
The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands - cjmb
https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big-business-nobody-understands
======
secabeen
This article is interesting, but it makes the fundamental error of assuming
that the primary product of an R1 research university is education for
undergraduates, which it is not. The primary product of an R1 research
university is research, largely performed by Graduate Students, Postdoctoral
Researchers and Professional Researchers. All of these are paid a salary of
some form, some market-rate, others less-so. That's where the cost is, along
with actual costs of instruments, libraries, consumables and buildings
necessary for cutting edge research. Most of the funding for that comes from
research grants and you can see how it represents a huge fraction of the
budget in his charts. Unfortunately, all of the expenditure data that the
Education department puts out combines both R1 and non-R1 institutions, so
it's hard to see just how different the top 120 schools are from most of the
rest. If you have expenditure data segmented by research intensity, I would
love to see it.

The undergraduate education is part of the university, but not the primary
part. (At UChicago, grad students still outnumber undergrads!) If you want to
see what the finances of an institution that primarily educates undergraduates
looks like, go to one of the Liberal Arts colleges, or non R-1 state schools,
like any of the Cal States in California, or non-flagship schools in other
states.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> go to one of the Liberal Arts colleges, or non R-1 state schools, like any
of the Cal States in California, or non-flagship schools in other states._

...and look at the instructor's salaries. PhD's from top universities who
could easily make 300k+ in the private sector but instead take positions that
pay 60k-70k. Even with tenure, that's a labor of love.

Blaming highly paid admins would be great, except that university presidents
at teaching colleges are the highest paid (reminder: branch campuses and
liberal arts colleges never have Div 1 sports programs) and _still_ make
$50k-100K less than a green phd out of a top 10 CS program (200k is good money
for a president of a branch campus or liberal arts college -- and remember,
that's typically a person with 30+ years experience and a uniquely positive
track record).

I worry about what will happen to the American teaching college (public or
private) over the next 50 years if the current war on college -- which this
article typifies -- wins out in the public mind.

If you doubt a single word of this feel free to reply to this comment. I'm
extremely familiar with both markets. When I say that (even tenure-track) CS
teaching requires a 200k paycut, I really do know what I'm taking about.

~~~
gnicholas
> _Blaming highly paid admins would be great, except that university
> presidents..._

When people talk about the cost of university administration, they're not
always talking about the cost of the most highly-paid, but rather the
aggregate cost:

"Since 1980, the number of administrators per student at colleges has about
doubled; on most campuses their numbers now match the number of faculty,” the
study reads. “Here are some of their titles: senior specialist of assessment;
director for learning communities; assistant dean of students for substance
education; director of knowledge access services."

from [http://mediahub.unc.edu/administrator-salaries-drive-cost-
pu...](http://mediahub.unc.edu/administrator-salaries-drive-cost-public-
university-tuition/)

~~~
jimhefferon
> Since 1980, the number of administrators per student at colleges has about
> doubled

I don't doubt that's true; I see it at my college. But I also see at my
college that the percentage of students who need extensive administrative
attention has shot up in the past ten years. (I teach at a SLAC, so if I have
a concern about a student then I call an appropriate administrator and they
genuinely try to see if the student is OK. For instance, not too long ago I
called about a student and it turned out to be a suicide risk and my call and
others prompted an intervention, and the student is OK. I don't know how many
hours of administrator attention was clocked on this one person but I expect
it was a lot.)

~~~
matchbok
It's good that the student got help, but these students are adults, aren't
they? Why can't they use the same resources as everyone else?

~~~
52-6F-62
I probably come from a very certain camp on these kinds of issues, but...

Most students are hardly adults. They look it, but they are not necessarily
yet fully equipped to manage themselves.

And what if the people the same age who didn’t attend college— well, I would
push for more and improved social programs to help them. Of course then you
could reduce the staff at the colleges.

I’m all for being proactive about rising needs like social and mental health
issues, but I also think a reactive response needs to take place in the
interim.

