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Agreed. And it's not just "overpriced", because "overprice" says you are not getting enough output per input. In this case, with higher education, the economy (

by rsj_hn 6y ago

Agreed. And it's not just "overpriced", because "overprice" says you are not getting enough output per input. In this case, with higher education, the economy (and nation) needs skilled workers, and universities are not producing them in the quantities needed even as they graduate more and more students who have degrees that don't help them succeed in the job market. I think the solution should be a combination of things: 1. Make universities cheaper. Say fire 90% of non-academic staff, and force universities to have more academic staff than non-academic staff. Also make admission more rigorous, so they are more selective. Also get rid of the non-tenure track slave labor in academic staff. Ideally roughly 1/3 of the population should go to university, say 30% fresh from college students and 5% older students. 2. Provide vocational training so that people can have as option vocational education such as electrical work, carpentry, plumbing, machine tools, and yes, programming, day care, medical assistant, accountant, etc. Vocational training should be max 3 years of focused training with an apprenticeship period in the last year, and unlike universities, these vocational schools should be setup so that everyone can access at least a couple of vocational school options, at government expense. Ideally 2/3 of the population should go to a vocational school. 3. Stop providing government loans to universities entirely. Universities can provide scholarships and there should be government scholarships available based solely on merit. There should also be student aid based solely on financial need, but with high academic requirements, otherwise route the student to a vocational school, which should be fully paid for by the government. 4. Safety valve. If someone goes to a vocational school there should be an option to go back to university based on academic merit. Say a construction worker really takes to it and wants to become an architect, etc. The safety valve should be rare, say 5% max. 5. Online learning/certifications for people switching specializations roughly within the same field.

blablabla123 6y ago
I think other countries do well without such expensive universities, like Germany for instance where students are much more on their own. So I disagree with reducing "non-academic staff" and making admissions more difficult. In my opinion class sizes could be even larger and moved online completely. After all students only spend a fraction of their time in classes. Most of the time needs to be spent actually learning the stuff from the lectures, both alone and in groups with other students. Universities are there to facilitate the latter, it's just not possible with pure online learning - yet. To me most valuable are tutoring classes that are lead by staff or just more senior students, so it's possible to get qualified feedback and help with exercises and to actually understand things on a deeper level. At least for CS, Math, Natural Sciences. There is a tendency to automatize a lot of basic work. Speaking for myself, I moved out from home 15 years ago and had to hire someone to repair something at my place only once. And that was because they messed up an installation that was initiated by the landlord. Societies as a whole are economically much better off when people get a higher education and should strive to enable it for everybody who wants to get it. (Many people actually don't want to study.)
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  The reason why education in Germany is affordable whereas education in the US is not, is precisely because we have 7-10 non-academic staff per academic staff, whereas Germany has less than 1. These proposals of reducing non-academic staff, increasing rigor, reducing time to graduation, etc, is an attempt to be more like the German model. You might want to look at this comment where I provide some numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817814
  - blablabla123 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting. Still, I wonder how German and U.S. universities compare for example in numbers of tutors. ("HiWis") I would estimate there is one per 20-50 students per course and they might fall into both groups since those helping out in 1st or 2nd semester courses might not have a university degree yet. Also the payment is typically quite low, although considered good enough for a first student job. They are actually quite an important part of studies like Physics and Mathematics. Regarding time of gradution/number students: in the past German model (which is now obsolete) where people studied for diploma, the typical lazy student would mean basically no extra cost for univsersities. Since this person usually doesn't occupy any lecture room or tutoring capacity... ;-) But the introduction of Bachelor/Master introduced quite some changes, in particular closer support for the students and more stringent time lines. But still, the Bachelor usually takes 3 years and the master an additional 2 years. Basically the curricula for diploma studies were just being split.
    - rsj_hn 6y ago
      So people like tutors, graders, TAs, are considered academic staff, and you can add them up in terms of FTE (full time equivalent), so 5 tutors that each work 8 hours per week add up to a single FTE. It turns out not to make much of a difference to look only at full time staff versus FTE -- I didn't know this when I started looking at the data, but the slices of time by tutors end up being a marginal correction to counting just full time staff when you look at things like student-teacher ratios or total expenditure per staff. In the US, there is a meaningful difference between tenure track and non-tenure track, as universities shift ever more funds away from academic staff and towards non-academic staff, one way this is accomplished is to pay the academic staff less, and this is accomplished by keeping the old professors at current pay but hiring mostly non-tenure track instructors as headcount is increased. The other way this is accomplished is by identifying some problem that needs an immediate solution, and then creating multiple vice provost positions which require their own department position, etc. Say community relations, gender equality, many different types of "outreach" positions, etc. European universities have so far resisted this type of cannibalization of tuition dollars by non-academic staff. Thus the extra cost of non-academic staff is a good first order explanation for the diverge in annual tuition between US and Europe, and the fact that our students take 5-6 years to graduate and many don't graduate is another multiplier that explains differences in total spending on tertiary education per bachelors degree holder. Taken together, these three factors: non-academic staff, longer time to graduation, much higher dropout rates, basically explain the full difference in spending between the US and Europe.
mkoubaa 6y ago
I agree with most points but I don't think admissions should be more rigorous. retention should be more rigorous, you should not be guaranteed four years because you had a good SAT. they should let in more freshman's and mercilessly cull each year. I don't get why they hold hands for some students when so many would have loved to be in their place.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  So if you want school to be more expensive, then a good way to do that is to let in twice as many people as can cut it, and then have half of them drop out. Basically what we are doing now. That more than doubles the cost and also screws a lot of people out of good years of their lives, since those who drop out then have to seek education elsewhere.

