same pressures as other fields. Nonprofits are being run as profit-generating centers, and the implicit promotion track goes from faculty to senior faculty to administration, if you're even on tenure track. The administration salaries are increasing, as are the number of administrative positions (deans, associate deans, vice associate deans, assistant deans, etc.), and the structures are becoming increasingly hierarchical. Things are very top-heavy and expensive to run because the salary budget is so disproportionately distributed. I don't think that's all of it, though. The rest of it is harder to quantify, but is the flip side of the educational bubble coin. Students are rushing to go to college in record numbers, which then puts pressure on colleges to stand out to attract more students and more high-paying students who become high-donating alumni. Institutions that should be getting public funding are not, which then trickles down to students; other private institutions then benefit from the increased tuition norms etc. It's a complicated problem that involves HR and administrative practices and norms, economic incentives within university funding structures, incentives coming from a broken employment system in the US, problematic incentives coming from federal grant structures, etc. etc. etc. etc.
  - Ancalagon 7y ago
    Can you expand on the broken employment system in the US? Honestly just curious.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      If I had to complain about things, it would be these: 1. Lack of workplace training - very few employers will pay for you to train/gain experience, partly because there's nothing preventing someone from jumping ship for better pay once the training is complete 2. Credentialism - the things that actually matter in hiring are either difficult or illegal to test for (conscientiousness, knowledge, intelligence), and so degrees are used as proxies instead
      - paulddraper 7y ago
- cmpolis 7y ago
  This comment is sadly familiar to me - it sounds exactly how my friends in healthcare describe the state of their industry (more admin, fancy buildings, less focus or spending on patient care).
- gnicholas 7y ago
  An AEI report on 'administrative bloat' in higher education: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/diversity-and-other-administrative-monstrosities-in-higher-education/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/diversity-and-other-administr...
  - setpatchaddress 7y ago
    AEI is a hard-rightish conservative think tank. I’d be wary of trusting anything they publish about money and schools.
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      You're right that they're libertarian/conservative in this regard. But they've published a number of articles with relevant facts about the growth of administrative roles in higher ed, and the associated costs. I haven't seen those facts questioned anywhere — have you?
big_chungus 7y ago
Interestingly enough, many elite schools have need-blind admissions and excellent aid if you are poor. If you are rich, it's affordable. As usual, it's the middle class that gets screwed.
- snarf21 7y ago
  Right, I also assume a lot of these MSRP prices are what they want wealthy foreign nationals to pay, not necessarily a US citizen. We really need the data on the average cost and what the distribution curve looks like.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Depends a lot on how you define "middle class" and "screwed". For example: https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/index.html https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/index.html https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    I went to Stanford. My mom did part time office work and my dad was the director of planning for a local city government. It was very affordable for us. Everyone thinks they're in the middle class.
    - setpatchaddress 7y ago
      When?
      - asdfman123 7y ago
        I'm in my early 30s.
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  >UChicago guarantees free tuition for families with incomes under $125,000 per year (with typical assets). Seems generous for middle class. (the median US household income is only 61k)
JDiculous 7y ago
Has the University of Chicago ever advocated for free college? Their economics department, home of the late Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys, is among the most right-leaning in the country.
- eindiran 7y ago
  This really isn't true anymore, but people keep regurgitating it. Chicago has a lot of behavioral economists like Thaler/List/Levitt, a lot of people who work on econometrics or mathematical economics like Harberger/Uhlig/Stokey/Tesler. There are still some Chicago school of economics folks at the university, but increasingly "the Chicago school" is an independent beast. There are a few emeritus professors in the old guard, but claiming that the department is one of the most "right-leaning" in the country is wrong.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  That was then.
1-more 7y ago
U. Chicago is left leaning? It produced the Chicago boys, the authors of neoliberalism in Chile.
- freeAgent 7y ago
  It depends on what area of the University of Chicago you're talking about.
- mdasen 7y ago
  I think most people would say you're correct about the Econ department, but that isn't the whole university. Plus, it's not like U Chicago is that far off from other universities when it comes to tuition and fees. They cost $58k, but Columbia University is already above $59k, Dartmouth is $55k, Penn is $56k, Duke is $56k, Brown is $55k, Tufts is $56k, There are plenty of liberal schools whose sticker price is going sky high.
slg 7y ago
The tuition price being talked about is the top sticker price. If you care about inequality, that isn't the metric to care about. You should instead focus on something like median tuition paid since financial aid can mean that any individual student is paying anything from zero up to the full tuition costs. The concept of the richest students paying a six figure sticker price in order to help compensate for the students on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum who can't afford it is the exact type of thing you would expect from a "left leaning" institution.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  But as the article says, low income students are scared away by high tuition. My fiancee was raised poor and I kind of understand the mentality -- when the tuition is a multiple of what both your parents make in a year, you say "this place isn't for me" and move on. You've been told in various ways throughout your life which places aren't for you (there are a lot of them), and a $100k sticker price is a pretty damn good signal. And besides, no one wants to rely on the generosity of paternalistic college administrators. That's not safe. You don't want to wake up and suddenly find due to some technicality you again owe more money than both of your parents make in a year. And you don't want to feel like a charity case. (If you think that's a remote possibility, think of the people who went into teaching with the promise of debt forgiveness, and found it revoked. They don't have any choice in the matter -- they're totally screwed.) Better to go to the local city college. Your cousin went there and a few other people from your school go there, too. It's a safe choice, and there are people like you there.
oconnor663 7y ago
Looking at the sticker price can be confusing, when the majority of students are receiving some financial aid. You'd need to look at the average tuition paid by students at different family income levels. But is that data even publicly available?
- lancesells 7y ago
  That is definitely the way to look at it although there is a middle class where family income is more than what qualifies for financial aid but far lower than tuition being "affordable".
tehlike 7y ago
The same goes for housing, in same states.