The approach of “here’s a helpline phone number, now deal with it” hasn’t
proven effective so far so why lean into it?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Because raising the cost of uni for everyone including poor folks to provide a
bundled service they don’t need is not fair to them.

------
dhruvp
Wow this essay is fantastic. The idea that the amount of people who "need"
financial aid has stayed constant while tuition prices have increased 170%
(way outpacing wage growth) is unreal.

Conrad if you wrote a book about this I would buy it. Super fascinating stuff.
Colleges are clearly massive financial instruments that need to be analyzed
further.

~~~
dfgert
I doubt analyzing university would do much since its already a common
knowledge at this point still nothing is happening. Government and legal
institutions are ineffective in solving problem where solution results in loss
in profit.

Building alternatives to universities that are driven by grass-roots movements
are the perfect way forward here. Home schooling, MOOCs and startup businesses
are some of the developments that have started diminishing the need of
expensive degrees.

~~~
bumby
What I think will be interesting in the next few decades is if universities
will maintain their monopoly on accreditation or if they will lose that like
they did on their monopoly of education.

As long as there's a need for degrees as a signal for baseline
competence/barrier to entry, it seems those needing it will be at the mercy of
the systems that provide it.

~~~
wallace_f
> a need for degrees as a signal for baseline competence/barrier to entry

The signal is valuable. The unnatural barrier to entry is, at best, unethical.

Ideally, the barrier to the opportunity to earn the credential would not
exist. It should be available to everyone worldwide.

Individual research positions should be applied for. Certain practical skills
must be taught in labs, etc. But the vast majority of intellectual effort in a
Harvard degree should already have all its coursework and testing available to
everyone, and at reasonable cost. Otherwise it is not an open competition, it
is an institution promoting socioeconomi status.

~~~
bumby
I think that's part of the issue as it relates to the article. If that
accreditation becomes available to anyone, it loses its elitism and erodes
some of the value signal.

That may or may not be why some of the elite schools open up their courses but
not their accreditation online. It may not be in the institutions best
interest to be as open as the ideal you describe.

~~~
wallace_f
Yes, and especially as charities that are effectively subsidized by Joe
Everyperson taxpayer, they should not be left off the hook.

------
absherwin
The underlying assertion is that universities must provide financial
assistance to the majority of their students to be considered tax exempt. No
citation is provided.

26 USC 501(c)(3) explicitly lists an organization operated exclusively for
educational purposes as being tax exempt. Charitable organization is listed as
a separate type.

Also worth considering is the example of Cooper Union: It charged no tuition
and therefore offered no financial aid for most of its history. While one
could argue that that is a form of aid so too would any other tuition
reduction enabled by an endowment. This further suggests that universities do
not set tuition in order to maintain tax exempt status.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
They author has commented below, which I needed to read a few times to
understand his justification.

He's not really saying that there is some "50%" magic number in tax law. What
he is saying is that, imagine a situation where the price of admission was
much more reasonable (i.e. hadn't gone up 300+% in the last generation) so
that only, say, 10% of students needed aid. This means 90% of students would
be paying full price. Well, if 90% are paying full price, he imagines the
political pressure would come to say "Why the fuck are these absolutely
gigantic, small country-sized endowments able to earn all this profit, and
compound it, _tax-free_ , and still 90% of students are paying full price!"

Thus, he argues that the large universities play this fuzzy-math shell game to
consistently jack up the price of tuition so that the majority of students
require aid. That way they can argue their endowment profits should remain
tax-free because they are going to subsidize the students' education.

That's just my summary, but all-in-all I think the whole essay is powerfully
argued. In my mind (and I say this as an Ivy league grad) I agree that getting
an Ivy league degree 25 years ago is basically like buying real estate in SF
25 years ago. The overall supply has remained artificially constrained which
has made prices go through the roof, with the social signalling and economic
benefits accruing to those who graduated when admission rates were higher and
tuition was lower.

~~~
absherwin
I agree wholeheartedly with the larger point that we have a higher education
bubble.

