As Colleges Move Classes Online, Families Rebel Against the Cost (deccanherald.com) 222
"A rebellion against the high cost of a bachelor's degree, already brewing around the nation before the coronavirus, has gathered fresh momentum as campuses have strained to operate in the pandemic," reports the New York Times.
"Who wants to pay $25,000 a year for glorified Skype?" one incoming freshman tells them: Incensed at paying face-to-face prices for education that is increasingly online, students and their parents are demanding tuition rebates, increased financial aid, reduced fees and leaves of absences to compensate for what they feel will be a diminished college experience. At Rutgers University, more than 30,000 people have signed a petition started in July calling for an elimination of fees and a 20 percent tuition cut. More than 40,000 have signed a plea for the University of North Carolina system to refund housing charges to students in the event of another Covid-19-related campus shutdown...
Universities have been divided in their response, with some offering discounts but most resisting, arguing that remote learning and other virus measures are making their operations more, not less, costly at a time when higher education is already struggling.... Moody's Investors Service, which in March downgraded the higher education sector to negative from stable, wrote that even before the pandemic, roughly 30 percent of universities "were already running operating deficits." Since then, emptied dorms, canceled sports, shuttered bookstores and paused study-abroad programs have dried up key revenue streams just as student needs have exploded for everything from financial aid and food stamps to home office equipment and loaner laptops. Public health requirements for masks, barriers, cleaning and other health protections also have added new costs, as have investments in training and technology to improve remote instruction and online courses....
Chapman's president, Daniele Struppa, said the university spent $20 million on technology and public health retrofits for the fall semester, and he estimates that the switch to an online fall will cost the school $110 million in revenue. He has cut spending "brutally" from the $400 million annual budget, he said, freezing hires, slashing expenses, canceling construction of a new gym, ending the retirement match to employees and giving up 20 percent of his own $720,000 base salary. Only students who can demonstrate financial need will get help, he is telling families. "Tuition really reflects our cost of operation, and that cost has not only not diminished but has greatly increased." A survey by the American Council on Education estimated that reopening this fall would add 10 percent to a college's regular operating expenses, costing the country's 5,000 some colleges and universities a total of $70 billion....
Some families have sued. Roy Willey, a class-action attorney in South Carolina, said his firm alone has filed at least 30 lawsuits — including against the University of California system, Columbia University and the University of Colorado — charging universities with breach of contract for switching in-person instruction to online classes, and is closely monitoring the fall semester....
A handful of universities have announced substantial price cuts... But most colleges have kept prices flat, and a few have even increased them. They can't afford to do otherwise without mass faculty layoffs, said Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall University associate professor of higher education...
"Who wants to pay $25,000 a year for glorified Skype?" one incoming freshman tells them: Incensed at paying face-to-face prices for education that is increasingly online, students and their parents are demanding tuition rebates, increased financial aid, reduced fees and leaves of absences to compensate for what they feel will be a diminished college experience. At Rutgers University, more than 30,000 people have signed a petition started in July calling for an elimination of fees and a 20 percent tuition cut. More than 40,000 have signed a plea for the University of North Carolina system to refund housing charges to students in the event of another Covid-19-related campus shutdown...
Universities have been divided in their response, with some offering discounts but most resisting, arguing that remote learning and other virus measures are making their operations more, not less, costly at a time when higher education is already struggling.... Moody's Investors Service, which in March downgraded the higher education sector to negative from stable, wrote that even before the pandemic, roughly 30 percent of universities "were already running operating deficits." Since then, emptied dorms, canceled sports, shuttered bookstores and paused study-abroad programs have dried up key revenue streams just as student needs have exploded for everything from financial aid and food stamps to home office equipment and loaner laptops. Public health requirements for masks, barriers, cleaning and other health protections also have added new costs, as have investments in training and technology to improve remote instruction and online courses....
Chapman's president, Daniele Struppa, said the university spent $20 million on technology and public health retrofits for the fall semester, and he estimates that the switch to an online fall will cost the school $110 million in revenue. He has cut spending "brutally" from the $400 million annual budget, he said, freezing hires, slashing expenses, canceling construction of a new gym, ending the retirement match to employees and giving up 20 percent of his own $720,000 base salary. Only students who can demonstrate financial need will get help, he is telling families. "Tuition really reflects our cost of operation, and that cost has not only not diminished but has greatly increased." A survey by the American Council on Education estimated that reopening this fall would add 10 percent to a college's regular operating expenses, costing the country's 5,000 some colleges and universities a total of $70 billion....
Some families have sued. Roy Willey, a class-action attorney in South Carolina, said his firm alone has filed at least 30 lawsuits — including against the University of California system, Columbia University and the University of Colorado — charging universities with breach of contract for switching in-person instruction to online classes, and is closely monitoring the fall semester....
A handful of universities have announced substantial price cuts... But most colleges have kept prices flat, and a few have even increased them. They can't afford to do otherwise without mass faculty layoffs, said Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall University associate professor of higher education...
