Britain's Bankrupt Universities Are Hunting For Cheaper Models (economist.com) 88
British universities face mounting financial pressures with four in ten institutions running deficits, according to the Office for Students regulator. Half have closed courses to save money, while Durham and Newcastle each shed 200 staff members. Lancaster's cost-saving plan could eliminate one in five academic positions. The crisis, writes Economist, stems from frozen tuition fees for English students, which will rise by only a few percent in August for the first time in eight years.
Cheaper models? (Score:4, Funny)
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Page three.
Is that where we find the naked campus “administrators” tenured by the dozen? ‘Cause I have an idea as to why costs are so pointlessly high..
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In California, the number of administrative staff at state-funded colleges has tripled since 1980.
Some of the increase, but not all, is due to unfunded federal mandates.
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In California, the number of administrative staff at state-funded colleges has tripled since 1980.
Some of the increase, but not all, is due to unfunded federal mandates.
"Some" yes, but the event's leading up to the student loan crisis allowed Universities to have more administrators than professors and researchers.
Where I retired from, when I started, and until the early 1990's, we had three people doing our accounting. When I retired, Accounting was the largest group in the place, they even put accountants in each group. With a total budget not much more than before. Sure was a strain on overhead. Actually eliminated it.
But my requirement to take professional devel
No Tenure (Score:2)
Is that where we find the naked campus “administrators” tenured by the dozen?
Not in the UK because UK universities no longer have tenure. Unless something has changed since I left the government forced universities to employ lecturers on fixed term contracts that do not have to be renewed when they expire.
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I'm still available, if they need a balding, dying cancer patient for some hot photo sessions.
Given my situation, I am afraid I'm going to need to have cash payment up front, and all expenses paid.
Economist's analysis is a bit trite (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend who worked for Jo Johnson (ex higher ed minister under the Tories) and who was an exuberant backer of tuition fees and student loans. I pointed out to him that the administrative costs and profits of the loans model, plus the timeshifting effects of costs being incurred by unis immediately but revenues taking years to generate, inevitably meant that the system would come under immense financial strain, all for the nominal moral principle of introducing a user-pays element that was clearly done to satisfy nasty old cunts who never went to uni themselves and resented paying into a general taxation pot for anyone else to go. He insisted that the model was sound, and made clear that he thought the Scandi model of just funding three years of tertiary education via general taxation the same way the previous 13 years of education is funded was totally ridiculous.
Well, I was right, and he was wrong, despite his giant brain. This has been a cluster of massive proportions, and proves that once you break certain types of thing, it's an enormous pain to fix them. And New Labour and the Tories absolutely broke higher ed, and I won't forgive them for that. My son's at Durham, and in common with almost every other British uni, he had virtually no teaching at all in his third term. It's a fucking joke.
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What the fuck are you talking about? Who says I fell or voted for any of this? I certainly didn't, so how about you take your twattery and shove it up your arse, you delusional prick. I don't own higher education policy, and I literally have related a story to you in which I tried to persuade someone who was actually in a position to influence policy to change his mind, which is pretty fucking active for a member of joe public, and a damn sight more than you've ever done, I'll warrant
Re: Economist's analysis is a bit trite (Score:1)
I rarely post. But Shelley, you are right on the money. Moving to pay for education has killed our once elite universities. Unless of course you have a spare silver spoon and go to oxbridge. You summed up the situation well and the AC above can do one.
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People repeating that prejudice and discouraging applications are a bigger problem for Oxbridge access than lack of silver spoons.
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I rarely post. But Shelley, you are right on the money. Moving to pay for education has killed our once elite universities. Unless of course you have a spare silver spoon and go to oxbridge. You summed up the situation well and the AC above can do one.
I'm not certain how they do it across the big pond, but the Student loan business over here was so messed up. Students were getting money for tuition, books, and living expenses. And the kiddies apparently thought it was an all expenses paid scholarship.