Dirlewanger 7y ago
- Rampant cronyism in the administrative bureaucracy. Too many inflated titles with ~$200k yearly compensations. - Building architecturally impressive (but questionably prudent) faculty buildings/dorms/libraries/etc. in hopes of luring prospective students, many funded by alumni looking to stroke their ego via their name on the structure (reminds me of that scene from House of Cards when Kevin Spacey's character does this very thing) - Federal government showing no signs of abating the giving out free money to attend college, which enables the entire cycle to continue
pastor_elm 7y ago
It's pretty clear how these schools operate. They charge high tuition for people with a lot of money and cover the costs for people that can't afford it. >With over $159 million in financial aid distributed this year, UChicago is committed to ensuring that its students graduate debt-free and prepared for lifelong success, no matter their chosen major or background prior to enrolling in The College. UChicago is a need-blind institution, which means we make admissions decisions independent of a family’s financial circumstances[0] That seems like a hallmark move of progressivism, no? [0]https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/cost-aid https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/cost-aid
- garmaine 7y ago
  Financial aid is code for student loans. If they meant a scholarship they would have said so.
  - pastor_elm 7y ago
    > Guaranteed Free Tuition Families earning less than $125,000 per year (with typical assets) will receive a financial aid award that covers the full cost of tuition. Families earning less than $60,000 per year will have tuition, fees, and room and board covered by financial aid. UChicago’s need-based financial aid involves no loans and is awarded as grants, which do not need to be repaid. https://nobarriers.uchicago.edu/ https://nobarriers.uchicago.edu/
    - garmaine 7y ago
      That's the need-based financial aid program specifically. Are the numbers quoted by the grandparent post for that program specifically?
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Financial aid is code for student loans. No, especially at well-funded not-for-profit private universities, “financial aid” often includes generous need-based grants (not scholarships, which are merit-based) that reduce the amount that must be met from student/family resources (including loans) substantially for non-wealthy students (not unheard of for it to be down to $0 for the poorest who manage to get admitted, and that's not just tuition but sometimes housing, books, etc.).
BurningFrog 7y ago
When there is a difference between what people say and what they do, always believe what they do.
asveikau 7y ago
Has it occurred to you that maybe the state can handle the cost? Compare to how much we spend buying fancy equipment to kill people. (Military spending if that is too indirect a description.) Consider also that a large amount of student loans are already from the government, so in a default...
eindiran 7y ago
Given that most (yes, most) students at the University of Chicago receive financial aid, what you're seeing is a sticker price. The school is using the high sticker price + financial aid to perform very efficient price discrimination[0], so they can get a lot of money from people who can pay. It is effectively a sliding scale fee [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale_fees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale_fees
- secabeen 7y ago
  Yes, this. The nameplate tuition is paid by a vanishingly small percentage of students. What I think each school should do is publish data showing what the median tuition paid is, and the quartiles. That would help a lot to fight this perception that "tuition is going up every year!"
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- popularwarfare 7y ago
  In theory. Do you have evidence that is what is actually happening?
  - eindiran 7y ago
    If your request for evidence is about the claim that most Uchicago students receive aid: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/financial-aid-budget-forecast-grow-5-percent-uchicago-implements-new-aid-initiatives https://news.uchicago.edu/story/financial-aid-budget-forecas... If its about the claim that this is an example of price discrimination: that is an opinion I formed while I was at the University and spoke with some folks in the economics department about it. There is a class offered in econ about the economics of education, and that certainly hit the point home that financial aid is a type of price discrimination. I couldn't have paid for the tuition in full, so I myself received significant financial aid and supplemented with some student loans, so I got to see a bit of it first hand.
buboard 7y ago
You might see people rallying for forgiving debt, but not for increasing enrollment, which is what caused high debts in the first place. It s impossible not to call this hypocritical
akhilcacharya 7y ago
> One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then turn around and having tuition costs that having been rising at rates so far above inflation. Eh...the UChicago economics department and the people of Chile would like a word with you on that.
wdr1 7y ago
> One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then turn around and having tuition costs that having been rising at rates so far above inflation. It's weird you chose to make this comment on an article about the University of Chicago, the home of Milton Friedman, Supply-side economics, "no safe spaces"[1] and so on. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/30/so-you-like-the-university-of-chicagos-rejection-of-safe-spaces-for-students-consider-this/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/...
- wardnath 7y ago
  Tuition rates seem to be rising across the board however. University of Chicago is just the tip of the spear.
jefftk 7y ago
> the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, ... These schools are price discriminating, which means only the richest families are paying the full price. This kind of heavily graduated pricing where the wealthy pay for most of the cost of the school is very much in line with their principles.
gaze 7y ago
You may want to look into the difference between liberalism and leftism.
tenpies 7y ago
> One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning Why? Being Left leaning is easiest when it's not your money. Yes! Raise our tuition! More levies! Mommy and daddy will pick up the tab. If not the government-backed loans will take care of it and I just won't pay for it. After all, those capitalist boomer tax payers should subsidize my virtuous leftist existence. It's just like left leaning policies everywhere in the world.
- spodek 7y ago
  Do you prefer they lean to the right, increase deficits, and promote a military budget larger than the military asks for?
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  Good lord, the level of discourse on this site has absolutely plummeted. We're in /r/conservative territory now.
  - joenot443 7y ago
    > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
  Assume that inherent skill is evenly distributed, Assume that the environment to foster that skill is not. Why would we not make college affordable if we can produce high quality college graduates. The US isn't a closed system, we make a lot of money in the knowledge economy, a fight we're slowly losing to China and India.
viburnum 7y ago
Yeah they’re not left leaning at all, they’re completely corporate and plutocratic. The highest paid state employees are university presidents and college sports coaches.
L_Rahman 7y ago
While this is true of its peers, no one has ever accused the University of Chicago of being left leaning. The unrestrained neoliberalism (deregulation of consumer protections, unwinding of antitrust policy) that characterizes our time is literally called the "Chicago School" of economics.