I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:3)
Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:5, Insightful)
Well something needs to weed out those being willing to stick with a job, and being willing to stick with college is a good indication. Of course, working for four years is probably a pretty good indicator too.
One of my favorite restaurants is going out of business because most of the people they've hired just stop showing up, or never show up from the first day, and the owner can't keep running it on his own. Though I don't know a lot of details, it could be less about the people he is trying to hire and how much he is paying them... or something.
Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the enhanced unemployment. Up to a few weeks ago it was 600 bucks a week ( plus whatever the state was giving you ), meaning most folks were earning more staying home than going to work.
Had a hell of a time getting staff to come in, and I don't really blame them.
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I'm a liberal, and I think I agree with the republicans.
Maybe, just maybe, it should be capped at 100% of your previous income. The GOP wants 70% I think. I think I'd even agree with a cap of $600/week or 100% of previous income, whichever is higher.
Although, I do think it would have been better to just give all legal residents $1200/month. Yes, even kids (age 2+). I know this would be expensive, but the long-term ramifications will be worse by doing nothing.
I also think we need to bail out states. Either a
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There is no way in hell I would ever vote for someone that decided we needed to bail out Illinois and New Jersey given how many empty promises were made by their legislators and how many people voted for "free money". The people in those states are in for a world of pain in about 10-20 years.
Michigan at least has a partial argument since the auto industry essentially collapsed, although they suffered from some of the same of what was being peddled in Illinois and New Jersey.
Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:4, Interesting)
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Probably the enhanced unemployment. Up to a few weeks ago it was 600 bucks a week ( plus whatever the state was giving you ), meaning most folks were earning more staying home than going to work.
Had a hell of a time getting staff to come in, and I don't really blame them.
That makes an interesting amount of sense. Restaurants being hit hard right now because of no customers from coronavirus, plus having a hard time finding workers because of the bump to unemployment. Makes one think of the unintended consequences of different policies.
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"Unintended".
If they were "unintended", would they be talking about re-upping it? I don't know why these idiot politicians are dead set on hurting/killing small businesses, but at this point it's intentional.
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What a load of nonsense. It's all about punishing the poor for being poor.
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Why? Because, for many, the cruelty is the point. Reason doesn't enter in to it. It doesn't matter that they'd personally be better off. They just don't want anyone they think as beneath them to get anything they don't think they deserve.
I know one business owner who permanently closed his shop rather than apply for PPP because he didn't want to pay his employees "for staying at home". (It's possible that the shop closed for other reasons, but this is how he explained it to me.)
Yes, it's remarkably st
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Ya, I'm calling bullshit on that. Few people want to punish the poor for being poor ( I'll grant there are psychopaths in the world ). Most don't care if the poor are poor, and those that matter who do care want to see the poor better off because they understand it helps everyone.
That, in fact, is why being poor is the US redefines the term "poverty". I think you'd be shocked to learn what "poverty" means in most of the rest of the world. The poor in this country are kings, comparably.
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Or because the pay was barely adequate to get employees to show up before corona and the work environment failed to foster a sense of loyalty, now with the extra health hazards and hassles, it's not enough.
It could also factor in that since restaurants have always depended on tips to incentivise waitstaff to show up and now there are few tips on offer, the effective pay cut makes the job no longer worth it.
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https://econofact.org/have-enh... [econofact.org]
https://news.yale.edu/2020/07/... [yale.edu]
https://www.chicagofed.org/pub... [chicagofed.org]
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-c... [brookings.edu]
And sorry I can't remember exactly where the 5th was but I think the above are more than sufficient.
The common themes are:
- we're not in a normal unemployment spike, this is huge and will have long lasting effects
- people recognize that UI is temporary AND that many jobs may never return so there are ultimately more workers than jobs, even long term, so trying to ride it out as
Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:5, Insightful)
Well something needs to weed out those being willing to stick with a job, and being willing to stick with college is a good indication. Of course, working for four years is probably a pretty good indicator too.
Yeah, nothing says "reliable" like a combination of your parents and crazy loans paying for you to hang around a campus and burn couches for four years.
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Well something needs to weed out those being willing to stick with a job, and being willing to stick with college is a good indication. Of course, working for four years is probably a pretty good indicator too.
Yeah, nothing says "reliable" like a combination of your parents and crazy loans paying for you to hang around a campus and burn couches for four years.
In my engineering school we started with a freshman class of 300 and I graduated with 30 people. I'll amend my previous comment by stating that not all programs are an indicator of hard work when a student graduates, but I know good local college programs tend to garner a reputation when they produce good graduates.
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Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, I don't think online classes give you 100% of what in-person classes do as far as the education. At least not when I took them 10 years ago. But you can get most of it.
But what people are paying their life's savings for isn't the education. It's "the college experience". Part of it is being on campus for a few years... and part of it is the post-graduation stability. The ticket into the middle class. When you tell people, "You're son's not actually going away to college - Here's the phone number of some knowledgeable people and a pile of books", you start chipping away at the experience. People are emotionally tied to spaces. If my son won't be present at school, will he be present in a shiny office later? Have they lied to me? Is he really going to end up around proper high-class people... or will we see him in a restaurant kitchen?