We should never have pulled such a stunt for young adults, many who have had every bill paid by parents from birth. It just seemed like one more benny for many.
So we're adjusting over here. Until the student loans took over, and the semesters edging in
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Holding each of us accountable at an individual level for governments' policy decisions, even when we may have actively voted for parties opposed to many policiy decisions and, as in my case, actually tried to persuade policy-makers to change position, isn't a convenient summary, it's a nihilistic and cynical rewriting of the political process designed to make us all feel personally to blame at the same time as being helpless to do anything about it. I reject it completely as a trope. It's every bit as dumb
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Virtually no teaching = a single lecture and a couple of seminars in the third term, plus a single exam.
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Virtually no teaching = a single lecture and a couple of seminars in the third term, plus a single exam.
Are they doing a sandwich course?
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Nope. This is now standard practice outside Oxbridge, Imperial and a couple of other places, and some specific courses eg medicine. Even 30 years ago, there was some of this. But now it's rampant.
Re: Economist's analysis is a bit trite (Score:2)
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"Oh but electricians will be treated by doctors who studied at university" goes the tired argument
The argument for funding universities used to be that they were funded by the increased tax rate that higher earners pay because, with very few exceptions, higher earners have either benefited from a university education themselves or have benefitted from the works of others with university educations.
The great thing with that system was that those who needed a university education but who ended up in a lower paying job like teacher or nurse were not saddled with massive debts and instead had their educ
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"Oh but electricians will be treated by doctors who studied at university" goes the tired argument
The argument for funding universities used to be that they were funded by the increased tax rate that higher earners pay because, with very few exceptions, higher earners have either benefited from a university education themselves or have benefitted from the works of others with university educations.
The great thing with that system was that those who needed a university education but who ended up in a lower paying job like teacher or nurse were not saddled with massive debts and instead had their education paid for by those going into business and earning far more employing an educated and healthy workforce. the great thing with that old social contract is that it justified higher taxes for the more wealthy and they, along with the rest of society, got to benefit from it. Instead now we have a system where it's hard to justify higher taxes on those earning more because they are almost entirely excluded from the benefits and jobs critical to society, like teachers, are becoming increasingly hard to fill.
The system is indeed pretty messed up. It's a conglomeration of several issues.
One of the really big issues is that we aren't students forever. At some point, a person graduates, and needs to support themselves. I knew that way back in the day. I looked at my abilities, and what would allow me to make a living afterwards. I know people drone on about GS or Philosophy majors, but where exactly did they think their knowledge gained from listening to each other's opinions in an echo chamber would take them
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Huh? What's next? As the road using standards become more and more, shall we say, "democratic", it becomes difficult to justify building and maintaining public roads. Especially when people with no cars are effectively subsidising the ones that have them. (etc)
Public education is an intellectual infrastructure, just like the public road system is a physical infrastructure, and the public hospital system is a service infrastructure. When one's civilization privatizes and removes its public infrastructure
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Going to university somewhere in Europe was a great option for British kids that would have trouble affording university in the UK. Pick the right university and the tuition was free, the teaching was in English, and there was help with living costs. Brexit put a stop to that though.
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As it happens, my son is also an Austrian citizen, and so could have gone to university in France or elsewhere in the EU for free. And he may yet do that for his third year. But he didn't want to go abroad for all three years.
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This is another Brexit dividend! International students used to make up a significant amount of uni funding here. That dropped off a lot after the right-wing cunts (Tories mostly, new labour include) made the UK hostile to our best-paying students.
Re: Economist's analysis is a bit trite (Score:2)
right-wing cunts (Tories mostly, new labour include) made the UK hostile to our best-paying students.
2nd best paying students. Those from outside the EU pay more as they were not entitled to treatment equal to that of UK citizens.
I wholeheartedly agree with the name-calling though.
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Brexit didn't just make the UK hostile to EU students, the impact followed through to a drop in all international registrations, not just those from the EU. We also lost quite a lot of good staff who didn't want to live outside the EU (there were pension and professional registration impacts).
