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> Administrative overhead is growing, but you can't cut there - you need functional infrastructure. A college needs gardeners, programmers, network admins and

by wtbob 12y ago

> Administrative overhead is growing, but you can't cut there - you need functional infrastructure. A college needs gardeners, programmers, network admins and secretaries; does it need Vice Presidents of Student Diversity and football coaches?

rayiner 12y ago
Football coaches pay for themselves. As for vice presidents of student diversity, I think they get a bad rap. As college expands to include more than just the children of the rich, you need additional support infrastructure for students: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-gr...
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Or perhaps colleges simply need to stop admitting students without adequate preparation in the name of "diversity". I'm also uncertain what "diversity" has to do with "children of the rich". Maybe you could explain? According to the article you link to, the "diverse" students have SAT scores 200 pts lower than average and perform even worse than that SAT gap would predict. It seems a bit unfair to charge students who study for exams extra money simply to pay for extra help to those who don't (e.g., "Vanessa" in the article you link to).
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Here is the relevant statistic: > If you compare college students with the same standardized-test scores who come from different family backgrounds, you find that their educational outcomes reflect their parents’ income, not their test scores. Take students like Vanessa, who do moderately well on standardized tests — scoring between 1,000 and 1,200 out of 1,600 on the SAT. If those students come from families in the top-income quartile, they have a 2 in 3 chance of graduating with a four-year degree. If they come from families in the bottom quartile, they have just a 1 in 6 chance of making it to graduation. We're talking about students with similar SAT scores displaying dramatically different graduation outcomes based on parental income. The function of college, especially state colleges, isn't to reward people for being on the ball earlier in life, especially considering how much that has to do with parental education and income. It's to educate the populace, and enable upward mobility within society. It's penny-wise and pound-foolish to not spend money helping lower-income students graduate at the same rate as higher-income students with similar SAT scores. Every low-income student with above-average SAT scores that doesn't graduate college is a huge missed opportunity for the state to put a capable and educated person into the workforce.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      The article suggests later on that Vanessa is atypical: To get a better sense of who these struggling students were, Laude started pulling records...almost all of them had low SAT scores — low for U.T., at least — often below 1,000 on a 1,600-point scale. A 200-point difference in average SAT scores between the two sections (one of them being the "we won't call it remedial" section) is also discussed. Also, take a look at why Vanessa needed help, at least as per the article's implication: "She failed her first test in statistics...At Mesquite High, she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all without really trying." You also seem to believe that putting heroic efforts into teaching students thing will somehow help them become a capable worker. That might be true for a few rote fields - perhaps Vanessa's nursing career might be one of them [1]. But except for fields where college is mere rote training in procedures, that's not actually producing capable workers. When I hire, giving me a person who can only learn new things if I invest heroic effort and personal attention is useless - I need my employees to figure things out on their own. [1] I know little about nursing - from the outside it appears fairly rote, but I'm open to being corrected on this
      - rayiner 12y ago
        It's useful to quote the part that comes after that: > Even Laude was surprised by how effectively TIP worked. “When I started giving them the tests, they got the same grades as the larger section,” he said. “And when the course was over, this group of students who were 200 points lower on the SAT had exactly the same grades as the students in the larger section.” The impact went beyond Chemistry 301. This cohort of students who, statistically, were on track to fail returned for their sophomore year at rates above average for the university as a whole, and three years later they had graduation rates that were also above the U.T. average. Individualized help took these students who were scoring 200 points below the rest of the students, and got them to the point where they were scoring comparably to everyone else on exams and graduating at above the average graduation rate. That's a huge success from the state's perspective. So what if these students came in under-prepared? These kids are often first-generation college students, whose parents have no experience with the whole process and don't inculcate the right values in their kids. The kids from more privileged backgrounds, even ones who aren't any smarter (going by SAT scores), have a leg-up going in due to factors that are mostly in their favor as a result of the parental lottery. Why should that entitle them to a perpetual leg-up?
- munin 12y ago
  football programs only pay for themselves at a small number of universities, almost all subsidize them. http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Are-a-Cash-Cow2.aspx http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Ar... http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa-finances-subsidies/2142443/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa...
  - kodablah 12y ago
    Your comment is about football but your links discuss subsidies on entire athletic programs. It is well known that more popular sports offset expenses for less popular ones (especially those satisfying title IX) and many times the schools have to subsidize even further. I think you are confusing the expense/revenue ratio of college football with college athletic programs as a whole.

by wtbob 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago

Football coaches pay for themselves. As for vice presidents of student diversity, I think they get a bad rap. As college expands to include more than just the children of the rich, you need additional support infrastructure for students: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-gr...

