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What struck me most about your response is what you hear from all the stakeholders when it comes to reforming the healthcare system in the US - you talk to each

by refurb 2y ago

What struck me most about your response is what you hear from all the stakeholders when it comes to reforming the healthcare system in the US - you talk to each individual stakeholder and they'll give you a list of reasons why they aren't the problem and how they couldn't possibly get by on less money. Doctors talk about how their salaries, the highest in the world, couldn't possibly be lower and blame insurance and the hospitals. Hospitals tell stories about all the uncompensated care they provide, how they can't tell doctors how to practice and how patients would be dying on the streets if they got $1 less and the problem really lies with doctors and insurance. Insurance companies talk about how hospital spending is out of control and most of the money is paid out in claims and how doctors fees have exploded. Etc, etc, etc. The truth is that the cost of university has skyrocketed over the past few decades. University budgets have grown well beyond inflation for decades. The administrative class has exploded in terms of head count and campuses have gotten more and more luxurious (try comparing them with one in Europe or Canada!). In the end if universities couldn't possible move money around to cover what amounts to a few percentage of their total budgets, then I don't know what to say. Maybe the slate needs to be wiped clean and we start again with a system that makes more sense in terms of where the dollars come from and go.

jltsiren 2y ago
I haven't seen any luxurious campuses in the US, though I don't have much experience with student housing and services. Some departments are baseline modern office buildings, while others remind me more of Latin America than Europe. And some would be eerily similar to the USSR, if you painted them light blue. Large part of the cost explosion is simply Baumol effect. In particular, universities employ many professionals, and professional salaries have grown ridiculously high in the US. Median full time income is something like $60k, which means that anything above $120k should be high income by the usual definition. But if you ask a professional, $120k is not a particularly good salary. Another large part is the growth of mandatory spending. Roughly speaking, many administrators are mandatory, because they exist for external reasons. Universities cannot cut them, unless the external environment changes. The more regulations and expectations there are, the more administrators universities require. Then there is the issue that American students expect to be taught, which makes education more expensive. I studied in a European university, where the curriculum was structured around exams. Classes were offered when the resources allowed it, but you were expected to pass the exams regardless. Very convenient if you are sufficiently independent. And less so if you are not. The public research university I'm at recently had something like 15% deficit in core funding. Mostly due to tuition fees and state funding lagging behind inflation. There is simply no money to move around.
- refurb 2y ago
  > Another large part is the growth of mandatory spending. Roughly speaking, many administrators are mandatory, because they exist for external reasons. Universities cannot cut them, unless the external environment changes. The more regulations and expectations there are, the more administrators universities require. Can you shed more light on that? I haven't heard that, but would be interested to hear what admin is required.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    It's death by a million regulations. In some countries, a researcher can write a grant on their own, with minimal support from the university. Not in the US. If you are not a full-time administrator, it's effectively impossible to know what is required from the application. A department-level administrator will often work with the PI to produce an endless pile of documents. And then a higher-tier administrator has to double-check everything, because the department-level administrator is likely to miss some details. Universities hire a lot of foreign employees. Because the US immigration system is complex, there are usually people helping new hires deal with it. And they only deal with immigration bureaucracy – they rarely have time to help with more practical issues, such as how to open a bank account. Maybe you are attending a conference. It's often cheaper to pay a membership fee in a professional organization + discounted registration fee than the full registration fee. But you can't pay membership fees from federal grants, so administrators have to pay those from another funding source. You came back from the conference with a bunch of restaurant receipts in random foreign languages. Now the administrators need to check and double-check that they are not reimbursing any alcohol from federal grants. Or maybe you are attending two conferences in a row in Europe, with a few days between them. Now you need to provide evidence that it's cheaper to stay in Europe instead of flying back to the US for the weekend. And you also need to justify the use of a European airline for flying between two European cities. Pretty much everything a university does is in a similar regulatory hell.

by refurb 2y ago

jltsiren 2y ago

I haven't seen any luxurious campuses in the US, though I don't have much experience with student housing and services. Some departments are baseline modern office buildings, while others remind me more of Latin America than Europe. And some would be eerily similar to the USSR, if you painted them light blue. Large part of the cost explosion is simply Baumol effect. In particular, universities employ many professionals, and professional salaries have grown ridiculously high in the US. Median full time income is something like $60k, which means that anything above $120k should be high income by the usual definition. But if you ask a professional, $120k is not a particularly good salary. Another large part is the growth of mandatory spending. Roughly speaking, many administrators are mandatory, because they exist for external reasons. Universities cannot cut them, unless the external environment changes. The more regulations and expectations there are, the more administrators universities require. Then there is the issue that American students expect to be taught, which makes education more expensive. I studied in a European university, where the curriculum was structured around exams. Classes were offered when the resources allowed it, but you were expected to pass the exams regardless. Very convenient if you are sufficiently independent. And less so if you are not. The public research university I'm at recently had something like 15% deficit in core funding. Mostly due to tuition fees and state funding lagging behind inflation. There is simply no money to move around.

refurb 2y ago
> Another large part is the growth of mandatory spending. Roughly speaking, many administrators are mandatory, because they exist for external reasons. Universities cannot cut them, unless the external environment changes. The more regulations and expectations there are, the more administrators universities require. Can you shed more light on that? I haven't heard that, but would be interested to hear what admin is required.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  It's death by a million regulations. In some countries, a researcher can write a grant on their own, with minimal support from the university. Not in the US. If you are not a full-time administrator, it's effectively impossible to know what is required from the application. A department-level administrator will often work with the PI to produce an endless pile of documents. And then a higher-tier administrator has to double-check everything, because the department-level administrator is likely to miss some details. Universities hire a lot of foreign employees. Because the US immigration system is complex, there are usually people helping new hires deal with it. And they only deal with immigration bureaucracy – they rarely have time to help with more practical issues, such as how to open a bank account. Maybe you are attending a conference. It's often cheaper to pay a membership fee in a professional organization + discounted registration fee than the full registration fee. But you can't pay membership fees from federal grants, so administrators have to pay those from another funding source. You came back from the conference with a bunch of restaurant receipts in random foreign languages. Now the administrators need to check and double-check that they are not reimbursing any alcohol from federal grants. Or maybe you are attending two conferences in a row in Europe, with a few days between them. Now you need to provide evidence that it's cheaper to stay in Europe instead of flying back to the US for the weekend. And you also need to justify the use of a European airline for flying between two European cities. Pretty much everything a university does is in a similar regulatory hell.