4 ms·

I recently graduated (class of '25), and the thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely r

by rd 7mo ago

I recently graduated (class of '25), and the thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university. There's a great student op-ed about _a_ proposed solution (firing the deans): https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-bureaucratic-bloat-harvard/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...

neutronicus 7mo ago
That's a common sentiment among non-Hopkins Baltimoreans. It's a small city, so a lot of people have experiences with real estate held by Hopkins.
DesaiAshu 7mo ago
Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club) It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very heavy paycuts to remain in academia, but the result of that finger pointing is devaluing education The right approach - in my eyes - is to share the land Harvard, Stanford, et. al. sit on with 10x the number of students. This simultaneously increases efficiency of the entire P&L while providing a higher quality of education to everyone As we've seen with the UC system (and the excellence of IITs + Chinese research universities), high density education can be synonymous with top tier research outcomes - Ivory Towers are not needed
- impendia 7mo ago
  I got curious, and looked up the Harvard Polo Club. Apparently it naturally faded away as polo declined in popularity, but then was revived in 2006. I understand that, if you have a current and active polo club running, then you either have to keep it going or run the risk of pissing people off. But, if I can ask you to speculate, why might Harvard have revived its club in 2006?
  - PaulHoule 7mo ago
    Probably they got a donation. I used to have a view of a baseball field out my office window until they rolled up the astroturf to start construction of the new computing and information science building. They got some money to build a really nice fan-friendly facility off-campus. Still the thing about baseball is that the season is early in the year and starts before the weather is comfortable for home games so they spend the first half of the season going to away games down south, far enough away that they're probably buying airline tickets instead of riding the bus the way that Ivy League (or ECAC) teams usually ride the bus to go to other Ivy League (or ECAC) schools. If it wasn't for Lacrosse we wouldn't have anybody using our football stadium in the spring and hey, Lacrosse is both a men's and women's sport. (At Cornell we're lucky enough to have two football teams to keep it busy in the Fall) Critics would say that Lacrosse is a boon to rich students since poor students don't go to high schools that have Lacrosse and it largely escapes the notice of the marginalization-industrial complex because those folks are aware that there is an industry in SAT test prep and not so aware that there is Lacrosse.
    - gsf_emergency_6 7mo ago
      [dead]
  - raddan 7mo ago
    It’s an open secret that “expensive ancillaries” like polo, crew, equestrian teams, etc, are a sneaky way to have supposedly blind admissions while making sure that the incoming class still contains just the right number of students who can pay full tuition. Smart people are not all that rare.
- nyeah 7mo ago
  How old is typical university land, compared to the average age of land in the same city?
  - georgeecollins 7mo ago
    I know you are making a joke, but for people who may not understand: The point is that well regarded Universities in the USA are generally old relative to other institutions in the USA. So Stanford has a pretty campus on land that was purchased when hardly anyone lived in Palo Alto. Now that land is absurdly valuable. As in the article, it changes how you might use the land. A grove is a beautiful place to go and read or relax. But if you could replace that grove with a structure worth of hundreds of millions of dollars it changes things.
