Your State University Doesn't Want You

theodp writes "According to a new survey of college admissions directors by Inside Higher Ed, the admissions strategy judged most important is the recruitment of more out-of-state and international students, who can pay significantly more at public institutions. Ten percent of those surveyed also reported admitting full-pay students with lower grades and test scores than other admitted applicants, and a majority of schools either use or plan to use controversial commission-paid agents to recruit foreign students (commission-based recruitment is barred in the U.S.). 'This isn't about globalization or increased educational diversity,' asserts USC's Jerome A. Lucido. 'They need the money.' So, should employees of a public university where the President's annual compensation exceeds $1 million receive a full state-funded pension for educating 16,000+ out-of-state students?"

Comments

As a university professor:

[Anonymous Coward]

Our funding in Wisconsin was slashed by our governor. Our pay has been slashed for the last 4 years. Enrollment is down, which means money for supplies is trickling down to zero. So when we go to China (a new program instituted this year) to import foreign students, we're doing it to stay solvent.

Who should be mad? I would say the taxpayers of the state, but they get what they pay for. Even though they have paid into the system their whole lives, they would rather save a few bucks in taxes each year than have access to cheap, amazing education in their state.

Someone has to pay for all those managers...

[G-Man]

"What happened, for instance, to swell the bureaucracy at the UC over the past two decades? There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different - 2,429 to 6,846.

Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it's all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1."

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/585302/201109191844/By-The-Way-We-Teach-A-Little-Too.htm

Costs of education?

[Gr8Apes]

The cost of education really has sky-rocketed. Perhaps a study or two needs to be done on the real cost of education, because to hear tell, the educators aren't getting big raises, and this even occurs at schools with no need for capital expansion. So where is all this additional money going?

Perhaps state funded schools should need to justify every increase in their tuition, and certainly business projects, such as stadiums and sports teams, should be excised out of the report (ie, they need to be self-funding)

Re:Costs of education?

[ironjaw33]

Obviously, but that clearly isn't the sole cause of increases in education costs which were occurring during the boom years and also at private institutions.

+1. Ten years ago, my first year in a state funded university cost about $10k. State support was at about 20% of the school's operating budget. Today, it costs around $25k with state support at about 13%. So a drop in 7 percentage points in state funding equals a tuition increase of 2.5? Not only that, but the school has also increased total enrollment as well as the proportion of out of state and international students, which pay more than if you live in state.

Re:Capitalism - make your own

[Antisyzygy]

You can't just start a business without capital. Right-wingers always assume people have the ability to gather savings when they are under-paid and/or under-employed, then start businesses in fields with such large capital requirements that it would be impossible. Just try to start a cellular provider, or internet provider, or restaurant, etc. You pretty much have to find a rich person to finance you, and that is also not as easy as Right-wingers always assume it is. Simply put, the middle class has been eroded and pressured so badly there are not many capable of doing this. If you look at the number of "entrepreneurs" attempting to start businesses over the last 30 years it has been a steady decline mostly due to people not being able to survive let alone save anything on the wages they make. We live in a capitalist society with less-and-less markets capable of being exploited due to massive corporations, off-shoring, and the money supply being concentrated into only a few hands. Then, if you want a good job, you need a good education and thus are slapped with crippling debt for the rest of your life. How can you start a business when all your savings go to paying off interest?