

Why Top Colleges Squeeze You Dry - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304017404575165730979629178.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTThirdBucket

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blahedo
Even if these things are mostly "obvious", it's good to hear them said and
it's good that it's in something other than, say, the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
But he draws some odd conclusions from his supply-and-demand argument. People
grumble about the high cost as if it's greedy, overpaid professors (sometimes
explicitly blaming tenure), but many if not most could make a lot more money
elsewhere. I hold a PhD in computer science, have been teaching computer
science at a four-year college (non-US read: "small undergraduate university")
for 7 years, and my salary is $52,000 a year. I don't need to tell anyone here
that I could make a lot more than that working in industry.

It's plenty to live by and I have no complaints, because I'm certainly not in
it for the money; I'm stating an actual number because I want to be quite
clear that tuition rates that have gone up faster than inflation for most of
my lifetime are _not_ due to professorial salaries. In fact, it's hard to get
a clear answer on what they are going to, although my money's on ballooning
administrations that perform tasks once performed by members of the faculty
but are much better-paid.

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cdr
One thing a lot of it may go towards is infrastructure and expansion. I know
my alma mater has always had to constantly come up with big new construction
projects (new stadium, new academic buildings, new apartments, etc) because
they needed something to do with all the money they were taking in. The
construction seemed very clearly driven by the need to spend money, rather
than the tuition being driven by the need for buildings. Providing value to
students was definitely not a concern, because whatever tuition is it'll get
paid - plenty of applicants were being rejected.

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gamble
This may not apply to private institutions, but public schools are subject to
boom-and-bust cycle of generous government funding in economic booms and
budget cuts during recessions. It's easy to justify almost any project when
you know that leaving money on the table means it may not be there when you do
need it.

~~~
jwhitlark
This isn't a problem unique to educational institutions, it affects most
entities that practice standard budgeting. That's one reason why I favor zero-
based budgets, although they have their own problems. (frequently take longer,
more work, etc.)

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carbocation
Forgive me for my bitter cynicism (or don't), but I couldn't help but feel
that the thesis of this article boiled down to the following quote: "My alma
mater, Oberlin College, provides financial aid for as many as 70% of its
students."

I have a sneaking suspicion that the author wrote this entire article to
assert that Oberlin is a "top college." (I am agnostic / do not care at all on
this matter.)

He does claim to answer the question of what your tuition money is really
spent on: (a) he notes that salaries for tenured professors has increased, and
(b) he addresses the fact that colleges are building fancy new dorms/athletic
facilities/etc to increase student demand. Without evidence, asserts that your
tuition pays for these. Without evidence, I would be inclined to believe that
these are more likely to be funded by named endowments from private donors.
Again, I feel that this thesis is merely ostensible, to justify his assertions
about his alma mater.

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orborde
This article reminds me once again why I am determined never to donate any
money to the school I went to.

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BigZaphod
And the reason is.... _drumroll_ Supply and demand! Wow. Insightful.

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roc
"Supply and demand" doesn't explain anything until you recognize that what
universities sell, is prestige.

That's the key point of the article.

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kokofoo
I can see the opposite side too. Prestige isn't worth much if nobody willing
to pay for it. But the fact is there are people willing to pay for it. EDIT: I
guess that's what you're saying as well.

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Qz
And why are people willing to pay for it? Because universities have marketed
said prestige as something that is absolutely essential to success in the
modern world. So of course people will buy it.

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glen
How long will it be until recommendations from trusted others and work
examples are accepted as better predictors of competency and success over
degrees from elite schools?

I love that some fields have already overcome this bias. I'm also glad that
our globalized world is quickly making this more and more of a reality.

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marciovm123
Exactly...my startup has some funding from a great seed program to work on
this. Any suggestions on what a great social recruiting web app would look
like?

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cj
<http://www.groupereye.com/>

~~~
marciovm123
Thanks, this service seems to be more for one time projects then for
recruiting though. Is there anyone trying to replace/supplant resumes (not
just upload them, like LinkedIn)?

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glen
We are in the form of eportfolios.

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dantheman
Universities need to be conservative and guard their wealth. They outlast
countries. It's important they be stable, many schools aim for cheap and fast
which is fine but at the first bump in the road they hit serious problems.

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nfnaaron
Why do they need to outlast countries? At that point the only relationship
between University("today") and University("100 years ago") is the bricks in
the building. None of the professors or students that made a university
whatever it was 100 years ago remains; "greatness" is then a happy
coincidence.