  - bandrami 7mo ago
    It's the deed that's old; in the case of Columbia it's that it holds the northern half of the Anglican church's glebe[1] in Manhattan (Columbia is the largest private real estate owner in NYC), which is not only held tax-free but generates significant money for the University. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe (for Northern Virginia residents who have always wondered)
- 141205 7mo ago
  Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. If we wanted elite colleges to provide the benefits that they are supposed to; then we would, if anything, want to reduce matriculation. Stanford,—and I would hazard a guess many other HYPSM schools,—are already minting out too many students; this is especially true when it comes to non-PHD masters degrees, which are essentially an unbecoming cash cow for departments. Actual "quality of education" mostly comes from a low staff/student ratio and direct access of students to elite researchers: this difference in education mostly takes the form of better research labs to work in, with some spillover into office hours; increasing matriculation would only lead to more auditorium-sized classes that are run by lecturers or postdocs—these classes are essentially at the same level as trudging through online material. Your proposed "solution" would have a Procrustean effect: I can't speak for Chinese or Indian universities, but while schools like UC Berkeley, UT Austin, University of Michigan, et seq... have good reputations, they have a noticeably lower reputation than the ivy leagues and certain private colleges like Stanford, MIT, and Caltech—and a worse reputation for being degree mills. If you think that Stanford having 180,000 students matriculated will give everyone a quality education, then I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality. The only benefit that would come of it would be popping the degree bubble and prematurely ending the current moribund trajectory that universities are on; where they are already treating degrees as if they were artificial-scarcity NFTs, rather than providing the actual scarcity that is access to,—and direct training from,—high-level researchers.
  - nablaxcroissant 7mo ago
    Pretty much agree but may I also add that Santa Clara County would probably not allow Stanford to increase its student body by any real sizeable amount due to restrictions in traffic, building, parking, etc, etc.
    - 7mo ago
- nickwrb 7mo ago
  I can’t comment on the Chinese research universities you mention, but the comparison with IITs is bizarre. They are notoriously extremely selective, and all set in lush, spacious, grounds. I don’t think they back up your point at at all.
bonsai_spool 7mo ago
> The thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university. I feel a better question is what entities that are in continuous operation since the 1630s do not resemble a real estate holding company? If you analyze only the extremes of any distribution you'll find weirdness.
- rd 7mo ago
  This is true! I hadn't thought about it like this to be totally honest. It's hard to point fingers at old institutions, especially given they're mostly located in prime real estate locations across the country (Cambridge, Palo Alto, etc.), and it's not really their fault that they need land to operate.
  - tempacct2cmmnt 7mo ago
    Many of them are prime real estate locations in large part -because- the old institutions are there.
    - raddan 7mo ago
      Yeah, this is a silly argument. Go walk around the neighborhoods near MIT and you’ll see company after company that intentionally positioned themselves in proximity to the campus. Many of those companies are also MIT spinoffs.

