
US universities under pressure to cut fees because of remote learning - hhs
https://www.ft.com/content/41bdaca1-1988-4fac-9204-4ff4e70b36cc
======
code4tee
The Pandora’s box here is that far too little of these “fees” actually went to
in-person instruction vs. bloated admin and other things not directly linked
to core educational activities. Unless universities slash those bloated admin
and other costs then they’re not really in a position to be giving everyone a
“remote learning” discount.

~~~
edgefield0
These fees aren't for bloated admin. They support resources like the library,
general student use fitness facilities, techology, and other student focused
items. I get why students want to stop paying these fees during the pandemic
since they can't use many of the resources. The issue is that most of the
costs for these resources are fixed, mainly personnel and facilities. If you
cut the fees, the university would have to lay off many of its staff,
librarians, IT support, etc. The facilities would also fall into disrepair.
There's no easy solution here.

~~~
code4tee
Few would argue about fixed costs of libraries, but you be hard pressed to
explain how libraries etc. are responsible for the cost of higher ed
increasing far far faster than inflation to levels that are increasingly hard
to justify. That has a lot more to do with the number of “Assistant Vice
Provost of Underwater Basketweaving” type non-teaching non-research roles and
positions that have developed over the years at many schools.

It’s a story similar to Healthcare in the US. It’s so expensive because so
little is actually spent on healthcare vs paperwork and administration.

~~~
fortran77
See "Administrative Bloat and Academic Freedom"

[https://www.thefire.org/administrative-bloat-and-academic-
fr...](https://www.thefire.org/administrative-bloat-and-academic-freedom/)

------
mishftw
In fact some institutions like my alma mater, University of Michigan, are
charging additional remote learning fees on top of the usual tuition increase.

~~~
boromi
What is the justification and are people accepting this increase

~~~
bachmeier
Because remote classes have higher costs. It's always been that way.

~~~
michaelt
That’s why Khan Academy et al are so expensive, huh?

~~~
tasogare
Khan Academy is not an university.

In my country, universities that offer remote degrees (well before covid) all
charges additional fees for it. It’s usually not much (something like 200€ on
top of the ~500€ typical fee), but some charge per module so it can add up
quickly. A few have a dedicated remote learning center, with is own workers.

------
ntsplnkv2
People just don't understand on here. It isn't like buying a loaf of bread.

Kids want to go to college. It's an exciting time in everyone's life, you get
to go away somewhere, meet knew people, all while earning a degree, which
because of the corporate worship of our nation, is now required to get a job.

And you wonder why fees are so high? And tuition skyrocketed?

No one shows anger towards the corporations which don't train anymore for
their BS job in their BS department which doesn't do much of anything. We
ignore the corporate bloat and regulatory capture across the entire spectrum
for the select few corporations that have our politicians in their back
pocket.

------
mathattack
Certainly every university should cut them if they’re no selling brand and
access to an alumni network.

Harvard/MIT/Stanford can get away with it because they can get you into
Google/Goldman/McK purely based on their screening. The market pays a high
price for that.

Schools with more open admissions policies can’t expect to charge much more
than Coursera for similar offerings.

------
merricksb
[https://archive.md/suoy4](https://archive.md/suoy4)

~~~
sheikheddy
We should probably change the link of the article to this, I couldn't see the
original one due to the paywall.

------
cm2187
What happens to students who were financing their tuitions through athletic
scholarships? Or by working on campus?

~~~
toomuchtodo
They become advocates of better educational public policy, because they’re
currently (sadly) out of luck, casualties of a broken educational system.

~~~
jmeister
Yes it’s great that they’ll join your pet political cause, but what about
_right now_?

They need to get their degree and graduate.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It’s unreasonable and counterproductive to call for bandaids when the jugular
is bleeding out.

What a time to be alive when a functioning educational system with universal
access and financial support is spoken about as “a pet political cause.” Some
of us consider it a foundational component of a developed country, and the
pandemic has laid bare the need.

------
rayiner
Defund higher education.

~~~
fortran77
I would love to see a two-part program

1\. No more government-backed Student Loans. (Tuition would drop like a rock.)

2\. Build many more free/cheap community colleges and make that much more
accessible to everyone.

~~~
SeanLuke
Neither of these would be as disruptive as:

3\. Student loans no longer survive bankruptcy.

~~~
to11mtm
I don't think we could do that without also removing the Federal government
from the student loan process.

