4 ms·

How did we used to do this in the 1970s where the state paid for it all? We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up docum

How did we used to do this in the 1970s where the state paid for it all? We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself, you can instantly send written communication via email. You can publish agendas, and other campus wide information instantly on a website. You can automate. You can distribute notes to your students for free instead of endless photocopies. Why given these gifts bestowed upon us by the tech gods, are we so hopelessly inefficient in the West? What is the actual point in doing more research, when we have all this step jump in technology, and we can't seem to do anything any more?

killjoywashere 7y ago
> we can't seem to do anything any more? I disagree. We do some amazing shit. Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. My own research, as a far smaller example, has scaled up nicely despite the fact that in the old model it should be virtually impossible to do any research in the career track I'm in. Tech doesn't help people who are bored (boring?). But it is like hydrazine for people who need to get serious shit done on the fringes of society.
- amiga_500 7y ago
  But the core functions of society are no longer working. Universities provided education that pushed society forward for centuries. In just 30 years of applying growth obsessed capitalism, that has stopped working. Tech isn't my complaint. Tech helps, yet despite this huge boost, we are going backwards.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. That is because there has been a severe lack of competition until SpaceX arrived. Let's be honest there is no real alternative to Airbus and Boeing for airplanes, and it has been the same situation for space before SpaceX. Or, to express it better: Why should ULA have tried to divert to agile processes or try out new ways of doing things when the status quo reliably keeps jobs in congressional districts and money in supplier companies? The goal of these semi-governmental mega companies is not to efficiently produce goods/services, the goal is to ensure distribution of public taxpayer money to jobs, no matter how wasteful they are, in order to essentially bribe voters. Airbus, for example, could drastically cut costs and time in airplane production if they would not have to send airframes and parts sometimes three times across Europe, but that would not fly well with politicians as voters would ask "we pay r&d money to Airbus but why aren't we getting anything back?"...
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Sounds cynical. But I assure everyone its not. Government contracts are a gravy train. I mentioned to my high school friend that my contracting overhead in the Midwest was about 25%. He said "In Washington contractor overhead is 200%" Why? To make the owners of the contracting companies rich, of course.
znpy 7y ago
> We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself Probably because some other kind of unnecessary positions have been created
- red_admiral 7y ago
  You need someone to check that your document conforms to the accessibility policy, equality and inclusion policy, corporate messaging policy and so on. Most of these, on their own, are actually good things in my opinion (though I'm skeptical of the coroporate messaging one, we're supposed to be a university). EDIT: just to clarify, after seeing the lecture slides that some of my esteemed colleagues used to produce, the accessibility policy is a very good thing indeed.
KoftaBob 7y ago
Because the thing that tech hasn’t solved yet is misaligned incentives. No amount of advanced technology will counteract an organization or industry thats incentivized to be inefficient. Especially in the case of universities which are largely “non profit”, as are the majority of hospitals. Without shareholders to push for increased efficiency and price competition, the leadership has little reason to care about that. It should be no surprise that as a result, college education and healthcare are two of the biggest expenses Americans deal with. Misaligned incentives.
- amiga_500 7y ago
  How did they function for centuries before, when shareholders were not demanding increased efficiency? College in the USA is expensive because of the credit available. That is how prices are set.
  - KoftaBob 7y ago
    It is mostly due to the credit available, I totally agree.
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    >How did they function for centuries before, when shareholders were not demanding increased efficiency? They only served the rich elite
red_admiral 7y ago
Ironically at universities in the UK we seem to have more "professional services" staff than ever. Part of what they do is really valuable: customer services helpdesk/helpline for students for example, every question they answer is one that doesn't end up taking academics' time. But then there's also all the "quality control" where you really wonder how we ever managed to run a degree without every decision going through at least three different committees. And you need someone to sit on these committees, because academics will avoid them whenever they can :)
- Shivetya 7y ago
  fwiw, University of Georgia has approximate eleven thousand staff for forty thousand students[0]. however what they have property wise under their domain is amazing. now, some of the ivy league colleges have endowments in the multiple billions in addition to other properties but UGA is a state college [0]https://www.uga.edu/facts.php https://www.uga.edu/facts.php
pjc50 7y ago
There were fewer students. And less administration; the public sector has been led into the trap of mistaking metrics for productivity, so it's very easy to end up spending more time on the paperwork to show that a process has been followed than it is to just do the thing. Between the "REF" and grant applications it's very easy to spend more time getting the money for research and producing the required outputs than it is on doing the research. There is also the much wider question of what it is that "we" want universities to "do".
sirsar 7y ago
Higher education is merely one face of Cost Disease; we've seen similar trends in medical care, transportation (especially US subways), primary education... Slate Star Codex [1] has a good overview, but doesn't provide a solution (instead only providing some good evidence that rejects some hypotheses). As far as I can tell, the single biggest driver of Cost Disease is labor, but not salary: it takes more people to deliver the same services. This in turn is driven by market failure: - The signaling component of higher education is zero-sum, and infinite loans and foreign capital mean not enough few consumers make college decisions based on cost - US states have shown insufficient teeth in enforcing caps on construction budgets; overruns are expected meaning the bidding process cannot actually cause cost savings. And the days of private light rail companies competing against each other are long, long gone. - Primary education's cost growth has been concentrated in areas that are not teaching - administration and bureaucracy. There is, of course, no meaningful cost competition at all in primary education. All of these carry the caveat that we used to be able to get these things for cheaper, and e.g. primary education was never traded on a free market. So what happened? Was it inevitable, and merely took time? If anyone has other ideas, please let me know. I would love to vote against cost disease and call any politician who will listen, but I don't fully understand the problem, let alone have a solution to offer. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
thulecitizen 7y ago
Rent. "…today, a tiny minority of people and corporate interests across the world are accumulating vast wealth and power from rental income, not only from housing and land but from a range of other assets, natural and created. ‘Rentiers’ of all kinds are in unparalleled ascendancy and the neo-liberal state is only too keen to oblige their greed. Rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. Most familiar is rental income from land, property, mineral exploitation or financial investments, but other sources have grown too. They include the income lenders gain from debt interest; income from ownership of ‘intellectual property’ (such as patents, copyright, brands and trademarks); capital gains on investments; ‘above normal’ company profits (when a firm has a dominant market position that allows it to charge high prices or dictate terms); income from government subsidies; and income of financial and other intermediaries derived from third-party transactions." [1] [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...
physicsguy 7y ago
We didn't. Hardly anyone went to University in the UK at that time, compared to now.