by rd 7mo ago

neutronicus 7mo ago

That's a common sentiment among non-Hopkins Baltimoreans. It's a small city, so a lot of people have experiences with real estate held by Hopkins.

DesaiAshu 7mo ago

Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club) It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very heavy paycuts to remain in academia, but the result of that finger pointing is devaluing education The right approach - in my eyes - is to share the land Harvard, Stanford, et. al. sit on with 10x the number of students. This simultaneously increases efficiency of the entire P&L while providing a higher quality of education to everyone As we've seen with the UC system (and the excellence of IITs + Chinese research universities), high density education can be synonymous with top tier research outcomes - Ivory Towers are not needed

impendia 7mo ago
I got curious, and looked up the Harvard Polo Club. Apparently it naturally faded away as polo declined in popularity, but then was revived in 2006. I understand that, if you have a current and active polo club running, then you either have to keep it going or run the risk of pissing people off. But, if I can ask you to speculate, why might Harvard have revived its club in 2006?
- PaulHoule 7mo ago
  Probably they got a donation. I used to have a view of a baseball field out my office window until they rolled up the astroturf to start construction of the new computing and information science building. They got some money to build a really nice fan-friendly facility off-campus. Still the thing about baseball is that the season is early in the year and starts before the weather is comfortable for home games so they spend the first half of the season going to away games down south, far enough away that they're probably buying airline tickets instead of riding the bus the way that Ivy League (or ECAC) teams usually ride the bus to go to other Ivy League (or ECAC) schools. If it wasn't for Lacrosse we wouldn't have anybody using our football stadium in the spring and hey, Lacrosse is both a men's and women's sport. (At Cornell we're lucky enough to have two football teams to keep it busy in the Fall) Critics would say that Lacrosse is a boon to rich students since poor students don't go to high schools that have Lacrosse and it largely escapes the notice of the marginalization-industrial complex because those folks are aware that there is an industry in SAT test prep and not so aware that there is Lacrosse.
  - gsf_emergency_6 7mo ago
    [dead]
- raddan 7mo ago
  It’s an open secret that “expensive ancillaries” like polo, crew, equestrian teams, etc, are a sneaky way to have supposedly blind admissions while making sure that the incoming class still contains just the right number of students who can pay full tuition. Smart people are not all that rare.
nyeah 7mo ago
How old is typical university land, compared to the average age of land in the same city?
- georgeecollins 7mo ago
  I know you are making a joke, but for people who may not understand: The point is that well regarded Universities in the USA are generally old relative to other institutions in the USA. So Stanford has a pretty campus on land that was purchased when hardly anyone lived in Palo Alto. Now that land is absurdly valuable. As in the article, it changes how you might use the land. A grove is a beautiful place to go and read or relax. But if you could replace that grove with a structure worth of hundreds of millions of dollars it changes things.
- bandrami 7mo ago
  It's the deed that's old; in the case of Columbia it's that it holds the northern half of the Anglican church's glebe[1] in Manhattan (Columbia is the largest private real estate owner in NYC), which is not only held tax-free but generates significant money for the University. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe (for Northern Virginia residents who have always wondered)
141205 7mo ago
Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. If we wanted elite colleges to provide the benefits that they are supposed to; then we would, if anything, want to reduce matriculation. Stanford,—and I would hazard a guess many other HYPSM schools,—are already minting out too many students; this is especially true when it comes to non-PHD masters degrees, which are essentially an unbecoming cash cow for departments. Actual "quality of education" mostly comes from a low staff/student ratio and direct access of students to elite researchers: this difference in education mostly takes the form of better research labs to work in, with some spillover into office hours; increasing matriculation would only lead to more auditorium-sized classes that are run by lecturers or postdocs—these classes are essentially at the same level as trudging through online material. Your proposed "solution" would have a Procrustean effect: I can't speak for Chinese or Indian universities, but while schools like UC Berkeley, UT Austin, University of Michigan, et seq... have good reputations, they have a noticeably lower reputation than the ivy leagues and certain private colleges like Stanford, MIT, and Caltech—and a worse reputation for being degree mills. If you think that Stanford having 180,000 students matriculated will give everyone a quality education, then I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality. The only benefit that would come of it would be popping the degree bubble and prematurely ending the current moribund trajectory that universities are on; where they are already treating degrees as if they were artificial-scarcity NFTs, rather than providing the actual scarcity that is access to,—and direct training from,—high-level researchers.
- nablaxcroissant 7mo ago
  Pretty much agree but may I also add that Santa Clara County would probably not allow Stanford to increase its student body by any real sizeable amount due to restrictions in traffic, building, parking, etc, etc.
  - 7mo ago
nickwrb 7mo ago
I can’t comment on the Chinese research universities you mention, but the comparison with IITs is bizarre. They are notoriously extremely selective, and all set in lush, spacious, grounds. I don’t think they back up your point at at all.

bonsai_spool 7mo ago

> The thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university. I feel a better question is what entities that are in continuous operation since the 1630s do not resemble a real estate holding company? If you analyze only the extremes of any distribution you'll find weirdness.

rd 7mo ago
This is true! I hadn't thought about it like this to be totally honest. It's hard to point fingers at old institutions, especially given they're mostly located in prime real estate locations across the country (Cambridge, Palo Alto, etc.), and it's not really their fault that they need land to operate.
- tempacct2cmmnt 7mo ago
  Many of them are prime real estate locations in large part -because- the old institutions are there.
  - raddan 7mo ago
    Yeah, this is a silly argument. Go walk around the neighborhoods near MIT and you’ll see company after company that intentionally positioned themselves in proximity to the campus. Many of those companies are also MIT spinoffs.