I’m skeptical both that: Lower tuition would make taxing endowments more
likely and that universities believe that that’s the case.

In a world with lower tuition, endowments grow somewhat more slowly and are
easier to justify because they are the thing that enables low tuition.

For a more direct set of examples of how much inertia we have, consider the
way wealthy individuals use foundations to avoid taxes. I haven’t heard people
crying out to tax the Gates Foundation despite its endowment growing over time
because it can’t keep up with its contributions. Nor is there a massive uproar
about donor advised funds which (particularly in CA) can be 80%+ taxpayer
funded while effectively lacking minimum disbursement requirements as part of
a larger organization.

~~~
yyrrll
> I’m skeptical both that: Lower tuition would make taxing endowments more
> likely

Yes, if the tuition were reduced by increased endowment subsidy, the political
cover for the endowment would not be much affected.

But that strategy would limit the value of that cover (for the university
staff) by 1) ultimately limiting the size of the "politically justified"
endowment and 2) limiting the overall resources they control.

Re: 1), if the university contains cost inflation below endowment retained
returns, the endowment eventually grows to fund 100% of tuition. At that
point, the question "why do they need more?" becomes obvious and unanswerable.

Re: 2), note that the article implies an "agency" effect with university
personnel, in that they benefit by their control of the institution's
resources. In companies, such effects are seen in executives taking higher
than market salaries and excess perks. All that diverts income from equity
owners to managers. In a university these might be above-market salaries,
research budgets, job security, prestige, trips, subsidized housing, etc etc
etc -- diversions of endowment returns from "teaching" to the staff.

The agency model argues that university staff benefit from _growing_ costs,
which give them more resources to control. The story that education costs rise
faster than inflation and middle class incomes removes the limit on the size
of the cost base / resources controlled. It also "politically justifies" an
ever-growing endowment.

Thus lowering tuition simply by paying ever increasing portions of tuition
does not serve the university staff. The point of the article, I believe, is
that those staff have an ongoing interest in _increasing_ the costs to be
subsidized by the tax-free growth of their endowments.

(It is also worth noting that such arguments justify more than protection of
endowment returns: state funding for public schools, federal "overhead"
payments for research grants, etc. We might even wonder if the endowed
universities play a "cost-setting" role for higher education generally. They
operate at ever-higher cost, sustained internally by the endowment returns;
those costs then help justify the budgets of unendowed schools. "Hey, if you
want the kids of Michigan to have a first-rate education, this is what it
costs, just look at Harvard." If so, and MIT, Harvard et al began controlling
costs, those controls would then ripple over time throughout the whole system
through those benchmarking effects. Thus even unendowed schools would have
long-term political interest in protecting those endowment returns.)

Note that we don't have to fully believe the whole story to learn from it. The
"market" for higher education market is clearly pretty weird, and explaining
that will require so pretty involved stories.

~~~
cjmb
"...the endowment eventually grows to fund 100% of tuition. At that point, the
question "why do they need more?" becomes obvious and unanswerable."

This is a very good articulation of my points, thanks for laying it out so
crisply. Worth noting that this is already a reality at a select few places.
While there is continual agitating in America for our Gov. to provide free
college, it turns out that some elite private institutions are already in a
position to do so, or will be in the next decade. Food for thought, including
the follow-on social implications of the headline: "Tuition Now Free At
Harvard! Still $50,000/year At Your Local State University Though"

Regarding agency effects / moral hazard:

Someone asked me on another forum what predictions, if any, I would be willing
to make in defense of this article.