Finnucane 7y ago

I work at one local university, and my wife works at another. One thing we've definitely noticed (and this is a widespread problem) is that the administration is becoming more top-heavy. There are cutbacks in faculty, support, and teaching staff, more reliance on adjuncts (academic temps, basically), and so on, while central administration grows. Expensive new buildings contribute, but less than people suppose. But that is a tangential problem, in that wealthy donors want to give big gifts for vanity projects rather than to, say, scholarship funds.

big_chungus 7y ago
Ahh, the iron law of bureaucracy at work. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
wtvanhest 7y ago
Yes, admin is a problem, but its not just admin. If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Colleges need dramatic, across the board cost cutting including professors, admins etc. Colleges are in for a world of pain in the next 50 years.
- Finnucane 7y ago
  >If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Also, how much of your funding comes from unsavory sources like Jeffrey Epstein and the Saudi government.
- Bjartr 7y ago
  Why shouldn't a professor make 150k? I mean, from a societal point of view.
  - ahi 7y ago
    How much of that is skimming off what the grad students do? ...who get a poverty wage adjunct position
  - wtvanhest 7y ago
    If that is what they are earning without burdening thousands of students with unsustainable debt over their careers than I'd argue nothing is wrong with it. For example if the salary is 100% from NIH grants and the prof makes 500k, more power to them. If the prof makes 100k and all their salary is funded by student loans, then they should decide whether their livelihood is worth the externalities they are creating. Its a moral choice
    - lazypenguin 7y ago
      150k/year. Let’s assume the professor teaches 4 units per semester and maybe 2 in the summer (or research or some equivalent). Comes out to 15k/unit. Let’s say 15 students per unit just to represent smaller classes comes to $1k/unit/student/year. Each unit is like 3hrs/week for 12 weeks on average. So comes out to something like $28/hr. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Average course load for a student is like 6 units a semester so using the back-of-the napkin math above it should cost roughly $6k/per semester for students to have a full course load of $150k professors. $12k/year + other expenses is a far cry away from $100k that is being charged.
      - wtvanhest 7y ago
        $12k a year is completely unacceptable. Other costs are also unacceptable. Colleges charge $500+/month for shared rooms. And require freshman to stay in them. Nevermind the fact that your math misses several major cost categories like building maintenance, fringe benefits for professors (+30% of salaries at least). In your hypothetical example, students are paying $20k/year before getting ripped off on the cost of the dorm and meal plan. If a prof is making 150k, class sizes need to be 300+ and they need to teach 1,000 kids a semester
haberman 7y ago
Do colleges make their budgets public? When a program is taking too long to run the first step is to profile. What does the data say on college costs? > But that is a tangential problem, in that wealthy donors want to give big gifts for vanity projects rather than to, say, scholarship funds. In the past I've felt quite motivated to give to scholarship funds. It resonates a lot if you yourself relied on scholarships to go to college. But I feel somewhat more cynical about this since I've seen costs spiraling out of control. The actual price of college can have anything bundled in there. I want to support students, but I feel less good about supporting ballooning costs that are twice inflation when I haven't heard a good reason for this.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Certainly public colleges have public budgets.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Alex Tabarrok disagrees: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bloat-does-not-explain-the-rising-cost-of-education.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...
- Finnucane 7y ago
  That data is only for public universities.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Arguably those are the only ones we should care about -- they're getting our state tax funds. Private Uni's are, well, private. They can charge what they want, and if the average Pell Grant or other DoE loans aren't enough that's not the Uni's problem.
moduspol 7y ago
I worked for five years at a private university a few years ago, and my experience is similar, although to add a little: It never felt like a plan or conspiracy to make administration costs bigger. It's just very easy to do when you have more money coming in, year after year. In another economic environment, you'd get a "hard no" because the money isn't there. But when there is, expenditures become just another bargaining chip. Maybe you get your seventh librarian this year, and I get my fifth network guy next year. New buildings (as you stated) aren't as big of a contributor as expected due to the convoluted role of donations, grants, etc. But another big factor for those buildings is that we were getting loans for them, too, and those were based on (big surprise) long term forecasts presuming this gravy train is going to keep on chugging for the next 30+ years. And even then we were getting projections of our "debt capacity" and always riding that line, so it's debt on top of debt all the way down. I don't know about big schools, but for a smaller one like ours, there was no visible bad faith. These kind of things just happen when you can keep bringing in more and more money and so can your competitors.