The elephant in the room is that most people who go to college don't actually need the education for their jobs. It's just that the jobs all check for that Ticket to the Middle Class. No Ticket, you don't ride.
I don't think "free college for all" in the form of throwing money at the existing college system can solve this. I think we should fund focused, 6-to-18-month trade-school type programs instead. Likely it'd cost less public funding than the colleges we prop up now. It'd provide what most people go for anyway - job skills - with less of the rest. There could be placement programs with the private sector that actually work. Give employers a tax break for hiring them on, like we do with veterans. Make the private sector value these certifications. Work with employers to find what skills are needed in which regions, and offer training programs tailored to fill those needs. It'd function as the retraining program we know the economy needs. People could retrain two or three times in their life if need be, with the conciseness of these programs.
Perhaps we could add an extra year or two, optional, to the high school curriculum for general education in civics, history, such that will make a general improvement in society. Or leave that to the community college system we have now. The people who go through that route would be the ones who really want/need a rounded education, not the ones that just need to make a living. We wouldn't be talking about individuals or states spending bookoo bucks on education they don't need. Grade inflation and devaluing of degrees would stop. Education would be about education again. People who don't need it could go back to making a living without being in a perpetual state of debt and existential crisis.
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But what people are paying their life's savings for isn't the education. It's "the college experience". Part of it is being on campus for a few years...
If you look at it that way, then the colleges are indeed cutting them a price break right now. Room and board is separate from tuition, and people who are currently not living on campus are not paying for it.
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If you look at it that way, then the colleges are indeed cutting them a price break right now. Room and board is separate from tuition, and people who are currently not living on campus are not paying for it.
There are colleges that are encouraging students to still come to campus even though the classes are remote. My babysitter's brother is going to college as a freshman this year and still going into the dorms. From a cost perspective it makes sense colleges would want this because they still have to pay property taxes, upkeep, mortgages, etc. with or without students in them. If they lose all revenue from dorms it would be a big hit on their finances.
I'm not really sure what their arguments are for convincin
A well-done online course isn't a lecture on Zoom (Score:5, Informative)
> Firstly, I don't think online classes give you 100% of what in-person classes do as far as the education. At least not when I took them 10 years ago.
It really depends, in my experience. Back in 1990s, some newspaper and magazine publishers would throw a PDF of their paper online and call that a web site. Some people looked at that and said "the web sucks". Of course, we know that a web site can be much, much better than a PDF, offline material, posted online.
That's analogous to what most schools did this past spring and how some people do for "online courses". Conducting your offline-style lecture over Zoom isn't an online course, anymore than putting a PDF on a web server makes a proper web site.
I've been doing a master's program from a top university, a program designed for online. I think it's great. I have great access to world-class experts, because we don't have to schedule a time to meet at their office - we can email, post in the chat, or have a quick Zoom any time. I'd even get answers at 10:00 PM while I was working on a project.
At a former job, I was part of a large team that developed online courses. We had professionals from many disciplines on the team - graphic designers, UI expert, curriculum / learning expert, subject matter experts, programmers, etc. It took about three years to develop a course. In some cases, the person who wrote the textbook (which was used at other schools) was the day-to-day instructor. In that sense, our only course was better than competing in-person courses - we had as the instructor the guy who literally wrote the book on the topic.
> don't think "free college for all" in the form of throwing money at the existing college system can solve this.
Agreed. Too much money is spent for "the college experience" (four years of partying and such) by people who can't afford to take a four-year vacation.
> If my son won't be present at school, will he be present in a shiny office later? Have they lied to me?
In my last few jobs, I don't show up to a shiny office, I go upstairs to my home office. Instead of my employer paying $15,000 / year for an office with a view, I get paid well. Very well, actually.
If your son learns the background he needs to work in a field he enjoys and is good at, he'll do well. If he parties for four years while taking courses in Peruvian pottery and Gender Studies, online or off, he might not end up with marketable skills.
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Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:4, Interesting)
But what people are paying their life's savings for isn't the education. It's "the college experience".
False. The college experience is cheap and costs next to nothing. You're paying for your degree and the name of the university on it, nothing more. Most of the world shows you get the college experience (and education) while paying less over the entire degree as an American pays for one semester.
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Also, look at where and how costs have increased at universities. It has NOT been for teaching staff/professors. The lopsided admin level people is where the costs are at. The universities keep adding high-priced deans and VPs and all that garbage that is so far removed from a classroom, and then turn around and say "but tuition costs reflect actual costs!"
Nice try. Dump all the worthless executives and costs will come down.
Re:I like that fact that it took online classes (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're missing the most important part of the college experience: networking.
You can get the education with a free library card, and much of the socializing experience by bumming around the local bars and coffee shops.