killjoywashere 7y ago

> we can't seem to do anything any more? I disagree. We do some amazing shit. Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. My own research, as a far smaller example, has scaled up nicely despite the fact that in the old model it should be virtually impossible to do any research in the career track I'm in. Tech doesn't help people who are bored (boring?). But it is like hydrazine for people who need to get serious shit done on the fringes of society.

amiga_500 7y ago
But the core functions of society are no longer working. Universities provided education that pushed society forward for centuries. In just 30 years of applying growth obsessed capitalism, that has stopped working. Tech isn't my complaint. Tech helps, yet despite this huge boost, we are going backwards.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mschuster91 7y ago
> Elon Musk runs circles around ULA. That is because there has been a severe lack of competition until SpaceX arrived. Let's be honest there is no real alternative to Airbus and Boeing for airplanes, and it has been the same situation for space before SpaceX. Or, to express it better: Why should ULA have tried to divert to agile processes or try out new ways of doing things when the status quo reliably keeps jobs in congressional districts and money in supplier companies? The goal of these semi-governmental mega companies is not to efficiently produce goods/services, the goal is to ensure distribution of public taxpayer money to jobs, no matter how wasteful they are, in order to essentially bribe voters. Airbus, for example, could drastically cut costs and time in airplane production if they would not have to send airframes and parts sometimes three times across Europe, but that would not fly well with politicians as voters would ask "we pay r&d money to Airbus but why aren't we getting anything back?"...
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Sounds cynical. But I assure everyone its not. Government contracts are a gravy train. I mentioned to my high school friend that my contracting overhead in the Midwest was about 25%. He said "In Washington contractor overhead is 200%" Why? To make the owners of the contracting companies rich, of course.

znpy 7y ago

> We now live in a world where you don't need a secretary, because you can type up documents yourself Probably because some other kind of unnecessary positions have been created

red_admiral 7y ago
You need someone to check that your document conforms to the accessibility policy, equality and inclusion policy, corporate messaging policy and so on. Most of these, on their own, are actually good things in my opinion (though I'm skeptical of the coroporate messaging one, we're supposed to be a university). EDIT: just to clarify, after seeing the lecture slides that some of my esteemed colleagues used to produce, the accessibility policy is a very good thing indeed.