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Brexit definitely made things worse, but even without that, universities were facing real challenges financially thanks to the student loans system
More admin staff vs instructors = financial crisis (Score:4, Informative)
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Once administration is put in control the first thing they always do is expand the administration department.
Ontario, Canada, has the same issue (Score:1, Insightful)
If that'
Staff (Score:3)
The large university near me has a 10-1 staff to faculty ratio. Not administrators, or academic staff. Janitors, groundskeepers, support, librarians, maintenance workers, aides to the higher-ups, etc.. This seems a bit excessive.
Fun story. I have friends who work for a smaller, though still quite big, local university. When a new president came on board, his wife was dismayed that he only had one personal aide and a secretary, and she didn't get one (at the larger university, the president has something li
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After ~5 weeks, I got pissed off, and walked to the office of the assistant dean, the second or third person in charge. I didn't schedule an appointment, I didn't email anyone, I just walk
Trickle-Down (Score:2)
I appreciate the post. This is what is happening in my friend's department.
He works in IT support. There used to be around 30 full time staff to support all major university functions. Email, blackboard, access to 3rd party sites, directory and security, stuff like that. As time went on, 20% of the staff were doing 80% of the work. You had new hires with no experience nor any desire to do any work of any kind. They were experts at making excuses as to why they couldn't do the work, or were overworked, or ge
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She didn't happen to want a crowbar upside her head did she?
Cause I don't think anyone would have a problem funding that.
Re:Ontario, Canada, has the same issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of your post is repeating false propaganda. While classes like "The Music of Taylor Swift" etc do exist, they are the equivalent of the inter mural sports program - they cost very little money, have small classes, and are add-ons that attract attention and students rather than loss leaders. What you call the 'side programs' do wonders to educate the students again at low cost. They do not cost the university money.
The STEM classes are the expensive ones that many people join and then quit the program. Everyone and their uncle wants to be one of the 'smart, valuable students', but most don't have what it takes. All those people trying to make the cut but failing cost the university far more money for far less return.
The atriums etc that you dislike, they are usually gifted by the wealthy. People give 50 million and demand an atrium to have their name.
Similarly, the licensed software is often gifted by the corps. They want people to learn how to use their license stuff, not the free-ware which is just as/almost as good.
There is no "better not be white service", and your inclusion of that indicates that you are prejudiced. You and the snide comments you make are why we need those services. Yes, these things are expensive. The easiest way to deal with that cost is to just kick anyone out that thinks like you. Stop coddling racist and prejudiced shmucks rather than paying for therapy for everyone else.
The real costs problems tend to be 1) administrative, 2) failed students, 3) healthcare is growing.
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Healthcare was a shit show at the school. The school required you to have insurance, and if you didn't have private insurance, you had to buy the school's insurance.
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When you're paying thousands of $$$ to attend University because HR drone says thou must - and you see your money being horribly wasted - how is that a personal gripe?? Universities are losing money and ultimately customers - why? more and more people see them as no longer worth the money/debt - and this is a great deal of why. Luckily I'm old enough to have gone to University for free (UK poster here and our crooked Govt even took that away from us, no lowering of taxes to compensate though!) - I'd ha
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I mostly agree, but I have to press the point that I mention to all kids wary about the cost of university in the UK - you don't come out of university with a debt, the government does. What you've agreed to is paying a higher effective rate of tax when you earn above a threshold. The loan doesn't impact your eligibility for other loans, and it gets written off after time. So don't worry about the size of the loan, think about whether you think that paying that higher rate of tax is a fair exchange for goin
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When you're paying thousands of $$$ to attend University because HR drone says thou must - and you see your money being horribly wasted - how is that a personal gripe?? Universities are losing money and ultimately customers - why? more and more people see them as no longer worth the money/debt - and this is a great deal of why. Luckily I'm old enough to have gone to University for free (UK poster here and our crooked Govt even took that away from us, no lowering of taxes to compensate though!) - I'd have been very upset had I gone in debt for it - it wouldn't have been worth it.