What you can't get, is the relationships built with other people in your field of expertise, who can later give you a heads up on tempting opportunities, and put in a good word for you with those making the hiring decisions. Because there's a whole lot of truth in "It's not what you know, it's who you know." And if who you know can vouch for what you know (or at least your character, which bolsters your own claims) that makes you a much lower risk hire than some unknown with a shiny resume who interviews well.
It's a free market... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not like you go to university to get an education, you can do that by lots of reading (there's this Internet thing these days). You go to get a paper (is sheepskin socially incorrect?) degree, which will get you a better job, where you'll learn actual life skills. Ocasionally, those are even related to your degree.
Re: It's a free market... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like you go to university to get an education, you can do that by lots of reading (there's this Internet thing these days).
Imagine believe this. Would you really be willing to undergo a procedure from a "doctor" who had only ever watched YouTube and read, rather than practiced on cadavers?
Maybe in your field reading and online tutorials are an acceptable substitute, but many professional fields have physical skills associated with them which it is substantially better to learn in controlled environments.
Re: It's a free market... (Score:3)
Few programs fit that example. How do you explain the worthless 5yrs majoring in - women studies - or -philosophy-. You cant even be a worthless high school guidance counselor with a philosophy degree, because even high school counselors know thats a complete fucking waste of money.
It reminds me of that line from Hackers â"
Her mom makes big bucks writing self-help
books for women. Stuff like | Women Who Love Men Who Are Emotional Amoebae |
Not every degree comes with experime
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rather than practiced on cadavers?
You took a very specific edge example but even then you're off base. Much of a medical degree is spent in a classroom and preparing for practical work.
I would absolutely let a doctor who did his entire pre-med study himself and spent his life absorbing youtube videos before actually starting his practical experience perform surgery on me. Doctors don't get a magical stamp of approval after sitting some exam, on the job training is a frigging huge part of their life.
Now back outside your poor attempt to cont
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Medical school is 4 years, followed by 3 years of residency
The overwhelming majority of practical is done in residency. Specialties are a great move of the goalpost since you don't do that in your university as part of your degree.
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The problem with autodidacts is that they don't know what is important to know, and what it is that they don't know. They also have a nasty habit of skipping over topis they don't find immediately interesting.
Then they go online and pretend they're Ph.d equivalents because they watched a few video's from a pop science youtube series.
Re: It's a free market... (Score:2)
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Many Universities have already retracted their policy of letting students come back to school after taking a gap year. Now they're saying that they'll need to re-apply.
Personally, I still think students should take a gap year. But don't be surprised if the less wealthy Universities are doing everything they can not to issue refunds, or to coerce students into staying.
Why not cut administration? (Score:2, Insightful)
With classes moving online, what do you need all those high priced administrators for? The faculty is what is providing the revenue, why would they cut them?
They can also cut all the sports faculty since you can't play sports from home.
Re:Why not cut administration? (Score:5, Insightful)
Government Paperwork doesn't do itself! (Score:4, Informative)
If your campus receives ANY federal money, including from student loans, you have signed up for a bevvy of required offices, and staff to fill them, to comply with the myriad of government regulations. Watch a training video on Title IX compliance some time, and count the number of departments you need.
States have their own requirements in exchange for state money.If you can figure out how to make one department work for both state and federal compliance, you might be able to save a bit of money, but it is unlikely the number of people involved will decrease.
Yes, the percentage of people actually teaching things is shockingly low at colleges and universities, but those people would not want to be doing the required paperwork themselves!
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There are services that handle just about everything for small schools that receive federal money from student loans. It's not the huge burden you seem to think it is.
Your school sounds corrupt.
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Title IX is indeed an issue, but it's not the only one. Take a look at this NYT op-ed from several years ago [nytimes.com]. Standout point:
By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.
Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.
So, over a time period that (due to automation) admin bodies should have been trending down, the CSU system went from a ratio of ~3:1 of faculty to admin bodies to 1:1. And that number is from ten years ago while in the interim we've seen all sorts of cries from the unduly passionate that we need even more "oversight" at schools.
GP poster is quite correct: the administrators contro
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The administrators have their own union. Whoops!
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Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac are for FHA loans (i.e. real estate). They have nothing to do with student loans.
At one point there was a GSE called SLM Corporation (a.k.a Sally Mae) it ended GSE status in 1995.
Oh no ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Chapman's president, Daniele Struppa, ... giving up 20 percent of his own $720,000 base salary.
How will he survive on only a $576,000 base salary? /sarcasm
(Also noting he specifically said "base" ...)
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Re: Oh no ... (Score:2)
Hell thats not even all the other ways he gets paid.
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The president of the college I work for has in addition to his "base salary" - a small clothing allowance, a vehicle/vehicle allowance, and a cell phone allowance (as just about any dept. director or higher can get).
Operating deficits? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bull-fucking-shit. Tuition goes up yearly, they have a guaranteed revenue stream from the government ( hooking the poor stupid student into years of crippling debt ).
If you can't operate in the black with a guaranteed revenue stream you deserve to be fired.