- supahfly_remix 7y ago
  Are the people who actually teach the classes (professors who teach and TAs) getting raises matching the tuition raises in your school? Or, is all of the money diverted to administration?
  - moduspol 7y ago
    I wasn't in a position to be explicitly told, although I did at one point see an anonymized list of faculty salaries and they did not seem unreasonable (only one in six figures). This school is about 40 minutes away from a city with an international airport. I think "diverted" is perhaps a strong word here. The way administrators see it, the administration is necessary to even reach the point where faculty can teach classes, and provides a significant role in empowering them to do so. And there's some validity to it. Besides, students' expectations with regards to faculty haven't changed nearly as much over the last ~20 years when compared to administrative departments. Students absolutely expect good WiFi, good Internet speeds, Google Apps-quality e-mail, and that's just tech stuff. Colleges are implicitly competing with other colleges with things like on-campus events, residence halls, modern cafeterias, online course registration, athletics... all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of money involved in these expectations that has outpaced the faculty side. But it's cyclical. We pump money into those things to keep retention up because we need to because the other schools are doing it.
o09rdk 7y ago
Former tenured professor. I think your impression is generally spot-on although there's nuances and it's more complicated than that. In general, universities are suffering from many of the same pressures as other fields. Nonprofits are being run as profit-generating centers, and the implicit promotion track goes from faculty to senior faculty to administration, if you're even on tenure track. The administration salaries are increasing, as are the number of administrative positions (deans, associate deans, vice associate deans, assistant deans, etc.), and the structures are becoming increasingly hierarchical. Things are very top-heavy and expensive to run because the salary budget is so disproportionately distributed. I don't think that's all of it, though. The rest of it is harder to quantify, but is the flip side of the educational bubble coin. Students are rushing to go to college in record numbers, which then puts pressure on colleges to stand out to attract more students and more high-paying students who become high-donating alumni. Institutions that should be getting public funding are not, which then trickles down to students; other private institutions then benefit from the increased tuition norms etc. It's a complicated problem that involves HR and administrative practices and norms, economic incentives within university funding structures, incentives coming from a broken employment system in the US, problematic incentives coming from federal grant structures, etc. etc. etc. etc.
- Ancalagon 7y ago
  Can you expand on the broken employment system in the US? Honestly just curious.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    If I had to complain about things, it would be these: 1. Lack of workplace training - very few employers will pay for you to train/gain experience, partly because there's nothing preventing someone from jumping ship for better pay once the training is complete 2. Credentialism - the things that actually matter in hiring are either difficult or illegal to test for (conscientiousness, knowledge, intelligence), and so degrees are used as proxies instead
    - paulddraper 7y ago
cmpolis 7y ago
This comment is sadly familiar to me - it sounds exactly how my friends in healthcare describe the state of their industry (more admin, fancy buildings, less focus or spending on patient care).
gnicholas 7y ago
An AEI report on 'administrative bloat' in higher education: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/diversity-and-other-administrative-monstrosities-in-higher-education/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/diversity-and-other-administr...
- setpatchaddress 7y ago
  AEI is a hard-rightish conservative think tank. I’d be wary of trusting anything they publish about money and schools.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    You're right that they're libertarian/conservative in this regard. But they've published a number of articles with relevant facts about the growth of administrative roles in higher ed, and the associated costs. I haven't seen those facts questioned anywhere — have you?