Why not have throw-away universities?

~~~
lincolnq
Because prestige is what they are selling, and prestige takes lots of time to
produce. The greater the prestige, the more good professors want to teach and
do research there, and the more good students want to learn there. This does
influence the next generation, and so on. If the quality of people stays
consistently high, the prestige remains.

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LiveTheDream
For most universities over the last 20 years, the number of "staff" has
doubled or tripled while the number of "faculty" has remained about the same.
(source: a tenured professor at a big state university). Whether this is just
bloat or not is another question, but does support the argument that most
tenured professors are not fat cats raking in cash from exploited college
students' families.

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pw0ncakes
_But senior, tenured faculty at elite schools are firmly entrenched in the
well-compensated professional class (top salaries at elite schools often
exceed $150,000; and for scholars in economics, business and law schools,
earnings can be substantially in excess of that) with superior benefits, such
as university-subsided housing, lifetime heath care and seven-figure
retirement accounts. Once tenure has been achieved, generally after less than
ten years of work, top college teachers face no professional risk and, by and
large, teach three or fewer courses a semester._

3 courses per semester is a lot of work if you're doing it right, especially
when you consider the amount of time research can take. 8-10 hours per week is
a good estimate of the amount of time each class takes.

Also, very few professors make $150k-- those are the stars-- and they tend to
be in their late 30s if not 40s. Academic pay is 1/5 to 1/10 of what it is in
other industries (and yes, it's harder to become a tenured professor than to
make $1 million/year on Wall Street).

American tuition is ridiculous, but overcompensation of teaching staff is
_not_ the problem. With tuition at $40,000/year for 10 classes, that's $4000
per class. If average class size is 25, that's $100k for 150 hours of the
professor's work ($667/hour). So a professor is bringing in $500+k through
teaching alone. For that professor to be making $65k (more realistic than the
$150k figure) is not overcompensation.

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tokenadult
Your source to show the accuracy of any of these estimates is?

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sigstoat
which estimates are you contesting? as someone involved tangentially in
academia, none of these even raise an eye brow. you might as well be asking
for sources that the sun will rise tomorrow.

if you really want hard numbers, pick your favorite public university. poke
around. their faculty salaries will be public record. also, the student
feedback on faculty will be public record. you should be able to figure out
the average number of courses taught, and the average salary in about 10
minutes after you find the relevant excel spreadsheets.

a 3 credit hour course will involve at least 3 hours of work per week (you've
got to transport your body to the room the students are in). a minimum of 1
office hour per week. you've got to come up with homeworks, and grade them.
even if you look at 25 students' homework for only 1 minute each, that'll take
about half an hour. so it takes 4.5 hours each just to do the bare minimum
possible work for a class.

google for "average college tuition" to cover that part.

what's left?

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ibsulon
"Publish or perish."

The dirty secret of universities: the job of most faculty isn't to teach, it's
to research and bring prestige to the university. In the sciences, research is
a byproduct of bringing in money, so research grants are the most important
part.

Thus, on top of those three classes (two at the university I live near)
they're expected to put in full time work on their research.

From what I see, it's about a 60 hour average week in the social sciences.
That dips to 35-40 in the summers.

~~~
mklg1266
Professors work. A lot. Maybe not the ancient tenured ones, and not all of
them, but the majority. It is far from a 40-hour job. And in the hard
sciences/engineering/computer science, they could definitely be making more
money in industry.

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korch
You can't talk about college costs and not also mention the enormous impact
the college sports industry has had on transforming colleges from their
academic role in society to that of being prestigious "mini-corporations."

Where is all the money going? Who's the top paid guy at university X? Oh, it's
the football coach. Well why does he get to make $3 million a year while we
just raised tuition 8% across the board, and cut financial aid by 20%? And
that fat new sports arena which the university board of regents approved and
just built for $100 million? Well, it doesn't count, because free market
capitalism still applies to academic institutions—our true revenue source is
selling and catering to sports fans. Professors, students, research, those are
of course net losses, we just pay to keep them around in order to justify the
existence of the sports team.

In a way, a University's brand, physical grounds, and costumed staff is a
Disneyesque facade for the real money maker: football. Or perhaps I've just
been reading too much into my Jean Baudrillard...

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philwelch
Football coaches are paid well because college football is a net money maker
for the university--especially since they don't have to pay the athletes. If
you want universities to be even more broke, by all means cut the athletic
programs.

~~~
korch
Is it a good thing that universities, who hold an implicitly benevolent, non-
profit societal role, should also have such high profit margins on their
"student"-players?

If the football team is bringing in the dough to fund a big chunk of the
operating expenses, but aren't being fairly compensated, then the universities
are exploiting those students for profit. What I don't see is how universities
can use this same logic to justify using their sports teams to fund their
academic operations.

This pattern sounds familiar, where else have I seen it, oh yeah: the rich
should pay for the poor, because they are lucky enough to have more. (I
actually believe this, and I'm just using parallel logic). A few student
athletes will win the lottery moving into the pro's, so colleges "tax"
athletes by not paying them, and substitute the incentive of "you might be the
next Lebron." (Do s/Lebron/Google/ and doesn't it sounds eerily similar to VC
startup logic?!) Then the rest of the student body benefits because the
football team just paid the salary of the Poetry professor.

It might work this way, but I doubt it, although I'd love to see a study
confirming how much money trickles back into colleges from their sports teams.
We can just look at the larger macroscopic view for how efficient trickle down
economics really is: of all the hundreds of billions given to the rich elites,
how much of it trickles down to the poor? I bet the football team is keeping
most of its profit, and in fact on average is a _net loss_ to its attached
college.

