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As for reducing costs, maybe, just maybe, “educational” institutions could not have the highest paid employees of said institution (and in most cases the highes

As for reducing costs, maybe, just maybe, “educational” institutions could not have the highest paid employees of said institution (and in most cases the highest paid public employee in the entire state) be a freakin football coach (or basketball if you are in Kentucky)!

JackFr 7y ago
As a fan of college basketball, I have no real love of John Calipari, but I assure you he is a profit center for the school. UK basketball takes in around $45 million in revenue and dies around $20 million in profit. Calipari’s ~$9 million a year may seem high for a state employee, but his performance is easily measurable and comparable to others in his field.
- Wildgoose 7y ago
  That was confusing. I iniially read "UK" as "United Kingdom" which would be the normal reading but I presume you actually meant University of Kentucky?
  - JackFr 7y ago
    Of course UK means University of Kentucky. It has to, cause KU is Kansas. :-)
- rhizome 7y ago
  If you want professional pay, go work for a professional team. If you work for a school, you work for the school, not yourself. Pay the coaches the same as teachers, they don't have any right to revenues or profit sharing.
dalanmiller 7y ago
As a graduate of UW in Seattle. I wish this weren't the case just as much as you but @JackFr makes the correct point that sports are largely profit centers for universities.
- watwut 7y ago
  Afaik, they are profits on some exceptional schools and financial loss everywhere else.
  - evgen 7y ago
    That would be incorrect. The “major” programs (men’s division 1 football and basketball) are almost always to be found carrying the rest of the athletic program for men and women. At very small schools it is possible that the programs are a loss, but the major sports will be closer to break-even than any others.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Note that those aren't independent; John Calipari may be returning $20 million / year to his school, but if the other schools are running losses, that money is in a very real sense taken from them rather than being value creation. If the other schools cut their money-losing sports programs, John Calipari's successful, profitable program would suddenly be an unsuccessful money-loser for lack of audience interest.
    - pmorici 7y ago
      Do you have any evidence this is true? It doesn’t sound obviously true to me.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        That what is true? The claim I made was "if there is only one school participating in the college football system, nobody will care about that system". But that is so obviously true that I imagine you must have thought I said something else?
        pmorici 7y ago
        You claimed that other schools are running losses while one reaps all the profits. I don't think it is true that there are only a couple winners and a bunch of losers broadly speaking many programs bring in a surplus of money.
newguy1234 7y ago
The bigger problem is employers insist on people having college degrees when they don't need one. Likewise, employers insist on people having college degrees when maybe different forms of education could be just as good like certifications. This ends up forcing everyone into going to college just to get a degree for the hell of it. That's the problem. IMO, I think there is going to be a huge market for software companies that can adequately verify someone's aptitude. If I am an employer, I want the best people I can find in my specific industry. I don't care if they have a degree or not. The problem is how do you find these people in the masses of people out there. If software was created that could evaluate people's skills directly, then that would be huge.
- dgoldstein0 7y ago
  This phenomenon is called degree inflation there's been a bunch of articles about it, such as https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/01/08/employers-demanding-college-degrees-weaken-the-economy/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/01/08/emplo... As far as software being able to judge people's aptitude... this is certainly interesting and I'm pretty sure I know some startups dabbling in it. The general problem though is hard - it's basically automating interviewing in some form. Which is easier if you let humans' write the questions & evaluation methods, but of course is then only as good as what you are screening for.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > IMO, I think there is going to be a huge market for software companies that can adequately verify someone's aptitude. Measuring aptitude isn't hard and we've got firms that have been doing it quite well for decades with high predictive power on future success in the domain for which aptitiude is tested. But employers don't care about aptitude (capacity to learn a skill), because we aren't in a system of lifetime employment. They care about present skill. And, it's uolely we are going to find good tests for that that don't involve lots of samples of applying the skill, which for simple tasks that can be repeated dozens of times an hour is easy and already readily available, for complex abstract processes that involve a mixture of lots of small task skills integrated through abstract reasoning, a quick easy test would be a breakthrough. But I think there is good reason to think that that is fundamentally intractable, the issue not being in the testing method but the nature of the phenomenon being tested.
LorenPechtel 7y ago
You realize the main driver of escalating education costs is the government reducing how much it chips in? The actual amount universities spend on education hasn't gone up unreasonably, it's just a lot has been shifted from the government to the students.