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Or perhaps colleges simply need to stop admitting students without adequate preparation in the name of "diversity". I'm also uncertain what "diversity" has to do with "children of the rich". Maybe you could explain? According to the article you link to, the "diverse" students have SAT scores 200 pts lower than average and perform even worse than that SAT gap would predict. It seems a bit unfair to charge students who study for exams extra money simply to pay for extra help to those who don't (e.g., "Vanessa" in the article you link to).
- rayiner 12y ago
  Here is the relevant statistic: > If you compare college students with the same standardized-test scores who come from different family backgrounds, you find that their educational outcomes reflect their parents’ income, not their test scores. Take students like Vanessa, who do moderately well on standardized tests — scoring between 1,000 and 1,200 out of 1,600 on the SAT. If those students come from families in the top-income quartile, they have a 2 in 3 chance of graduating with a four-year degree. If they come from families in the bottom quartile, they have just a 1 in 6 chance of making it to graduation. We're talking about students with similar SAT scores displaying dramatically different graduation outcomes based on parental income. The function of college, especially state colleges, isn't to reward people for being on the ball earlier in life, especially considering how much that has to do with parental education and income. It's to educate the populace, and enable upward mobility within society. It's penny-wise and pound-foolish to not spend money helping lower-income students graduate at the same rate as higher-income students with similar SAT scores. Every low-income student with above-average SAT scores that doesn't graduate college is a huge missed opportunity for the state to put a capable and educated person into the workforce.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    The article suggests later on that Vanessa is atypical: To get a better sense of who these struggling students were, Laude started pulling records...almost all of them had low SAT scores — low for U.T., at least — often below 1,000 on a 1,600-point scale. A 200-point difference in average SAT scores between the two sections (one of them being the "we won't call it remedial" section) is also discussed. Also, take a look at why Vanessa needed help, at least as per the article's implication: "She failed her first test in statistics...At Mesquite High, she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all without really trying." You also seem to believe that putting heroic efforts into teaching students thing will somehow help them become a capable worker. That might be true for a few rote fields - perhaps Vanessa's nursing career might be one of them [1]. But except for fields where college is mere rote training in procedures, that's not actually producing capable workers. When I hire, giving me a person who can only learn new things if I invest heroic effort and personal attention is useless - I need my employees to figure things out on their own. [1] I know little about nursing - from the outside it appears fairly rote, but I'm open to being corrected on this
    - rayiner 12y ago
      It's useful to quote the part that comes after that: > Even Laude was surprised by how effectively TIP worked. “When I started giving them the tests, they got the same grades as the larger section,” he said. “And when the course was over, this group of students who were 200 points lower on the SAT had exactly the same grades as the students in the larger section.” The impact went beyond Chemistry 301. This cohort of students who, statistically, were on track to fail returned for their sophomore year at rates above average for the university as a whole, and three years later they had graduation rates that were also above the U.T. average. Individualized help took these students who were scoring 200 points below the rest of the students, and got them to the point where they were scoring comparably to everyone else on exams and graduating at above the average graduation rate. That's a huge success from the state's perspective. So what if these students came in under-prepared? These kids are often first-generation college students, whose parents have no experience with the whole process and don't inculcate the right values in their kids. The kids from more privileged backgrounds, even ones who aren't any smarter (going by SAT scores), have a leg-up going in due to factors that are mostly in their favor as a result of the parental lottery. Why should that entitle them to a perpetual leg-up?
munin 12y ago
football programs only pay for themselves at a small number of universities, almost all subsidize them. http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Are-a-Cash-Cow2.aspx http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Ar... http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa-finances-subsidies/2142443/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa...
- kodablah 12y ago
  Your comment is about football but your links discuss subsidies on entire athletic programs. It is well known that more popular sports offset expenses for less popular ones (especially those satisfying title IX) and many times the schools have to subsidize even further. I think you are confusing the expense/revenue ratio of college football with college athletic programs as a whole.