Re: Operating deficits? (Score:2)
And tuition outpaces inflation nearly 3:1. Thats the underlying problem with the current liberal plan to have the government pay for college. Its not that the idea is flawed. Its that the plan is flawed. Its based on the plan that the universities can be trusted to set a fair price. Fuck that. Do what insurance companies do. We are paying $6k per student per semester and I dont give a fuck what your expenses are. Make it work or serve food at the local soup kitchen. Your choice.
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The quick fix is to make student loans dischargable via bankruptcy.
I'm not sure that's the "best" solution, but I feel that's the solution that would eventually lead to the best solution.
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That, and make the college provide the loans in the first place.
If they don't think the loan will be repaid, they should consider offering a more cost effective service.
California State University ripoffs during Covid (Score:5, Insightful)
I paid my son's tuition at CSU. They charged for the student health center (closed), the Student Union (campus is closed) and a "sports fee" (stupid to begin with but sports have also been discontinued).
Three fees for "services" that don't exist during the Covid shutdown.
On top of that, his physics professor essentially "didn't do" the entire lab. Some teachers are just having him read the text and take a test. Really crappy "teaching".
What a bunch of crooks!
Re:California State University ripoffs during Covi (Score:4, Funny)
Re: California State University ripoffs during Cov (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, instead of letting the media tell you to go tear down statues of atrocities from 150yrs ago, maybe people should be burning down the atrocities being committed TODAY instead. Like forcing our youth into financial bondage for something that in the 70s meant working part time as a grocery bagger to pay your tuition would cover, as long as you still lived at home.
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I was at university in Australia when the new government announced a legal crackdown on service fees, specifically there was a "student union fee" which covered all the other things you just listed that was compulsory for all students. The government made this free legally opt-in. The Universities declared that it would be the end of all student services and facilities on campus. Fast forward, the only thing that ended were 2 or 3 pointless clubs which no one was interested in.
Sure when I played Squash I ha
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Distance learning has improved a lot over the past 20 years. I'd say that there's even a lot more interaction between students and a lot more direct interaction with the instructor than in a traditional setting.
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That's not how it works at all.
Autodidacts have a lot of problems that they don't know they have. They skip topic they find uninteresting and think that they're unimportant. They miss whole subjects because they don't know what they don't know. They tend to put greater importance on they things they know well and less importance on things with which they struggle.
Besides, the autodidact can't just learn on youtube and "test out" of three years of their undergrad. It's just not how legitimate schools op
Incorrect attitudes by schools (Score:5, Interesting)
some offering discounts but most resisting, arguing that remote learning and other virus measures are making their operations more, not less, costly at a time when higher education is already struggling
They forget that student fees and tuition are to to cover the cost of the classes that person is taking. The argument is like saying the auto insurance premiums should not change at all, because the CEO's Yacht and executive bonuses still cost as much as they always did.
And as for adjustments to faculty, staff, and facilities, yes... those are absolutely the types of measures schools may and should be expected take as necessary to control their costs; just as with any other business.
Imagine how many hundreds of millions a year the costs will decrease basically not having to spend anything on maintenance for dorms and classrooms, and all; plus the new revenue opportunities that will open up now that all those various school buildings or portions can be sold or leased out for a year, since remote students will not need them.
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None. They can't lease out the buildings, because nobody else is operating, either, so there's no market. And they can't avoid doing at least basic maintenance on t
Re: Incorrect attitudes by schools (Score:2)
Leasing out old buildings is actually a pretty big business. Business offices that come pre wired for internet and phone is a big thing. Especially for businesses that just need a small space to legitimize their store front. Such as the over production of lawyers graduated yearly.
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The problem is that the costs are amortized over a very long period, and things still need to be repaired when not used. The universities don’t have the money to cover costs with reduced tuition.
But, for the next year using some endowment money to cover things is the right thing to do.
Re: Incorrect attitudes by schools (Score:2)
Bullshit. They can cut costs elsewhere. The amount of money spent of sports and grounds keeping is rediculous. Im not talking cutting grass. Since when is Topiary a fucking requirement for a properly functioning library??
The cost of remote learning (Score:2)
For years, the dream for many university administrators was to figure out the cheapest way to record all of a professor's lectures, then pay a teaching assistant to be the "instructor" for the class. Think of the money that would be saved by not paying
Zero sports costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Zero sports costs.
I don't mean "zero" as an adjective, but as an imperative verb.
When there is no on-campus tuition, there will be no sports. So close and mothball the expensive sportsball stadia, lay off the very highly paid sportsball coaches (who contribute nothing academic), stop paying for cheerleaders and other sportsball-support costs.
That will leave more money for education, of students, remotely.
Re:Zero sports costs (Score:4, Insightful)
Listen, I don't approve on a base level of collegiate sports. I think it's got little to do with the school's educational mission, I think they take advantage of student athletes which are not paid but produce revenue [theconversation.com] But on a factual level, you are wrong [saturdaymillionaires.com] that the sports programs contribute nothing. For many schools they are a large source of money in a three major ways
I would bet pretty good money that if a big-ten university that cuts sports out is gonna lose more in protest donations than they would get back on the budget. I don't like this state of affairs, but the last I checked me not liking it didn't make it not so.
