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Maybe universities in the US will finally get rid of the huge number of administrators and non-academic staff that they have bloated themselves with. Maybe they

Maybe universities in the US will finally get rid of the huge number of administrators and non-academic staff that they have bloated themselves with. Maybe they could also start providing fewer unnecessary services to students for free. Dorm rooms where much less opulent if you go back 30 years or more.

olliej 7y ago
Agree about the excessive admin, but don’t get the dorms comment - they’re not significantly fancier (outside the ivy leagues that all have a tonne of money, and for which most students have rich families). Also: 30 years ago the public universities also had substantially more government funding. By drastically cutting the tax rates for the wealthy (and in CA prop13 essentially was a variant of that), state and federal governments were “forced” to cut education funding, thus putting more pressure on universities to increase fees. Honestly I’d be all for a platform to return taxes to the levels that the boomer generation got to benefit from.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Educational funding has not been cut in the slightest. It’s grown rapidly for decades, even in terms of “constant” (inflation adjusted) dollars — from ~$3,000 per pupil in the 60s to about $14,000 per pupil today for primary and secondary education. [1] Research “cost disease”. [1] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_236.55.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_236.55.a...
  - olliej 7y ago
    The per student cost has many contributory factors, the most obvious are: * historically underfunded education for minority groups, disguising the reason for reduced cost * In CA at least use to underfund many schools, until the state Supreme Court ruled that all children were entitled to equal education resources - literally same $ amount per student, which again significantly increased the average cost per student, so the story is more “rural and poor communities subsidized education of other areas” * cost of living increasing at above inflation rates - teachers need to be paid enough to cover the cost of living, so if your funding increases at a rate lower than cost of living your actual funding has decreased. That said the relevant measure is tertiary education - that’s the part of education we’re talking about, and that’s the part that is bound by legally mandated free access.
    - zaroth 7y ago
      $14,000 per pupil means we are paying for a class of 20 students, on average nationwide, $280,000 for a K-12 education per school year. That’s an insane amount of money to teach a small group of kids the things which the average K-12th grader are actually being taught. The problem is definitely not that the cost of living for the average teacher for that class of 20 average students is anywhere near even $60k. Or that the depreciation on the capex for the portion of the facilities used by those 20 kids and 1 teacher is anywhere near $20k. The problem is the other $200k is being burned in an administrative and political dumpster fire.
      - olliej 7y ago
        Again, I agree with you on the prodigious increases in admin costs - many of which are forced by the politicians frequently complaining about costs. But also, pre-college education is funded completely differently from tertiary (large parts of the US actively hate higher level education, so its much easier to defund)
        zaroth 7y ago
        There’s $1.5 trillion of student loan debt. ~$800 billion of that is Stafford loans. 11.4% is delinquent. How much of that debt could have been issued without the Fed guaranteeing it? That is a huge subsidy in and of itself. Also, whether it is [currently] dischargeable or not, a massive percentage of that debt is probably not actually serviceable. That means the Day of Reckoning will come where the Fed takes a haircut on that loan balance. And that will amount to the largest ever recognized subsidy in tertiary education in the history of the world. It was sold as a Federally guaranteed loan program, but when you make a massive loan to someone who can never repay it, it’s actually a grant. It’s just not politically convenient to admit it (yet).

olliej 7y ago

Agree about the excessive admin, but don’t get the dorms comment - they’re not significantly fancier (outside the ivy leagues that all have a tonne of money, and for which most students have rich families). Also: 30 years ago the public universities also had substantially more government funding. By drastically cutting the tax rates for the wealthy (and in CA prop13 essentially was a variant of that), state and federal governments were “forced” to cut education funding, thus putting more pressure on universities to increase fees. Honestly I’d be all for a platform to return taxes to the levels that the boomer generation got to benefit from.

zaroth 7y ago
Educational funding has not been cut in the slightest. It’s grown rapidly for decades, even in terms of “constant” (inflation adjusted) dollars — from ~$3,000 per pupil in the 60s to about $14,000 per pupil today for primary and secondary education. [1] Research “cost disease”. [1] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_236.55.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_236.55.a...
- olliej 7y ago
  The per student cost has many contributory factors, the most obvious are: * historically underfunded education for minority groups, disguising the reason for reduced cost * In CA at least use to underfund many schools, until the state Supreme Court ruled that all children were entitled to equal education resources - literally same $ amount per student, which again significantly increased the average cost per student, so the story is more “rural and poor communities subsidized education of other areas” * cost of living increasing at above inflation rates - teachers need to be paid enough to cover the cost of living, so if your funding increases at a rate lower than cost of living your actual funding has decreased. That said the relevant measure is tertiary education - that’s the part of education we’re talking about, and that’s the part that is bound by legally mandated free access.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    $14,000 per pupil means we are paying for a class of 20 students, on average nationwide, $280,000 for a K-12 education per school year. That’s an insane amount of money to teach a small group of kids the things which the average K-12th grader are actually being taught. The problem is definitely not that the cost of living for the average teacher for that class of 20 average students is anywhere near even $60k. Or that the depreciation on the capex for the portion of the facilities used by those 20 kids and 1 teacher is anywhere near $20k. The problem is the other $200k is being burned in an administrative and political dumpster fire.
    - olliej 7y ago
      Again, I agree with you on the prodigious increases in admin costs - many of which are forced by the politicians frequently complaining about costs. But also, pre-college education is funded completely differently from tertiary (large parts of the US actively hate higher level education, so its much easier to defund)
      - zaroth 7y ago
        There’s $1.5 trillion of student loan debt. ~$800 billion of that is Stafford loans. 11.4% is delinquent. How much of that debt could have been issued without the Fed guaranteeing it? That is a huge subsidy in and of itself. Also, whether it is [currently] dischargeable or not, a massive percentage of that debt is probably not actually serviceable. That means the Day of Reckoning will come where the Fed takes a haircut on that loan balance. And that will amount to the largest ever recognized subsidy in tertiary education in the history of the world. It was sold as a Federally guaranteed loan program, but when you make a massive loan to someone who can never repay it, it’s actually a grant. It’s just not politically convenient to admit it (yet).