big_chungus 7y ago

Interestingly enough, many elite schools have need-blind admissions and excellent aid if you are poor. If you are rich, it's affordable. As usual, it's the middle class that gets screwed.

snarf21 7y ago
Right, I also assume a lot of these MSRP prices are what they want wealthy foreign nationals to pay, not necessarily a US citizen. We really need the data on the average cost and what the distribution curve looks like.
maxerickson 7y ago
Depends a lot on how you define "middle class" and "screwed". For example: https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/index.html https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/index.html https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet
- asdfman123 7y ago
  I went to Stanford. My mom did part time office work and my dad was the director of planning for a local city government. It was very affordable for us. Everyone thinks they're in the middle class.
  - setpatchaddress 7y ago
    When?
    - asdfman123 7y ago
      I'm in my early 30s.
pastor_elm 7y ago
>UChicago guarantees free tuition for families with incomes under $125,000 per year (with typical assets). Seems generous for middle class. (the median US household income is only 61k)

JDiculous 7y ago

Has the University of Chicago ever advocated for free college? Their economics department, home of the late Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys, is among the most right-leaning in the country.

eindiran 7y ago
This really isn't true anymore, but people keep regurgitating it. Chicago has a lot of behavioral economists like Thaler/List/Levitt, a lot of people who work on econometrics or mathematical economics like Harberger/Uhlig/Stokey/Tesler. There are still some Chicago school of economics folks at the university, but increasingly "the Chicago school" is an independent beast. There are a few emeritus professors in the old guard, but claiming that the department is one of the most "right-leaning" in the country is wrong.
paulddraper 7y ago
That was then.