All of this mess is part of the Degreed Übermenschen mantra, where a person's worth is indicated bay a college degree - and what degree they have is utterly unimportant. It is the concept that a person who has a communications degree, and has no job prospects other than the Drive-thru at McDonalds is still markedly superior to say a master machinist making 150 K a year.
So yes, more and more people are coming to understand that it is not a good bargain. More and more are coming to understand that not
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I'd add that higher education is where corporations outsourced their training programs to, which is why people don't get out of uni with an education, but with a training.
I saw this on myself: from the 1st year it was always "in preparation for your future job" . No, fuck you, I want to learn stuff, and gain critical thinking, not become a trained monkey for corpos.
I am a monkey now though.
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I'd add that higher education is where corporations outsourced their training programs to, which is why people don't get out of uni with an education, but with a training.
I saw this on myself: from the 1st year it was always "in preparation for your future job" . No, fuck you, I want to learn stuff, and gain critical thinking, not become a trained monkey for corpos. I am a monkey now though.
You'd love some of my instructors. minored in art with a focus on Photography. When I'd press them on what a class was worth to a career, the universal response was "We' aren't training you for a job, your question is irrelevant". Another one once told me my work looked like the work of 5 different photographers. I thanked him. He said it wasn't a compliment. I told him that it looked like 5 different photographers because I had the chops to make work that looked like 5 different photographers, so I could d
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the licensed software is often gifted by the corps
You do live in a little fantasy land all your own.
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Maybe post secondary institutes wouldn't be broke, if they focused on education
Actually, focusing on sports is more profitable.
The classes are a money sink. Why have them at all?
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Maybe post secondary institutes wouldn't be broke, if they focused on education
Actually, focusing on sports is more profitable.
The classes are a money sink. Why have them at all?
And the sports departments fund a lot of scholarships, at least half must go to women.
One of my favorite points to make is when women, who make up a majority of the people who utterly hate the athletic departments and want them eliminated, get reminded that they are suggesting the elimination of hundreds of women or thousands at the big unis being kicked out of college.
Crickets is the usual response.
Do you want the elimination of scholarships for women?
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I am doing projects in FreeCAD that I believe would tax AutoCAD beyond its practical limits. By way of saying that, while FreeCAD does not trounce AutoCAD in every single way, it already beats it in some ways and is moving far more rapidly than AutoCAD. Rather reminiscent of the progress of Linux or Blender or Krita, all of which now rule their worlds.
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One of the things that Autodesk has that AutoCAD works with is Vault Professional. This is customized source control for groups of drafters. It's integrated with and in AutoCAD, Inventor and more. It's not just SVN or Git with binary file support, it's into the linked assemblies and custom parts that are linked into the larger drawings etc.
Then, much like Office from 2003 era or Adobe or whatever, there's likely decades of history all organized, commented, linked, and integrated into other processes in at l
money (Score:2)
UK here. When I went to uni in 2005, it was £1300 a year (I did four years), when I did my masters in 2009 it was £3000. My younger brother started his degree in 2010 and it was £9000 a year. Did he get 7x as good an education as me. I DOUBT IT.
You can always tell whatever the UK equivalent of a boomer is when they talk about 'the grant', where they lived in a crazy fantasy world that existed up to 1998 where the state supported its students. "Oh don't you have the grant" "but you've got t
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The old fuck over the young. It's an old tale. And the young are so fucking stupid, they don't vote.
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Vote for who?
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Better candidates in primaries.
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U.S. defaultism...
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Then they can run for office.
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The lesser evil.
It sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
Not voting only leads to the shittier candidate winning by default and the slightly better candidate ignoring you since you're not a voter. The loser's faction will move to the middle since that's where the people who actually vote seem to be. The winner's faction will push further toward their side, since they can afford to. Democracy takes a long time, but look what the conservatives have accomplished by sticking together and voting, year afte
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Unfortunately it does not look like "the loser's faction will move to the middle". Witness what Democrats are getting the biggest buzz. It is obvious that extremism on one side makes the other side say "hey we can be just as extreme in the opposite direction!". This is despite the fact that the stupidest person working for either party knows that if they just put out a MODERATE candidate that they would wipe the floor with the opponent.
I voted against Trump. But I am seriously afraid what we are going to ge
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Vote for any of the smaller parties. I've voted for small far-left parties, right wing parties, joke parties, single issue parties. Anyone who votes for the Big 2 (or 2.5 in the UK) in my opinion is an idiot and is directly resonsible for the state the UK is in now. Maybe go so far as to call them a Traitor to the People of the UK.
People say "muh wasted vote" - half of it is about showing the big parties they aren't invulerable. If enough people went out and voted for the smaller parties the large ones mi
Re: money (Score:2)
No, in general, they don't.. The old tend to try and look out for the young, and help where they can.. That's been my experience anyway..
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Not when it comes to politics.
They'll help out when needed, but voting for the interests of the young, potentially against theirs, that ain't happening, and we have the entire world to prove that.
To prove my point: has there been a US GenX president?
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So, you would have the young vote against their own interests to help the aged (who really do need help) as well?
Everyone votes with what they believe will work best both for themselves and for everyone. Believing that just because someone votes other than the way you think they ought to shows that you have a massive bias. I've literally voted for every major party in the UK, all based on manifestos of what they say they're going to attempt to do, on the basis that I think that manifesto makes the most s
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> Believing that just because someone votes other than the way you think they ought to shows that you have a massive bias.
What? I never said anything remotely close to that.
I'm not saying they vote wrong, I'm saying they vote in their own interest.
Commenting in direct opposition to "The old tend to look out for the young" , which I maintain doesn't apply in politics.
> Honestly don't care if there's been a GenX president, as I'm not from the USA. I'm fairly sure there will be at some point.
You missed w
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The old fuck over the young. It's an old tale. And the young are so fucking stupid, they don't vote.
It's also an old tale that it is such a handy excuse. "I failed at life because of those fscking Boomers!"
Because it is easier to fail with a bucket of excuses blaming everyone else than to put in the work to succeed.
And actually, a lot of people, especially young men did vote this past year. Being marginalized and dehumanized by the far left and Democrats for so long, they didn't vote the way that Democrats and far left told them to vote. Gotta give the Dems credit, they demolished a demographic that
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https://rugbyoldbloke.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
Never ever forgive.
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And I'd be proud to contribute... Wrong country though.
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The Lib Dems should maybe have gone for a confidence and supply arrangement rather than full coalition, but the point of coalition is that both parties have to compromise, and the junior party/-ies have to compromise more. Compare the 2010-2015 parliament to the 2015-2019 one and tell me that the Lib Dems didn't have a moderating effect.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise (Score:2)
Wow, who could have predicted that trebling fees back in 2012 [wikipedia.org] would cause a problem?
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??
I think you're missing something. That caused a problem for the students. What caused a problem for the universities was that the newly trebled fees were meant to cover the entire course. Then the fees stayed the same through Brexit and Trussnomics, leaving the universities with very little money.
We need far less undergraduates (Score:3)
Being a graduate is now of little real world use, but has become a positional good which employers use to reduce the number of applicants to a reasonable amount. So more and more kids are taking Masters, for the same reason. This is a self destructive arms race that merely advantages those employed in the tertiary education sector. Stop it now - with a 25% cut in the number of undergraduate loans available, with the cuts focused towards those subjects that have graduates earning less 20 years down the line.
FTFY (Score:3)
We need far fewer undergraduates.
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The benefits of a Game of Thrones education.
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Oh, I dunno.