I tried to rattle off a few off the top of my head with low conviction. One
that I comes back to me still is:

"Professor Salaries will have an increasing Gini coefficient vs. today (i.e.
profs at Harvard make a higher multiple of Profs at State Colleges 25 years
from now)"

Given that the Top institutions will be competing for talent with Compound
Returns while everyone else must compete with Tuition increases, I think this
would be interesting to study & observe. I have zero data on this
unfortunately, so it's just an unsupported hypothesis for now...

~~~
yyrrll
Thank you for an interesting article.

> Professor Salaries will have an increasing Gini coefficient

I think your own model says this is too noticeable. Better strategy would be
harder-to-notice changes, like smaller teaching loads, more sabbaticals,
earlier retirement, travel abroad to conferences, etc.

------
jelliclesfarm
Does the fact that universities own insane amount of land and have all sorts
of diversified investments to be funded have any bearing on this discussion?

I think right after the Catholic Church, universities and colleges
collectively hold the massively large tracts of land as investments/REITs and
as physical asset.

Some of them..like the 2 year community college in my town in Bay Area,
CA...are selling it to real estate developers. Federal and bond money
...public money meant for education is going to a speculative activity like
real estate

I’d wager that most of American education is funded by speculation. Ivy
leagues have land in South America and invests outside the country. Even
public schools are funded by property taxes(at least in California..)...which
to me is a speculation. Considering the insane house prices in California, our
burgeoning population and prop 13. Throw in unionized teaching staff, it’s no
wonder that most of the best and brightest minds come from outside the
country. We attract immigrants because they really can fill a gaping vacuum in
the labour and skills market. And they can work for less aka demand less
because they don’t have the burden of student loans.

I am not sure if any of the above is relevant but those were my first thoughts
after reading the article.

~~~
fromthestart
>And they can work for less aka demand less because they don’t have the burden
of student loans.

Depending on their country of origin, they also are comfortable with lower
standards of living. Which puts negative pressure on wages.

------
sn41
Does anybody know what are the major running costs involved in a university?
What I found disturbing in the (public midwestern) university where I studied
are the luxurious sports complexes that kept popping up, whereas many
classrooms were poorly heated and ventilated. As far as the staff is
concerned, I hear that teaching and tenured positions are being reduced in
favour of increasing administrative staff and corporate-style bosses. The
peripheral processes seem to be eating up the core, much like one of those
parasites which thrive as outer shells long after their host trees are gone.

~~~
qaq
the ratio is shifting dramatically toward admin side

~~~
secabeen
Do you have a citation for this? The data I have shows that on a real basis,
expenditures at state schools for administrative services are largely flat:
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_334.10.a...](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_334.10.asp)

~~~
qaq
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/21/univer...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/21/universities-
broke-cut-pointless-admin-teaching)

I think looking at top level figures could be problematic because we don't
really know how classification was done.

~~~
secabeen
Intetresting. That's UK, which is a totally different system, but still neat.

------
rossdavidh
Fascinating article. A question I ponder is: given that, as I believe is true,
the student loan bubble is going to burst in a messy way sometime in the next
few years, what happens to the college industry at that point? The last time
it happened they made it illegal to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy,
but the rates of people unable to make payments is going up again, and at some
point it will cause a financial problem, I would think. Does any of this
calculus change if the student loan industry goes bust?

~~~
unimpressive
What makes you think it's a bubble? Just because something is unpleasant, or
even outright evil doesn't make it a bubble.

Perhaps at some point an equilibrium is reached where these institutions
extract exactly as much as the degree is worth, minus the little bit left that
will incentivize people to take the deal. After all, the 'value' of these
degrees has only gone up. Overproduced malthusian elitehood[0] has to be
better than starving with the unnecessariat[1], maybe[2].

We are after all already at the near-apocalyptic scenario. Economically
disenfranchised liberal arts graduates are roaming the earth and using the
only skills they have to extract resources from the environment. In practice
this amounts to a sort of _Trust Me I 'm Lying_ dystopia of manufacturing
outrage with one hand and selling solutions on the other.

For calibration, many students in the UK have turned to literal
prostitution[3].

[0]: [https://nationalpost.com/news/world/jonathan-kay-on-the-
tyra...](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/jonathan-kay-on-the-tyranny-of-
twitter-how-mob-censure-is-changing-the-intellectual-landscape)

[1]:
[https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/](https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/)

[2]:
[https://berthamasonsattic.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/i-applied...](https://berthamasonsattic.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/i-applied-
to-200-jobs-and-all-i-got-was-this-moderate-severe-depression/?src=longreads)

[3]: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-
news/...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-
news/students-sex-work-prostitution-webcam-university-tuition-fees-
education-a8614186.html)

~~~
antt
Anything that grows exponentially is a bubble.