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But on a factual level, you are wrong [saturdaymillionaires.com] that the sports programs contribute nothing. For many schools they are a large source of money in a three major ways
Your logic doesn't follow. If they are a "legit billions per year" source of income, why are colleges charging "sports fees" to regular students to run those programs?
I actually agree with you on the point that the sports programs bring in big money to colleges. The sports fees they charge to their students are unabashed nickel and diming. Even since administrators took over running colleges from the academics, their only goal has been to extract as much money out of their students as they can under whate
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But on a factual level, you are wrong [saturdaymillionaires.com] that the sports programs contribute nothing. For many schools they are a large source of money in a three major ways
Your logic doesn't follow. If they are a "legit billions per year" source of income, why are colleges charging "sports fees" to regular students to run those programs?
The sports fee is to pay for all the "sports" that students play. Intermural or club sports that are a drain, not a foutain. Most universities have a a gym open to all students, softball leagues, basketball leagues, volleyball leagues, etc take a quick look around and you will find most big universities support 100s of sports 99% of which lose lots of money.
Re: Zero sports costs (Score:2)
You are not wrong. But it is also extremely fucking sad that you are not wrong. Why does some assfuck that chases a baseball make more money in 1 year than the guy closing in on curing cancer will ever make in his/her lifetime. Thats hardly fucking equivalent, and even less so for a university whose mission statement is supposed to be about science and education.
Re: Zero sports costs (Score:5, Interesting)
I think your comment applies to society as a whole, not just universities.
Covid has brought into stark contrast what society seems to hold near and dear. The national footy league here in Australia asked federal government for a bailout to keep all their million-dollar players in contract, arguing the sport was *essential* to society. Meanwhile there's vaccine researchers working around the clock for minimum wage. There's frontline nurses who are contracting covid by the thousands, also getting paid minimum wage.
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Not in the case of America. They provides a net cash inflow for the university.
Good. (Score:2)
So yes, I do think that the prices need to drop given that the distribution of information just got quite a bit cheaper. A professor can now teacher a larger pool of students since the limiting factor was likely class room size and not the time o
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austerity strikes again (Score:2)
There was a time when you can get quality education for dirt cheap, this mention from someone that graduated with a BSEE in early 70s from UCB. God knows how much the state raked in from income taxes he made as a successful engineer instead what they would have made if he was just a smuck. For me graduating in 1980s from Cal State system, I had a little student debt (probably could have avoid it by better money management) but I wasn't burdened with huge student debt (just a mortgage in those first few year
Re: austerity strikes again (Score:2)
The day the feds tried to HELP, by setting up federal loans, was the day the universities was handed a blank check and a jar of vasoline and was told - dont fuck us too hard -
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And what does that mean in real english?
Re: austerity strikes again (Score:2)
It means the universities started inventing new shit to require students to take in order to line their pockets. It means that they could start mandating freshmen had to live in dorms the first year. It means even if the prices are astronomical, dont worry, we have a student aid office who specializes in saddling you with a lifetime of debt. No guilt, no remorse. A university teaches classes about the woes of that sort of debt, but will still tell you that you absolutely need to go to _their_ university eve
Layoff the faculty? (Score:4, Insightful)
A handful of universities have announced substantial price cuts... But most colleges have kept prices flat, and a few have even increased them. They can't afford to do otherwise without mass faculty layoffs, said Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall University associate professor of higher education...
The students are paying $10-35k for nice building, scenic landscaping, soccer fields, football stadiums, sports teams, counselling resources, dining, housing, skydiving clubs, comedy shows, etc. PLUS a few course lectures, and the only part of that they are getting this year is the lectures. That's the complaint. Why would laying off the people giving the lectures help address the complaint?
Imagine a mechanic charging you for a new engine, deciding to only fix the tail light because he didn't have time to install it, but then still charging you for the full engine because he didn't feel like cancelling or taking on the expense of the parts order. Customers pay for value they receive, not to prop up the business's desired annual budget.
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Some big nits to pick.
- Which colleges/universities are charging all-remote students for housing and dining? I suppose it's possible some do, but mine's not.
- Which colleges/universities aren't offering student advising and counseling? Mine is offering these services online, and I doubt you'll find a college which isn't.
- Heck, sports is a net moneymaker for many state schools, at least. UW reported sports revenues from the past fiscal year of $133 million dollars - they're worried how the lost of sports wi [thenewstribune.com]
Re: Layoff the faculty? (Score:2)
But they ARE having to pay to hear shitheads like HRC give some bullshit speech about how she was cheated. $500k that skank gets paid to hear her sour ass grapes whining yet again. Fuck Roe v Wage could not have come soon enough, otherwise her mom would have never missed with thst coat hanger. She isnt the only one. Every political has-been gets paid a fortune after office to do the speaking circuit. That fee comes straight out of your tuition whether you are so much a fan you sniff her panties, or you cou
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Customers pay for value they receive
Customer's perception of value and what is actually valuable are often very *VERY* different things. To your car example, having a headlight and a tail light, one costs $15 to repair, the other $100 (in my car because you have to remove half the fucking bumper to get at it). A customer will value those equally because the idea of having a light is identical to them and the customer has no clue on the effort involved.