by rsj_hn 6y ago

blablabla123 6y ago

I think other countries do well without such expensive universities, like Germany for instance where students are much more on their own. So I disagree with reducing "non-academic staff" and making admissions more difficult. In my opinion class sizes could be even larger and moved online completely. After all students only spend a fraction of their time in classes. Most of the time needs to be spent actually learning the stuff from the lectures, both alone and in groups with other students. Universities are there to facilitate the latter, it's just not possible with pure online learning - yet. To me most valuable are tutoring classes that are lead by staff or just more senior students, so it's possible to get qualified feedback and help with exercises and to actually understand things on a deeper level. At least for CS, Math, Natural Sciences. There is a tendency to automatize a lot of basic work. Speaking for myself, I moved out from home 15 years ago and had to hire someone to repair something at my place only once. And that was because they messed up an installation that was initiated by the landlord. Societies as a whole are economically much better off when people get a higher education and should strive to enable it for everybody who wants to get it. (Many people actually don't want to study.)

rsj_hn 6y ago
The reason why education in Germany is affordable whereas education in the US is not, is precisely because we have 7-10 non-academic staff per academic staff, whereas Germany has less than 1. These proposals of reducing non-academic staff, increasing rigor, reducing time to graduation, etc, is an attempt to be more like the German model. You might want to look at this comment where I provide some numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817814
- blablabla123 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting. Still, I wonder how German and U.S. universities compare for example in numbers of tutors. ("HiWis") I would estimate there is one per 20-50 students per course and they might fall into both groups since those helping out in 1st or 2nd semester courses might not have a university degree yet. Also the payment is typically quite low, although considered good enough for a first student job. They are actually quite an important part of studies like Physics and Mathematics. Regarding time of gradution/number students: in the past German model (which is now obsolete) where people studied for diploma, the typical lazy student would mean basically no extra cost for univsersities. Since this person usually doesn't occupy any lecture room or tutoring capacity... ;-) But the introduction of Bachelor/Master introduced quite some changes, in particular closer support for the students and more stringent time lines. But still, the Bachelor usually takes 3 years and the master an additional 2 years. Basically the curricula for diploma studies were just being split.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    So people like tutors, graders, TAs, are considered academic staff, and you can add them up in terms of FTE (full time equivalent), so 5 tutors that each work 8 hours per week add up to a single FTE. It turns out not to make much of a difference to look only at full time staff versus FTE -- I didn't know this when I started looking at the data, but the slices of time by tutors end up being a marginal correction to counting just full time staff when you look at things like student-teacher ratios or total expenditure per staff. In the US, there is a meaningful difference between tenure track and non-tenure track, as universities shift ever more funds away from academic staff and towards non-academic staff, one way this is accomplished is to pay the academic staff less, and this is accomplished by keeping the old professors at current pay but hiring mostly non-tenure track instructors as headcount is increased. The other way this is accomplished is by identifying some problem that needs an immediate solution, and then creating multiple vice provost positions which require their own department position, etc. Say community relations, gender equality, many different types of "outreach" positions, etc. European universities have so far resisted this type of cannibalization of tuition dollars by non-academic staff. Thus the extra cost of non-academic staff is a good first order explanation for the diverge in annual tuition between US and Europe, and the fact that our students take 5-6 years to graduate and many don't graduate is another multiplier that explains differences in total spending on tertiary education per bachelors degree holder. Taken together, these three factors: non-academic staff, longer time to graduation, much higher dropout rates, basically explain the full difference in spending between the US and Europe.

mkoubaa 6y ago

I agree with most points but I don't think admissions should be more rigorous. retention should be more rigorous, you should not be guaranteed four years because you had a good SAT. they should let in more freshman's and mercilessly cull each year. I don't get why they hold hands for some students when so many would have loved to be in their place.

rsj_hn 6y ago
So if you want school to be more expensive, then a good way to do that is to let in twice as many people as can cut it, and then have half of them drop out. Basically what we are doing now. That more than doubles the cost and also screws a lot of people out of good years of their lives, since those who drop out then have to seek education elsewhere.