The only question is when it stops growing because it has run out of space.

A simple example is that if Caesar had invested one gram of gold after the
conquest of Gaul at 3% compound interest today it would be worth 2.64e24
dollars. Or a trillion times larger than the world economy today.

------
scarface74
So if I’m a Georgia resident (which I am). Why would I pay the exorbitant
tuition of MIT when I could pay 1/5 as much to go to the Georgia Tech and have
basically the same average outcome?

In fact, I could pay even less and do the 2+3 program and go to an even
cheaper school for the first two years and stay at home?

[https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-
loans/highest-...](https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-
loans/highest-salaries-engineering-computer-science/)

On the other hand, I graduated from a no name state school in the mid 90s and
within three years I was sitting by people who went to “prestigious” schools
making just as much as they were making with no student loan debt. My entire
four year tuition was less than they spent in one year.

~~~
bluedevil2k
Your example is a one-person example. MIT grads on average earn $223k 10 years
after graduation (1) while Georgia Tech grads earn $115k (2).

(1) - [https://www.paysa.com/blog/harvard-vs-mit-which-tech-
grads-m...](https://www.paysa.com/blog/harvard-vs-mit-which-tech-grads-make-
the-most/) (2) - [https://www.ajc.com/news/education/this-how-much-alumni-
geor...](https://www.ajc.com/news/education/this-how-much-alumni-georgia-
colleges-make-average/J3PyBV2E2S0i4I6vm9ouXP/)

~~~
scarface74
My example included a citation for graduating seniors starting salaries.

[https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-
loans/highest-...](https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-
loans/highest-salaries-engineering-computer-science/)

Not that I’m disputing the 10 year salaries.

------
cjmb
Author here. Another long read -- apologies!

The TL;DR of this essay might perhaps be:

\- College degrees are more valuable than ever in post-industrial economies,
so applicants to top-tier schools are up 240% over the last 25 years

\- Meanwhile, available spots at top-tier colleges in America have increased
just 2% over the last 25 years (Thanks to Tyler Cowen & others for complaining
about this publicly)

\- Microeconomics 101: Fixed Supply + Increased Demand = Increased Price

\- That’s the obvious part

\- The non-obvious part is that this is intentional...

\- ...because the Charity-status ( 501(c)(3) ) of Colleges in America depends
on more-than-half of their students being unable to afford the education
(read: “receiving financial aid”)

\- That Charity-status protects the Investment Returns of College Endowments
from Uncle Sam & the IRS

\- Investment Returns Compound over time, and there is no more powerful force
on Earth — anyone not playing the game to maximize Compound-returns will lose
to everyone who is

\- Thus: if Colleges want to keep their Investment Returns tax-free, Tuition
MUST remain unaffordable for at least 50% of undergrads

~~~
analog31
A minor quibble: The ratio of admissions to applicants is kind of a funny
number. Applications could be driven by an external factor such as online
application systems and word processing making it easier to apply.

~~~
sn41
Foreigner here ... can confirm this. The application process to US
universities has gotten much better compared to 20 years ago. Back in the day,
we needed to pay application fees+international postage. Now, the second part
has gone away. The first part, surprisingly, has not gone up by much.

------
wallflower
I have not yet read through all of this 2013 IRS Official ”College and
Universities Compliance Project - Final Report”. However, nothing so far talks
about tuition and 50% attending receiving financial aid. The 50% rule may be
based more on 501c(3) spending at least 50% of their income on “their
mission”.

This seems to be the latest legal reference with regard to colleges and
universities retaining 501c(3) status.

