Who'd Go To University Today? (spiked-online.com)

Are students being short-changed by their $60,000 degree courses? And does a university education in 2018 represent good value for money? A slew of recent government and think-tank reports aim to tackle these questions. And the answers they give are not encouraging. From a report: The Public Accounts Committee announced this month that the value of the UK's student-loan system is falling. Last year, the government sold a tranche of the student-loan book at a major loss. The portfolio had a face value of $4.4 billion, but was sold for just $2.1 billion: a return of 48p in the pound, according to the public-spending watchdog. Clearly, the current method of funding higher education represents a bad deal for the taxpayer.

But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching, according to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration. These include admissions procedures, marketing, vice-chancellor pay and programmes to boost access for poorer students, as well as therapeutic services like mental-health provision and exam-stress counselling.

Universities today have far too much bureaucracy, fat-cat VC's salaries are far too high, and a great deal of what administrators spend money on is a hindrance to education. University bureaucracy is often at the forefront of coddling students, encouraging them to see exams and hard work as threats to their mental health. It is troubling to see that students are not only plunging themselves into debt at such a young age, but also that much of that debt does not go towards their actual education.

Comments

Oh, and those "fat cat bureaucrats" aren't real

[rsilvergun]

any more than fancy dorms are the cause of rising tuition.

Per the article I linked above tuition is going up because we slashed federal and state subsidies. I'm so tired of this lie being repeated...

Re:Another bubble

[Drethon]

Yeah, I'd like to see a link on the trades with entry level $80K

He didn't say entry level, so I'm assuming he is talking high end for both jobs with or without degree. Some numbers for good paying jobs without a degree: https://careers.workopolis.com...

Careful with the UK/US comparison

[damn_registrars]

Americans love to rant about how they think money is wasted in higher ed, but this article is from the UK. Not everything compares directly as their costs are a bit different.

As a full-time staffer at a major public research university in the US, I'd like to mention one cost that was not in the summary: building and grounds costs. Even if you don't want perfectly manicured lawns, you still need to maintain a level of safety on the grounds and make sure the buildings are collapsing on themselves. Many schools have faced year after year of reduced state and federal funding, and they have to pay these bills somehow. This isn't just an image thing either; a lot of grounds maintenance is about safety.

It is also worth noting that tuition helps pay for the costs of keeping the lights on, maintaining temperatures in rooms and labs, etc. Even as we go to smart(er) thermostats it is still not a trivial matter to provide efficient heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Schools aren't allowed to bill these costs to grants.

Are executives overpaid at our schools? Almost without question. But the amount of the tuition revenue that goes to their pay is pretty small compared to other costs that the schools have to face.