‘Administrators Ate My Tuition’
30th August 2011
Apparently, as colleges and universities have had more money to spend, they have not chosen to spend it on expanding their instructional resources—that is, on paying faculty. They have chosen, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources. A comprehensive study published by the Delta Cost Project in 2010 reported that between 1998 and 2008, America’s private colleges increased spending on instruction by 22 percent while increasing spending on administration and staff support by 36 percent. Parents who wonder why college tuition is so high and why it increases so much each year may be less than pleased to learn that their sons and daughters will have an opportunity to interact with more administrators and staffers— but not more professors. Well, you can’t have everything.
August 30th, 2011 at 06:25
Hey, they’re just private enterprises trying to maximize their bottom line. What’s the problem?
August 30th, 2011 at 09:21
‘Private enterprises’? Obviously you know as little about higher education as you do about economics.
August 30th, 2011 at 09:47
So, private colleges are not private enterprises? ‘Cause that’s who they were talking about. Or didn’t you read the article?
August 30th, 2011 at 10:53
No, they’re not. They’re non-profit enterprises heavily regulated by the government.
August 30th, 2011 at 11:49
But they are privately owned, are they not?
Profit, non-profit, regulated, unregulated: all immaterial. Private is private.
I see your strategy; when you don’t have an argument, you re-define the terms. Very ingenious.
August 30th, 2011 at 11:59
I think it’s terrific that private university hire administrators rather than professors and researchers. Sooner that they are seen as the useless tools they are. Harvard (among others) hates America, and it’s about time it collapses. I’d prefer something more dramatic, but a overly-bureacratized nomenklatura abolishing itself will do.
And it’s amazing the a private school can outpace state colleges when measured by bureaucrats employed.
August 30th, 2011 at 12:35
Not so surprising; they have a commodity in demand, they keep supply low and charge out the ass for it.
The Invisible Hand at work…
August 30th, 2011 at 13:22
@ ErisGuy: What do you see replacing private colleges and universities? Home Schooling, maybe?
August 30th, 2011 at 18:32
Well, obviously you are not such a product, or you would know that “contend” is not the correct word…
I am just trying to imagine a trade school for astronomers or mathematicians. Do you think Steven Hawking would have passed wood shop? I wonder…