KoftaBob 7y ago

Because the thing that tech hasn’t solved yet is misaligned incentives. No amount of advanced technology will counteract an organization or industry thats incentivized to be inefficient. Especially in the case of universities which are largely “non profit”, as are the majority of hospitals. Without shareholders to push for increased efficiency and price competition, the leadership has little reason to care about that. It should be no surprise that as a result, college education and healthcare are two of the biggest expenses Americans deal with. Misaligned incentives.

amiga_500 7y ago
How did they function for centuries before, when shareholders were not demanding increased efficiency? College in the USA is expensive because of the credit available. That is how prices are set.
- KoftaBob 7y ago
  It is mostly due to the credit available, I totally agree.
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  >How did they function for centuries before, when shareholders were not demanding increased efficiency? They only served the rich elite

red_admiral 7y ago

Ironically at universities in the UK we seem to have more "professional services" staff than ever. Part of what they do is really valuable: customer services helpdesk/helpline for students for example, every question they answer is one that doesn't end up taking academics' time. But then there's also all the "quality control" where you really wonder how we ever managed to run a degree without every decision going through at least three different committees. And you need someone to sit on these committees, because academics will avoid them whenever they can :)

Shivetya 7y ago
fwiw, University of Georgia has approximate eleven thousand staff for forty thousand students[0]. however what they have property wise under their domain is amazing. now, some of the ivy league colleges have endowments in the multiple billions in addition to other properties but UGA is a state college [0]https://www.uga.edu/facts.php https://www.uga.edu/facts.php

pjc50 7y ago

There were fewer students. And less administration; the public sector has been led into the trap of mistaking metrics for productivity, so it's very easy to end up spending more time on the paperwork to show that a process has been followed than it is to just do the thing. Between the "REF" and grant applications it's very easy to spend more time getting the money for research and producing the required outputs than it is on doing the research. There is also the much wider question of what it is that "we" want universities to "do".

sirsar 7y ago

Higher education is merely one face of Cost Disease; we've seen similar trends in medical care, transportation (especially US subways), primary education... Slate Star Codex [1] has a good overview, but doesn't provide a solution (instead only providing some good evidence that rejects some hypotheses). As far as I can tell, the single biggest driver of Cost Disease is labor, but not salary: it takes more people to deliver the same services. This in turn is driven by market failure: - The signaling component of higher education is zero-sum, and infinite loans and foreign capital mean not enough few consumers make college decisions based on cost - US states have shown insufficient teeth in enforcing caps on construction budgets; overruns are expected meaning the bidding process cannot actually cause cost savings. And the days of private light rail companies competing against each other are long, long gone. - Primary education's cost growth has been concentrated in areas that are not teaching - administration and bureaucracy. There is, of course, no meaningful cost competition at all in primary education. All of these carry the caveat that we used to be able to get these things for cheaper, and e.g. primary education was never traded on a free market. So what happened? Was it inevitable, and merely took time? If anyone has other ideas, please let me know. I would love to vote against cost disease and call any politician who will listen, but I don't fully understand the problem, let alone have a solution to offer. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

thulecitizen 7y ago

Rent. "…today, a tiny minority of people and corporate interests across the world are accumulating vast wealth and power from rental income, not only from housing and land but from a range of other assets, natural and created. ‘Rentiers’ of all kinds are in unparalleled ascendancy and the neo-liberal state is only too keen to oblige their greed. Rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. Most familiar is rental income from land, property, mineral exploitation or financial investments, but other sources have grown too. They include the income lenders gain from debt interest; income from ownership of ‘intellectual property’ (such as patents, copyright, brands and trademarks); capital gains on investments; ‘above normal’ company profits (when a firm has a dominant market position that allows it to charge high prices or dictate terms); income from government subsidies; and income of financial and other intermediaries derived from third-party transactions." [1] [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...

physicsguy 7y ago

We didn't. Hardly anyone went to University in the UK at that time, compared to now.