~~~
fortran77
Which is why I said stop government-backed student loans. And any effort by a
Democratic administration to forgive student loans would be absurd without
stopping new ones.

------
jameslk
I read this article a different way: instead of being under pressure to cut
tuition, schools just realized they can cut a bunch of amenities and students
will still pay their tuition, and even more. With that knowledge, they might
as well keep it that way forever and pocket the extra income. Students will
complain, but until they start dropping out, tuition can apparently be driven
up endlessly. It's a lucrative business.

------
twirlip
They can keep their tuition rates high, but online only schools should be
allowed regional accreditation. Massive open online courses (MOOC) and other
disruptive EdTech can offer equivalent educational instruction for a lot less
money than traditional higher-ed options.

------
mdavis6890
This problem is not complicated. If students don't like the fees - don't go to
school there! A little more price-shopping in higher education would go a long
way toward reducing the tuition.

~~~
iso1210
Many career paths have gatekeepers who expect new entrants to follow same path
as they had 20 years ago (and the generation or two before that), which means
alumni from specific schools will get the advantages, not because of any
actual different in the quality of the education, but because of bias -
concious and unconcious.

~~~
mdavis6890
Companies who have gatekeepers that bias toward (or away from) certain groups
of people will tend to perform more poorly than peer companies that don't.
They will pay more for similar performance, or fail to hire better qualified
candidates. This is not perfect, and takes a lot of time to play out - but it
does play out eventually.

Sometimes you have to wait for those gatekeepers to retire, so it might take a
generation, but it will happen over time. Sometimes it can happen much more
rapidly due to innovation and new industries replacing old very quickly.

In the meantime, focusing on acquiring useful skills as cheaply and
efficiently as possible is a winning proposition. Much more likely to be
winning than spending a whole bunch more money on a less valuable educational
product.

------
treebornfrog
What I don't understand about the whole education sector is these massive
endowments.

If they're so big and managed so well, why is there a need to charge so much
in the first place?

~~~
erdos4d
I think you are confusing schools like Harvard with your run of the mill state
university. The latter rarely has much of an endowment to fund itself with.

~~~
katmannthree
My run of the mill state school has an endowment larger than than $500 million
and still sent out emails begging alumni to donate to a fund to make sure
students didn't go hungry in the early days of covid.

------
valuearb
We should have strict price controls on university tuition and fees. Roll them
back a couple decades, and cap compensation at $250k a year for all employees
and contractors.

~~~
fennecfoxen
State universities — the bulk of public universities in the nation — are
already subject to control by state legislatures. The problem is that this
central planning capability is not in practice used to improve education and
its affordability, but rather to enrich and empower the university staff (and
occasionally faculty) as they siphon off public funds, loans, fees and
tuition, in a classic illustration of the principal-agent problem. Even the
retirement systems seek overtly political ends with their investments.

Unwinding this debacle will involve dealing with the entire university's
staff, who will be dead set against it, and who will have contracts that are
in place to protect them. The legislators who do so will face extensive public
criticism from these highly paid, highly motivated people, who wish to protect
their pay. Good luck with that!

(Private universities should of course be free to do as they wish in this
regard, because who do you think you are; mind your own businesses.)

~~~
qserasera
> Private universities should of course be free to do as they wish in this
> regard, because who do you think you are; mind your own businesses.

Thanks for the chuckle.

> Unwinding this debacle will involve dealing with the entire university's
> staff, who will be dead set against it, and who will have contracts that are
> in place to protect them. The legislators who do so will face extensive
> public criticism from these highly paid, highly motivated people, who wish
> to protect their pay. Good luck with that!

I reject the framing that this system is promoted or even protected by
university staff. It is of course in their interests to keep it largely intact
but the true system facilitators have been in place for centuries perhaps with
different names and agendas.

One thing that has been discussed here is removing government backed loans.
Doing so would perhaps reduce overall population exposure to higher education.
I think the trend of expanding costs of education will continue without
government help via positive feedback loop from parental investment and other
society wide changes happening today.

So in essence university value is being justified each day without a thought
of future consequences. To that end the government may act for increasing
government sponsorship loan forgiveness where you work off your loans at a
discount rather than a dead stop bailout of loans that may never be repaid in
a lifetime. The government could probably make a variety of optional part
time/full time 'loan forgiveness' programs for the public good. Unfortunately
assigning the public good would probably be too hard to decipher in a
bipartisan manner.