> Of total endowment distribution, 56 percent were made for scholarships,
> awards, grants and/or loans in the amount of $3 million. 29 percent of total
> endowment distributions were made for general university operations in the
> amount of $3 million.

Off-topic:

> Half of the systems reported that at least one of its five most highly paid
> employees received NCAA income.

[https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
tege/CUCP_FinalRpt_042513.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
tege/CUCP_FinalRpt_042513.pdf)

~~~
throwawayjava
A crucial distinction: _Of total endowment distribution_ is VERY different
from _of total spending_.

Tuition-dependent colleges and universities tend to look very different from
their large endowment counterparts.

------
gumby
Both MIT and the author are missing the point on tuition — disengenuously in
MIT’s case. I get the same budge numbers the author does (thanks, development
office!), and while tuition is 10% of revenues (down from 14% a couple of
decades ago) spending on education is about 12-15%. So your education isn’t
50% subsidized.

The best way to think of MIT is not as a school but as a research lab with a
small school attached.

------
lordnacho
Why hasn't someone done this yet?

\- You make an organization that just examines people in various subjects.

\- You hire a bunch of professors in each field.

\- You make sure everyone thinks the exam is hard.

\- You make sure the exams are fair. Rent exam halls, get invigilators to pace
up and down. Biometric scans. Passports. Etc.

\- You make the syllabus and practice exams freely available.

\- You make a secure website to show everyone who passed.

There must be something similar, somewhere. Perhaps the Chinese civil service
exams. Or the CFA exams.

~~~
lmm
1\. Suppose you're an employer. You see a candidate who did some radical
education program you haven't heard of and know nothing about the details of,
instead of going to university. Your natural assumption (because it's correct
in 95% of similar cases) is that this is someone who wasn't good enough for
university.

It's the same for a professor who got involved - everyone else in the field
would assume they couldn't get a university position, or really needed the
money. For the people who could give credibility to such a venture, there's
only downside.

2\. When the exam is cheap and the only source of credit, fraud is a much
bigger risk than for normal university exams. Apart from anything else,
outright bribery is now a risk at every level in the process, because a good
exam result is worth far more in lifetime earnings than you can afford to pay
anyone involved.

~~~
lordnacho
> 1\. Suppose you're an employer. You see a candidate who did some radical
> education program you haven't heard of and know nothing about the details
> of, instead of going to university. Your natural assumption (because it's
> correct in 95% of similar cases) is that this is someone who wasn't good
> enough for university.

But you can see the questions yourself. If you did a degree you'd know if it
was the sort of level that you'd expect from a university student. If someone
can answer university level questions, why do they need to go to university?

As for the profs, you can hire them from the same universities. They're
allowed to work on the side.

> 2\. When the exam is cheap and the only source of credit, fraud is a much
> bigger risk than for normal university exams. Apart from anything else,
> outright bribery is now a risk at every level in the process, because a good
> exam result is worth far more in lifetime earnings than you can afford to
> pay anyone involved.

Sure, so rent a hall, make people walk through a metal detector, etc. Make
sure the papers are seen by several randomized people.

It's a trust building exercise, that's true. But plenty of businesses depend
on trust, and it's not like nobody has managed to build trust before.

~~~
lmm
> But you can see the questions yourself.

Sure, but how long are you going to spend reading the syllabus/example
questions for some qualification you've never heard of, versus just assuming
it's junk like most of the other random qualifications you haven't heard of
that people list?

> As for the profs, you can hire them from the same universities. They're
> allowed to work on the side.

They can, but people will talk. At professor level the people in the same
field know each other and reputation is important, especially for the very top
level.

> plenty of businesses depend on trust, and it's not like nobody has managed
> to build trust before.

Bootstrapping an alternative trust basis in an area where one already exists
is inherently much harder, because everyone assumes (not unreasonably) that
you're probably doing it because the existing system doesn't trust you,
probably for good reason.