JackFr 7y ago

As a fan of college basketball, I have no real love of John Calipari, but I assure you he is a profit center for the school. UK basketball takes in around $45 million in revenue and dies around $20 million in profit. Calipari’s ~$9 million a year may seem high for a state employee, but his performance is easily measurable and comparable to others in his field.

Wildgoose 7y ago
That was confusing. I iniially read "UK" as "United Kingdom" which would be the normal reading but I presume you actually meant University of Kentucky?
- JackFr 7y ago
  Of course UK means University of Kentucky. It has to, cause KU is Kansas. :-)
rhizome 7y ago
If you want professional pay, go work for a professional team. If you work for a school, you work for the school, not yourself. Pay the coaches the same as teachers, they don't have any right to revenues or profit sharing.

dalanmiller 7y ago

As a graduate of UW in Seattle. I wish this weren't the case just as much as you but @JackFr makes the correct point that sports are largely profit centers for universities.

watwut 7y ago
Afaik, they are profits on some exceptional schools and financial loss everywhere else.
- evgen 7y ago
  That would be incorrect. The “major” programs (men’s division 1 football and basketball) are almost always to be found carrying the rest of the athletic program for men and women. At very small schools it is possible that the programs are a loss, but the major sports will be closer to break-even than any others.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Note that those aren't independent; John Calipari may be returning $20 million / year to his school, but if the other schools are running losses, that money is in a very real sense taken from them rather than being value creation. If the other schools cut their money-losing sports programs, John Calipari's successful, profitable program would suddenly be an unsuccessful money-loser for lack of audience interest.
  - pmorici 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence this is true? It doesn’t sound obviously true to me.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      That what is true? The claim I made was "if there is only one school participating in the college football system, nobody will care about that system". But that is so obviously true that I imagine you must have thought I said something else?
      - pmorici 7y ago
        You claimed that other schools are running losses while one reaps all the profits. I don't think it is true that there are only a couple winners and a bunch of losers broadly speaking many programs bring in a surplus of money.

newguy1234 7y ago

The bigger problem is employers insist on people having college degrees when they don't need one. Likewise, employers insist on people having college degrees when maybe different forms of education could be just as good like certifications. This ends up forcing everyone into going to college just to get a degree for the hell of it. That's the problem. IMO, I think there is going to be a huge market for software companies that can adequately verify someone's aptitude. If I am an employer, I want the best people I can find in my specific industry. I don't care if they have a degree or not. The problem is how do you find these people in the masses of people out there. If software was created that could evaluate people's skills directly, then that would be huge.

dgoldstein0 7y ago
This phenomenon is called degree inflation there's been a bunch of articles about it, such as https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/01/08/employers-demanding-college-degrees-weaken-the-economy/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/01/08/emplo... As far as software being able to judge people's aptitude... this is certainly interesting and I'm pretty sure I know some startups dabbling in it. The general problem though is hard - it's basically automating interviewing in some form. Which is easier if you let humans' write the questions & evaluation methods, but of course is then only as good as what you are screening for.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> IMO, I think there is going to be a huge market for software companies that can adequately verify someone's aptitude. Measuring aptitude isn't hard and we've got firms that have been doing it quite well for decades with high predictive power on future success in the domain for which aptitiude is tested. But employers don't care about aptitude (capacity to learn a skill), because we aren't in a system of lifetime employment. They care about present skill. And, it's uolely we are going to find good tests for that that don't involve lots of samples of applying the skill, which for simple tasks that can be repeated dozens of times an hour is easy and already readily available, for complex abstract processes that involve a mixture of lots of small task skills integrated through abstract reasoning, a quick easy test would be a breakthrough. But I think there is good reason to think that that is fundamentally intractable, the issue not being in the testing method but the nature of the phenomenon being tested.

LorenPechtel 7y ago

You realize the main driver of escalating education costs is the government reducing how much it chips in? The actual amount universities spend on education hasn't gone up unreasonably, it's just a lot has been shifted from the government to the students.