The same with university. Those people who think the value comes with going to a campus and
Losing Money? (Score:2)
If these places need more revenue, then they should invite more people into their classes. All online? They should be able to staff up fairly easily.
The reality is that a "College degree" at Yale or Harvard is about buying yourself friends, acquaintances and future business partners. It's about flashing that degree. It's about who you know.
Want to be part of the upper or middle class? This is the price. Once you've paid your dues, then you are welcome to fight the system.
--
Never, never rest content
What the costs are in providing education (Score:2)
People seem to be quite unaware of what the costs are in providing higher education. Yes, there's building & admin fees, books, etc., but those make up small percentage of the total cost. It's possible to save some money by distributing resources & using pre-recorded lectures & strategies like these scale quite well which is why many universities got quite excited about massive open online courses (MOOCs).
However, the main costs don't scale. There's no point in presenting information to students
College presidents are the first to blame (Score:2)
Administration is more than 30% of University budgets, let the fat cutting start there.
There's a lot of fat to cut (Score:3)
B.S. Colleges have been on a multi-decade spending spree to soak up as much student loan money that they could. Most of that money has gone into additional administrative staff [latimes.com]. Unless you want to defend the theory that colleges were going broke before the 2000s, these people are not necessary. Colleges worked just fine in the past without them. They were added solely to give the college an excuse to charge more for tuition.
Tuition is grossly overinflated relative to the cost of core operations (faculty + a few administrators to keep the lights burning). It only "reflects your cost of operation" if you include all those unnecessary expenses as a "cost of operation."
How is it even possible... (Score:2)
To offer lab-based degree classes, especially engineering and architecture in an online format?
Re: How is it even possible... (Score:2)
And for that matter medicine.
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The University of Minnesota, at least, is shipping lab kits and instructions to the students, for at least some of its labs for lower-division classes.
My expectation is that the upper-division labs that start involving hazardous materials are still in-person but distanced (e.g. organic chem.)
Wish I thought of that (Score:2)
Wish I thought of that when I was getting my degree in a distance learning program, which was *more expensive* than an equivalent in-person program "because convenience". Should have demanded to pay *less* for the "glorified Skype".
May the universities burn in the fire of their own (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah its gonna be a rough ride, but what rises out of the ashes might actually be institutions of higher learning. I miss them.
but we need to build a 100M e-sports gym! (Score:2)
if going to be on why not University of Phoenix? (Score:2)
At least with the University of Phoenix they have been doing on line for years so they are likely to do a better job at it.
Social aspect most important (Score:5, Interesting)
The #1 reason to pay to go to expensive business schools is to be surrounded by other students who paid a lot of money to be surrounded by the same. It's the social networking aspect which is critical in this path. There is actually very little you get from a university business curriculum that could not easily be obtained by self study. It's about being surrounded by your peers and establishing your credibility with people within your social network. Parties, bar trips, etc... are critical to a successful business degree. I'm not going to say that good professors and good lectures are worthless, but you could actually get that from open courseware and complete the curriculum for free and very quickly if that was the value. And online forums are quite useful for asking the occasional question.
Sciences
It's true in most sciences, working from home is perfectly ok. I work in high energy physics with CERN and the LHC and when the offices closed the travel stopped... nothing changed. We all kept going pretty unaffected. For most sciences, we like to work in labs and we like to get a feel for what we're doing. But honestly, online videos by Walter Lewin and others are generally more than sufficient. The rest is generally simulated in software anyway. In math and physics, probably 95% of the studies can be done with books, videos and Jupyter Notebooks.
Medicine
For undergraduate studies, a very very large amount of this study could be done online. There are definitely aspects of this which cannot. For example, dissecting a human in anatomy class obviously cannot be done online. In a way this is one of the most important courses a student can take as an undergraduate. There are just some things you can't simulate with videos. There is a certain touch and feel like "This is a healthy spleen" and "On this body, the spleen is inflamed" that you can show, but the students need to have some gloves on and just try.
I can cover discipline by discipline, but overall, I think the most important aspect of a university is being surrounded by your peers. Even introverts benefit greatly from the group environment and this can't be simulated online. You need people to study together and you need them to drink together. They need to establish communities.
Let's be perfectly honest... an MIT graduate is special not because of what they learned because MIT told them to study it. An MIT graduate is special because they go through an extremely effective vetting and admissions process that narrows the students base they work with to a small number of highly effective independent workers. It's not good enough just to get grades achieved through memorization. To get into MIT, you have to be someone who studied above and beyond your high school requirements. Anyone who achieves this level should also be able to sit and study on their own and reach a certain level of excellence in any discipline... with or without the support of the school. MIT has excellent lecturers and I don't know of any other university that doesn't set attendance requirements that consistently fills lecture halls as they do. Of course, most of the courses at MIT are available online for self-study (I've watched many). The TAs are quite good as well... after all, they made the cut to get in there too. But, as I'm not an MIT student, I don't use their TAs and generally just ask questions online... and often I get great answers.