------
smarttack
I worked in the industry selling and designing software for Financial Aid
offices. You are simply a SSN to them which equals $##,000 in potential
revenue

------
namuol
This suggests that the "wealth gap" (Endowment gap) of colleges in the US is
increasing, probably at an accelerating rate. This is _probably_ not a good
thing.

I wonder how much of a difference the tax-exempt status is a factor in the
growth of e.g. MIT's endowment.

Was this tax-exempt status ever in jeopardy? It's unclear from the article
whether this status was part of the failed anti-trust suit, but the article
does seem to suggest this is the underlying problem.

------
Synaesthesia
University as a business is not the ideal model for education. It should be
publicly owned and funded and all free, like it is in Germany.

~~~
zwaps
This is an interesting assertion, because there is certainly pro's and con's.

I am working in Germany now (in a "good" university) and I often visit top
tier US universities.

Due having money, US universities at a similar relative rank have vastly
bigger faculties, vastly better supply of researchers and usually better
admin. And it is not even close. Network effects among researchers are much,
much stronger.

Combine this with the fact that the German system has unecessary deficiencies.
The appointment system is f'ed beyond repair and it is virtually impossible to
offer positions to good prospective researchers. The "Mittlebau" lacks any and
all good career track and is made up of disillusioned and hopeless people on
2-year successive contracts (and nowadays, it is missing entirely). And of
course, there is no real tenure track, which means a lot of Profs are really
bad and would have never gotten tenure in a meriocratic process.

Since we have a couple of privately funded places that do the US system here
in Germany, we can see that it just simply works much better.

On the other hand, in terms of long term stability and the average quality of
education, I agree that the US system has issues. Relying on inflated
undergrad fees, especially from international student, seems dangerous in the
long term.

------
known
Sounds like an example for
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand)

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a nice essay. I learned some things I didn't know before.

There's a pattern here in public policy-making that needs further attention.
We have slogans and phrases that become untouchable. "Clean water" is one. Who
isn't for clean water? I've never met anybody who wanted water to be dirty or
poisonous. In the states we've had a very powerful movement called "Mothers
Against Drunk Driving". Once again, who the hell would be in favor of allowing
drunks to drive? These titles are self-evidently good things.

It goes on and on. I'm a fan of learning more about Universal Basic Income. We
solve poverty by, well, giving people money. We do it anyway through social
programs. Why not give it directly? (I don't know. Let's see what happens in
various experiments)

"College" is yet another one of these magic phrases. Who isn't for college?
Higher education? I just read another commenter on here that said we should
stop this "war on colleges"

That's why I'm commenting.

The pattern is this: there's a phrase or slogan that nobody in their right
mind would oppose. Lots of people and emotional energy is put into making sure
we have this goodness for everybody. People who provide any sort of feedback
at all aside from unanimous support are shunned. And they should be! After
all, they're against $GOODNESS_X

Then we start spending money and making public policy around the phrase -- and
the results can be quite mixed. Since the phrases themselves mean little, it's
all about the tiny details, the implementation. Some groups do this thing very
well. Some suck at it. Over time, however, in every one of these situations,
architectural cruft accumulates and people figure out how to game the system
to make it do things nobody ever intended.

Well then we're kind of stuck, aren't we? You can't provide any feedback aside
from full support, otherwise we'll shun you. We established that when we
started this movement. Colleges not working at the things the common person
thinks they're supposed to be working at? Prices way up, graduates sometimes
deep in debt with useless skills, use of the collegiate corporate structure as
a proxy for a modern country club? You point that out and you're one of those
anti-intellectuals fomenting a war on colleges.

 _The public discussions around dozens of policy initiatives suck_. And they
suck because the concepts have been so bowdlerized that we're all forced into
false dichotomies. And technology, by continuing to promote the concepts that
these huge, intricate, and detailed policy issues can be discussed at in terms
of 140-character tweets or something similar? We've got a huge hand in making
things as sucky as they have become. We're making a buck off of making people
stupider than they would normally be and having them fighting over things they
would normally mostly agree about. In my mind this is a terrible thing that my
community is mostly responsible for.