1-more 7y ago

U. Chicago is left leaning? It produced the Chicago boys, the authors of neoliberalism in Chile.

freeAgent 7y ago
It depends on what area of the University of Chicago you're talking about.
mdasen 7y ago
I think most people would say you're correct about the Econ department, but that isn't the whole university. Plus, it's not like U Chicago is that far off from other universities when it comes to tuition and fees. They cost $58k, but Columbia University is already above $59k, Dartmouth is $55k, Penn is $56k, Duke is $56k, Brown is $55k, Tufts is $56k, There are plenty of liberal schools whose sticker price is going sky high.

slg 7y ago

The tuition price being talked about is the top sticker price. If you care about inequality, that isn't the metric to care about. You should instead focus on something like median tuition paid since financial aid can mean that any individual student is paying anything from zero up to the full tuition costs. The concept of the richest students paying a six figure sticker price in order to help compensate for the students on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum who can't afford it is the exact type of thing you would expect from a "left leaning" institution.

asdfman123 7y ago
But as the article says, low income students are scared away by high tuition. My fiancee was raised poor and I kind of understand the mentality -- when the tuition is a multiple of what both your parents make in a year, you say "this place isn't for me" and move on. You've been told in various ways throughout your life which places aren't for you (there are a lot of them), and a $100k sticker price is a pretty damn good signal. And besides, no one wants to rely on the generosity of paternalistic college administrators. That's not safe. You don't want to wake up and suddenly find due to some technicality you again owe more money than both of your parents make in a year. And you don't want to feel like a charity case. (If you think that's a remote possibility, think of the people who went into teaching with the promise of debt forgiveness, and found it revoked. They don't have any choice in the matter -- they're totally screwed.) Better to go to the local city college. Your cousin went there and a few other people from your school go there, too. It's a safe choice, and there are people like you there.

oconnor663 7y ago

Looking at the sticker price can be confusing, when the majority of students are receiving some financial aid. You'd need to look at the average tuition paid by students at different family income levels. But is that data even publicly available?

lancesells 7y ago
That is definitely the way to look at it although there is a middle class where family income is more than what qualifies for financial aid but far lower than tuition being "affordable".

tehlike 7y ago

The same goes for housing, in same states.

Dirlewanger 7y ago

- Rampant cronyism in the administrative bureaucracy. Too many inflated titles with ~$200k yearly compensations. - Building architecturally impressive (but questionably prudent) faculty buildings/dorms/libraries/etc. in hopes of luring prospective students, many funded by alumni looking to stroke their ego via their name on the structure (reminds me of that scene from House of Cards when Kevin Spacey's character does this very thing) - Federal government showing no signs of abating the giving out free money to attend college, which enables the entire cycle to continue

pastor_elm 7y ago

It's pretty clear how these schools operate. They charge high tuition for people with a lot of money and cover the costs for people that can't afford it. >With over $159 million in financial aid distributed this year, UChicago is committed to ensuring that its students graduate debt-free and prepared for lifelong success, no matter their chosen major or background prior to enrolling in The College. UChicago is a need-blind institution, which means we make admissions decisions independent of a family’s financial circumstances[0] That seems like a hallmark move of progressivism, no? [0]https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/cost-aid https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/cost-aid

garmaine 7y ago
Financial aid is code for student loans. If they meant a scholarship they would have said so.
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  > Guaranteed Free Tuition Families earning less than $125,000 per year (with typical assets) will receive a financial aid award that covers the full cost of tuition. Families earning less than $60,000 per year will have tuition, fees, and room and board covered by financial aid. UChicago’s need-based financial aid involves no loans and is awarded as grants, which do not need to be repaid. https://nobarriers.uchicago.edu/ https://nobarriers.uchicago.edu/
  - garmaine 7y ago
    That's the need-based financial aid program specifically. Are the numbers quoted by the grandparent post for that program specifically?
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Financial aid is code for student loans. No, especially at well-funded not-for-profit private universities, “financial aid” often includes generous need-based grants (not scholarships, which are merit-based) that reduce the amount that must be met from student/family resources (including loans) substantially for non-wealthy students (not unheard of for it to be down to $0 for the poorest who manage to get admitted, and that's not just tuition but sometimes housing, books, etc.).

