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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?"
Considering how much tuition has increased at my local state schools over the last decade or so, I'm not sure they want *anyone*. I really feel sorry for kids today. It wasn't that long ago that I went to college. And tuition has almost tripled at my old school since then (while incomes have barely budged). If I had to do it over again today, there is no way I would have been able to afford it without crippling student loan debt. Sadly this rise has happened in a time when it has become almost essential to get a college degree if you want any kind of decent job.
There was an excellent article on this a couple of years ago in the NY Times.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's a purposeful distortion to ask if rank-and-file *employees* should get a pension after a lifetime of service, simply because one single administrator (uni pres) has a huge paycheck. That's like asking if the front desk secretary should be allowed to have a cigarette break because the Goldman Sachs CEO is already out playing golf.
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.
"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
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)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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?
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I am working at a "state school" right now, which receives a whopping 5% of its budget from the state. Do not be so quick to assume that "state school" means "paid for by the state government."
Palm trees and 8
Parent is insightfully addressing the misleading question in the summary:
"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?"
This appears to be a deliberate attempt to undermine the idea of providing a pension system to state employees without providing any evidence that those employees haven't earned that pension.
This rhetorical attempt to represent the compensation of a university *president* as justification for reduce compensation for the majority of university employees is logically fallacious, and seems like an attack on those employees simply because they work for a state or a state education system..
I expect better. Yes, even from Slashdot.