5 ms·

The amount of money the fellowship gives is about the same as two years worth of tuition at Stanford. In what ways is it not scalable?

spartango 13y ago
I'd say it's not scalable not because of the money, but because it's incredibly difficult to find people for whom the Fellowship is the right thing: The 20 fellows chosen in each batch are people who are not only sharp, but have projects and visions that they are already tackling. They tend to teach themselves what they need to learn to make those things work, and have the resourcefulness and skills to make their projects at least somewhat viable. That doesn't quite capture the whole of it, but my point is that there aren't huge numbers of people who are a good fit for the fellowship, and my experience thus far has been that the fit criteria are narrower than you might expect.
- jacoblyles 13y ago
  There are tens of thousands of bright young kids under 20 reading the internet and getting big ideas. Maybe 10,000 read this website.
richardjordan 13y ago
Yes but students pay for going to Stanford they're not paid to go. For this program to replace college someone has to pay for the fellowships. Hence not scalable. Money flows to student in one and away from student on other, no?
- jacoblyles 13y ago
  Just pay yourself the money you were going to pay a college.
  - richardjordan 13y ago
    which is very much NOT the same as someone else paying you money and certainly not available to the majority of people who pay for college on huge subsidize loans
- osnr 13y ago
  Actually, Stanford does essentially pay students to go. Each undergraduate student costs Stanford about twice as much as they pay in tuition. This is typically the case at elite colleges, which is why they spend so much time seeking donations from alumni. (Also, the vast majority of students don't pay full tuition anyway because of the extensive financial aid systems at these schools.) http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/383286-net-university-spending-per-student.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection... http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-Subsidy-Trends-Production.pdf http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-Subsidy-...
  - jdotjdot 13y ago
    That can't be right. First, your Delta study is woefully lacking in school - specific information. Second, the college confidential link's methodology seems to be missing a lot to me, particularly in the way of revenue. For example, for many universities (eg UPenn) the parking department is actually a huge revenue driver that must be taken into account to calculate overall university P&L, and that kind of thing is completely ignored here. Schools are businesses; you can't just ignore the other sources of revenue. As such, those estimates are hugely over inflated. Is Yale really spending $100k PER STUDENT each year? How could that possibly be? Let's look at Stanford. Wolfram Alpha claims 6532 undergrads, $37380 tuition per year. If student cost was truly double tuition, Stanford would be operating at a loss of $244.4MM per year, and (all other considerations aside) the $12.6BB endowment would be gone in 50 years. Ultimately, the reported cost is often based on some key assumptions that aren't always stated, and I'm pretty sure we as a population don't actually have much clarity on the true cost of educating a student, if it's even possible to really quantify such a thing (try measuring the monetary cost of creating a supportive environment or a caring teacher).
    - osnr 13y ago
      I'm not sure why you find this so a priori implausible. You're right that the CC link misses revenue sources -- but isn't that the point? Stanford seems to be using money from non-student revenue sources to subsidize a majority of per-student expenses. (That is, students are getting "paid.") Or are you assuming that all that other revenue still comes from students (e.g. parking), or directly from an unchanging endowment? Stanford raises hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from people who aren't students every year, more than enough to cover that $244.4m shortfall directly. Direct income from students is only a small part of the overall university budget: http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances Anyway, I'm only making a factual spending claim here. I make no claim about the effectiveness of the spending in educating students -- that's a separate issue.

spartango 13y ago

I'd say it's not scalable not because of the money, but because it's incredibly difficult to find people for whom the Fellowship is the right thing: The 20 fellows chosen in each batch are people who are not only sharp, but have projects and visions that they are already tackling. They tend to teach themselves what they need to learn to make those things work, and have the resourcefulness and skills to make their projects at least somewhat viable. That doesn't quite capture the whole of it, but my point is that there aren't huge numbers of people who are a good fit for the fellowship, and my experience thus far has been that the fit criteria are narrower than you might expect.

jacoblyles 13y ago
There are tens of thousands of bright young kids under 20 reading the internet and getting big ideas. Maybe 10,000 read this website.

richardjordan 13y ago

Yes but students pay for going to Stanford they're not paid to go. For this program to replace college someone has to pay for the fellowships. Hence not scalable. Money flows to student in one and away from student on other, no?

jacoblyles 13y ago
Just pay yourself the money you were going to pay a college.
- richardjordan 13y ago
  which is very much NOT the same as someone else paying you money and certainly not available to the majority of people who pay for college on huge subsidize loans
osnr 13y ago
Actually, Stanford does essentially pay students to go. Each undergraduate student costs Stanford about twice as much as they pay in tuition. This is typically the case at elite colleges, which is why they spend so much time seeking donations from alumni. (Also, the vast majority of students don't pay full tuition anyway because of the extensive financial aid systems at these schools.) http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/383286-net-university-spending-per-student.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection... http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-Subsidy-Trends-Production.pdf http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/Delta-Subsidy-...
- jdotjdot 13y ago
  That can't be right. First, your Delta study is woefully lacking in school - specific information. Second, the college confidential link's methodology seems to be missing a lot to me, particularly in the way of revenue. For example, for many universities (eg UPenn) the parking department is actually a huge revenue driver that must be taken into account to calculate overall university P&L, and that kind of thing is completely ignored here. Schools are businesses; you can't just ignore the other sources of revenue. As such, those estimates are hugely over inflated. Is Yale really spending $100k PER STUDENT each year? How could that possibly be? Let's look at Stanford. Wolfram Alpha claims 6532 undergrads, $37380 tuition per year. If student cost was truly double tuition, Stanford would be operating at a loss of $244.4MM per year, and (all other considerations aside) the $12.6BB endowment would be gone in 50 years. Ultimately, the reported cost is often based on some key assumptions that aren't always stated, and I'm pretty sure we as a population don't actually have much clarity on the true cost of educating a student, if it's even possible to really quantify such a thing (try measuring the monetary cost of creating a supportive environment or a caring teacher).
  - osnr 13y ago
    I'm not sure why you find this so a priori implausible. You're right that the CC link misses revenue sources -- but isn't that the point? Stanford seems to be using money from non-student revenue sources to subsidize a majority of per-student expenses. (That is, students are getting "paid.") Or are you assuming that all that other revenue still comes from students (e.g. parking), or directly from an unchanging endowment? Stanford raises hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from people who aren't students every year, more than enough to cover that $244.4m shortfall directly. Direct income from students is only a small part of the overall university budget: http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances Anyway, I'm only making a factual spending claim here. I make no claim about the effectiveness of the spending in educating students -- that's a separate issue.