I think having a better chance, or ANY CHANCE, of getting a decent job is a pretty good "real world use".
raise prices (Score:2)
They can go to the US student loan system (Score:2)
They can go to the US student loan system
No real surprises. (Score:3)
The courses used to be fully funded by a grant here in the UK. All you needed was to have the academic credentials to get in, and that was the tough part. About 15% of people went on to higher education (in the early 80s); the theory was that over your working life, you'd more than repay to the government in taxes what was spent on your training for your reasonably "high flying" job. Which was fairly true.
The wonderful thing about that was that selection was entirely on how academically competent you were (rather than practically competent, which was more for vocations and apprenticeships); it opened up social mobility quite nicely.
Then more courses were added. with increasingly niche and impractical subjects, many of which had a handful of hours of lectures a week, and by the mid 90s, about 25% of the school leavers went to University. The government decided it could no longer afford to send all these people to Uni, so introduced Student Loans instead of Grant, which had the immediate effect of starting to dissuade the poorer (though sometimes academically gifted) people from going to Uni.
Then after that in 1998 came tuition fees which needed to be paid (introduced by a Labour government, who were the last ones anyone would think would do this due to the chilling effect on social mobility that the extra financial encumbrance brought).
As parents weren't used to the eye-wateringly high cost of higher education that existed in places like the US, there was only so much that could be politically asked of people to pay, so course fees were capped. Still too expensive for poor, and quite a millstone around the necks of recent graduates.
All the increased degree taking (around 50% of the UK population now have degrees by the time they're 30) means degrees aren't worth what they were, and command far less salary, rendering them not such a great pathway (except you now almost need a degree to flip burgers in McDonalds).
Seeing as there's a limited amount of people you can funnel through the degree channel, and the cap definitely hasn't been keeping up with inflation, then something needs to give. Fixed costs of buildings and utilities remain the same, so the only factor left is to reduce the courses and the academic staff involved with those (fewer courses means fewer administrators, along with fewer lecturers).
I don't think most families see the allure of vastly higher tuition fees that would allow Universities to continue in their current mode, as the return on investment simply isn't there. Apprenticeships are starting to find the appeal that they used to have (two of the most successful youngsters that I know did Engineering apprenticeships, and are now on salaries not far short of mine, while I know a boatload of Degree graduates with crippling debt over their heads, and without the grounding to do a role that would pay that back in any comfortable timespan.
Couple this with the financial crash of 2009 (which is having a generational financial impact) and COVID (which will definitely be having a generational financial impact), there really isn't the money anywhere to pass along to these institutions.
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The only note I'd add is that "selection was entirely on how academically competent you were" should be replaced with "selection was entirely on how well coached you'd been to pass exams". There were certainly people there based just on how academically gifted they were. There was also a large cohort there based on how much money had been thrown at tutors and private schools, or who had happened to live near a sixth-form college skilled at getting people into university.
It's not a trivial exercise to design
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Student loans came in early 90s rather than mid - I'm from the first year ever to have them, and I gradated in 1992.
Baumol's Cost Disease (Score:2)
Aside from the regularly cited (and very real) bloat in administration in education, there's another important factor [wikipedia.org] driving up education costs: productivity gains in areas like manufacturing and technology tend to drive up prices in services sectors like education and healthcare. When productivity rises in some parts of the economy wages ultimately end up rising across the board, but for sectors (particularly in services) where productivity can't rise as fast, those wage increases turn into real value pr
Why is higher education so expensive? (Score:2)
I still don't understand why higher education is so expensive. Nearly every college/university is so old that all their property and buildings are long paid off. I get research is expensive, but tuition shouldn't cover research, grants should. So, other than slightly better paid educators and possibly smaller classes, why does higher education often cost 2 to 10 times as much?
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The University I'm near and the college I went to regularly build new buildings for numerous reasons. A new college (Computer Science became a degree path maybe 20 years ago at a lot of places), a new research center (some things need new buildings to house newer technologies), new dorm buildings so they can increase admission / house more people coming to college. Some buildings age out and need stuff like more power plugs, or wifi, or are just falling apart (depending on various things), or are up for mee