BurningFrog 7y ago

When there is a difference between what people say and what they do, always believe what they do.

asveikau 7y ago

Has it occurred to you that maybe the state can handle the cost? Compare to how much we spend buying fancy equipment to kill people. (Military spending if that is too indirect a description.) Consider also that a large amount of student loans are already from the government, so in a default...

eindiran 7y ago

Given that most (yes, most) students at the University of Chicago receive financial aid, what you're seeing is a sticker price. The school is using the high sticker price + financial aid to perform very efficient price discrimination[0], so they can get a lot of money from people who can pay. It is effectively a sliding scale fee [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale_fees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale_fees

secabeen 7y ago
Yes, this. The nameplate tuition is paid by a vanishingly small percentage of students. What I think each school should do is publish data showing what the median tuition paid is, and the quartiles. That would help a lot to fight this perception that "tuition is going up every year!"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
popularwarfare 7y ago
In theory. Do you have evidence that is what is actually happening?
- eindiran 7y ago
  If your request for evidence is about the claim that most Uchicago students receive aid: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/financial-aid-budget-forecast-grow-5-percent-uchicago-implements-new-aid-initiatives https://news.uchicago.edu/story/financial-aid-budget-forecas... If its about the claim that this is an example of price discrimination: that is an opinion I formed while I was at the University and spoke with some folks in the economics department about it. There is a class offered in econ about the economics of education, and that certainly hit the point home that financial aid is a type of price discrimination. I couldn't have paid for the tuition in full, so I myself received significant financial aid and supplemented with some student loans, so I got to see a bit of it first hand.

buboard 7y ago

You might see people rallying for forgiving debt, but not for increasing enrollment, which is what caused high debts in the first place. It s impossible not to call this hypocritical

akhilcacharya 7y ago

wdr1 7y ago

> One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then turn around and having tuition costs that having been rising at rates so far above inflation. It's weird you chose to make this comment on an article about the University of Chicago, the home of Milton Friedman, Supply-side economics, "no safe spaces"[1] and so on. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/30/so-you-like-the-university-of-chicagos-rejection-of-safe-spaces-for-students-consider-this/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/...

wardnath 7y ago
Tuition rates seem to be rising across the board however. University of Chicago is just the tip of the spear.

jefftk 7y ago

> the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, ... These schools are price discriminating, which means only the richest families are paying the full price. This kind of heavily graduated pricing where the wealthy pay for most of the cost of the school is very much in line with their principles.

gaze 7y ago

You may want to look into the difference between liberalism and leftism.

tenpies 7y ago

> One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning Why? Being Left leaning is easiest when it's not your money. Yes! Raise our tuition! More levies! Mommy and daddy will pick up the tab. If not the government-backed loans will take care of it and I just won't pay for it. After all, those capitalist boomer tax payers should subsidize my virtuous leftist existence. It's just like left leaning policies everywhere in the world.

spodek 7y ago
Do you prefer they lean to the right, increase deficits, and promote a military budget larger than the military asks for?
cycrutchfield 7y ago
Good lord, the level of discourse on this site has absolutely plummeted. We're in /r/conservative territory now.
- joenot443 7y ago
  > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
Assume that inherent skill is evenly distributed, Assume that the environment to foster that skill is not. Why would we not make college affordable if we can produce high quality college graduates. The US isn't a closed system, we make a lot of money in the knowledge economy, a fight we're slowly losing to China and India.

viburnum 7y ago

Yeah they’re not left leaning at all, they’re completely corporate and plutocratic. The highest paid state employees are university presidents and college sports coaches.

L_Rahman 7y ago

While this is true of its peers, no one has ever accused the University of Chicago of being left leaning. The unrestrained neoliberalism (deregulation of consumer protections, unwinding of antitrust policy) that characterizes our time is literally called the "Chicago School" of economics.