So why would someone who is that amazing go to MIT in the first place?
Facilities... whether you're talking about MediaLab or you're talking about the semiconductor facilities, they are extremely well equipped. I for instance like to hang out at the semiconductor facilities in the next building over from where I work. It's about being around brilliant people and learning from osmosis. Sure there's the occasional professor of interest floating around. But in reality, there's nothing special about the professors in most cases... in fact, most uni
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Let's start with the obvious.... business degrees.
I think the world's opinion is swinging against them. Even in Australia they're just in the process of re-tiering the entire educational pricing system. What was previous setup that the most expensive to run courses cost the most (engineering, science, medicine, basically anything with a lot of lab work) is being rejigged based on degree value to society. e.g. Engineering and Medicine (both in short supply) are getting cheaper, whereas business management, economics, accounting and law (all in oversupply) a
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No... without the social aspect ... and maybe the labs... I can't see any possible reason to go to the university. It's a waste of time and money and you'd be better off buying and reading the books on your own. And if you're not a person who can do that... the a university degree is pretty much a lie anyway.
The following one is also pretty good but it needs a caveat:
Let's be perfectly honest... an MIT graduate is special not because of what they learned . . . because they go through an extremely effective vetting and admissions process that narrows the students base they work with to a small number of highly effective independent workers
The caveat being that while it is effective for the school, it is difficult to imagine they are not filtering away vast numbers of students that would also do quite well but which couldn't make the cut set by their criteria. For example, they may come up short in not joining Physics Club (even if there wasn't one at their school, or it wasn't safe to hang out aft
Why are you paying them in the first place? (Score:2)
People need to figure out if college is a social club or an education institution. The only reason to complain about the costs without face time is because you feel it's a social club. How many country clubs do you think are handing out COVID refunds?
IT IS A SOCIAL CLUB! DUH! (Score:3)
You don't get a job in the whitehouse or whatever by going to an affordable school for a decent education! Part of the marketing may not be overt at all the places but it's part of the selling point for expensive schools; and it's the REAL value in their expense. Problem is that in reality it is no different than sending your child to summer camp for sports thinking they will be able to become rich professional sports stars. It only works for a few and it does boost the odds a little. (but unlike sports
In-residence is an extravagance (Score:3)
Look for a couple of dozen big name schools to offer relatively low-cost degrees online. You might have to go in-residence for one or two terms somewhere, depending on the field of study (for example: a chem major might need a lab, but that might also be arranged through third-party provided locations scattered geographically).
The fully in-residence degree will be seen more and more as an extravagance and an atavism.
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The ponzi scheme is on the verge of coming unraveled if the students will have some backbone and make a hard refusal to pay the traditional prices.
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It's not going to work great on all topics, but really a huge amount of content you take in college is stuff you aren't all that interested in. For all those classes you just need to get out of the way distance learning should be just fine. On the other hand everything takes practice and a bunch of teachers with zero previous experience doing distance learning and minimal existing infrastructure is guaranteed to be a rough transition. College in the US is mostly WAY too expensive regardless of online only or campus classes. The online part really doesn't have much to do with anything because it's nobodies choice or fault there happens to be a global pandemic that you just have to work around for the next year or three. That's just how some years go, so blaming the fact you a being made to go online for the high prices that have been growing faster than wages for decades now is a little bit dumb. I get they want a discount, but nobody else is getting a discount on anything during the pandemic and a short term discount like that could only be fairly small/superficial since you can't radically shift the whole business models overnight and just for this short term global pandemic. Everybody is paying the same costs for less service OR avoiding the services in the short term. LOTS of kids want to take a year of college... now they have a good reason, otherwise OH WELL if you don't like the less than perfect conditions. People who have to go shopping with reduced service and options don't get reduced prices. People working under harder conditions due to new rules aren't getting paid more. That level of micromanaging for a short term disaster just isn't practical, you just have to make the best of it and work with a lot of imperfect solutions. 2020 is just a mostly lost year... deal with it. 2021 won't be amazingly better most likely, but at least we'll be more used the idea of the fragile nature of our standards of living. That's a good lesson for a lot of people... maybe not mostly people globally, but a lot of the brand name nations that are talked about most in the news.
If you’re the product of distance learning I’m worried. Apparently paragraphs isn’t a part of online learning. :)
Re: Academics (Score:2)
That should not surprise you. Animal Farm spelled that out fairly simply. Equally disappeared fast in that story.
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The price is how Invisible Hand of Free marked
There is no invisible hand. There is no free market, and if there was it would be a disaster.
Go read Adam Smith's actual writings. It's laughable garbage by a man that never had to work a day in his life.