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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.
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.
Living at college used to be closer to living in the military. Dorms were spartan, you didn't have a choice at meal time, you ate what was served. Now, no one would go there unless they had a choice of on-campus coffee shops. Students are demanding housing that graduates couldn't even afford in the past. They want every kind of service imaginable. If the school doesn't provide it, they go elsewhere. So, schools are competing to offer great service and living conditions. If they don't, they don't attract the best students. Schools aren't investing the same way in the actual quality of teaching. Only the most dedicated students actually make their decision based on that. All this drives up the cost, and for some reason students are willing to pay.
Eliminate student loans. Require universities to take payment in full for each year UP FRONT, or take no money up front, and a percentage of lifetime income for anyone attending - with that percentage increasing with length of attendance. Numbers shown below are just examples:
UG Year 1 (or fraction thereof): 1% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 2 (or fraction thereof): 2% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 3 (or fraction thereof): 3% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 4 (or faction thereof): 5% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Graduate: 6% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
Graduate, Law, Medicine, etc. Studies: + 0.5% per year
Master's Degree, Law Degree, etc. : 8% future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
Doctorate: 10% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
This will encourage universities to be more selective with respect to admissions (they're have a stronger incentive as to student outcome and want to make the best bets they can) and to slim down all the bullshit they have going on now (get rid of expenses unrelated to improving student outcome and recruiting the best students).
In the case of students moving between schools, payments are split on a pro-rated basis.
Optionally - allow schools to compete by varying the income percentages that they take. Better schools can take more. Less quality schools can take less.
The root cause of current higher-education problem is government backed student loans. Why is that? Well it's fairly simple. Student loans can not be discharged by bankruptcy. In addition companies that offer student loans have little to no risk - because student loans in the US are fully backed by the government.
As a result, there is no incentive to means-check people prior to giving them a loan. In point of fact, there is very little means-checking. In addition, because of the government backing of the loan there does not need to be a correlation between what a particular degree is likely to actually pay, and how much the education might cost.
For instance, an electrical engineer could go to a university on all student loans. As long as that person gets reasonable grades, they will have decent earning potential. Another student could go to the same university and get a degree in basket weaving. It will cost them about the same. But the earning potential afterwards is nil. They are unlikely to pay back the loan.
This has led to universities charging insane amounts of money for degrees that are near worthless. We can't and shouldn't protect people from getting worthless degrees. That's their problem. We SHOULD, however, remove the liability from the taxpayer for those worthless degrees. That decoupling would result in far more stringent means-testing. It would also mean that loan companies would no longer give students loans for worthless degrees.
A college degree would be worth more. Trade-schools would likely make a return. People would be naturally funneled toward degrees that are in demand. We would be better off all the way around. Keep in mind, this is very similar to what happened to the housing market. As long as loan companies could gives loans and hide the risk they will do so. In the housing bubble's case it was through the clumping together of mortgages to hide the risk. In this case it's the government hiding the risk.
Please, tell me where University still costs only $60,000...
I got a degree for $20k in the early y2k at the local state college. The cost is a bit more than double that now but worth it for a job that paid $55k starting out of college in software development, and has gone up from there. The degree also included a full year of internship that paid $15 an hour which helps a lot with costs. This doesn't include housing costs as I lived from home and commuted so YMMV.
Sure. Get your "free" education and then go elsewhere to make your money. Seems reasonable.
That's exactly what large corporations expect me to do. It's basically the blue-print for most of their activities: Take something (subsidies, raw materials, knowledge) from somewhere for free, then move on to the next tax haven.
But maybe it's just nice to live where I am, and I'll stay.
and the last 2 years is basically on the job training I'm paying for. Not that I have much choice, but I can tell you that if you're in STEM the workload is nuts. You come out of college ready to hit the ground (or you don't graduate). You are most certainly prepared for the job market after that gauntlet.
Now, the diploma mills might be another thing. The last administration was trying to reign them in, to the point where big ones like the U of Phoenix were almost put out of business (good riddance). But the current admin... not so much. Hell, the current Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos is openly trying to shift public funds into religious schools (of her particular denomination, of course)
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One interesting take on "Free" university I've seen, that *does* address the problem, is to do away with grants and loans and have the university itself eat the cost of your education, and then claim a substantial percentage of your income for 5-10 years afterwards. Gives them great incentive to both give you a useful education, AND help you find jobs that will leverage that education into as much short-to-mid-term income as possible.
Admittedly I would assume such a university would drop a whole lot of the arts, humanities, and other largely financially useless "Renaissance" education, as well as refusing students whose high school performance doesn't speak well of their potential - but that's probably for the best all around. At least so long as universities are being marketed as white-collar trade schools.
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I work as researcher at a university inthe UK, and it seems i also need that grass because the university bites _at least_ 50% of my research money. I got £1 million grant.... £550,000 straight to the University's pocket.
Probably if vice chancellors weren't paid £x00,000 a year...
I'm skeptical of the analysis done by 538.
If it was true that US colleges cost so much due to cutting of state and federal funding then I would expect annual budgets at those colleges to increase - at most - by about 3% per year to keep pace with inflation on average. However, the local (big) land-grant college here has increased its annual budget by about 10% per year for the past 11 years. Based on the tuition rates of other large land-grant institutions throughout the US my guess is that they are increasing their budgets annually by a similar percentage.
Yeah, but the author's idea of 'stolen' is pretty much anything they do not like. The author (and site) single out health services as esp evil and 'destroying the youth'.
When the football team coaches are paid in the millions (the top 25 coaches' salaries are 5M+) then yes, money for supposedly class tuition is being stolen.
In "the good old days", University was not about getting a job - it was about learning about civilisation, plus a bit of specialisation. If you wanted to "learn a trade" you got a certificate, or diploma (HNC, HND, City & Guilds) this meant you knew how to do a job. A degree at a University meant you understood the theory, and, as everyone here probably knows, in theory: theory and practice are the same, In practice: they are not.
However, one of the advantages of democracy is it give the votes to illiterates - who know neither theory nor practice, and vote for Brexit/Trump and "everybody needs a degree to get paid what people with degrees are earning".
Obviously, if the Universities select the 15% most academically minded of the population, they can teach them to a higher standard, than if they have to accept 50% - which implies accepting people with below average intelligence, since some of the more intelligent won't go to university - have dropped out to start million selling businesses, or become rock stars, or take drugs. If a degree no longer implies above average intelligence and education, why would it imply above average pay?
To the employer, a degree no longer guarantees someone with above average intelligence and education, and possibly comes from "the elite" - it implies they have a piece of paper and a lot of debt, and tells you nothing about their social background. As an employer, I would set more value on someone who appeared bright and determined on the basis of stuff on their CV, and having the determination and will-power to avoid being forced into debt (except for certain types of knowledge - eg: a maths degree from a reputable university still probably means something).
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Working at a CSU for about 5 years in the IT department I was able to gleen some insight into how the whole California University System works, financially.
Problems really start at the top. The Chancellor for 26 universities sets the budgets and target enrollments per campus. So right there you have someone who controls all the money but often never sets foot on a campus.
I know what your thinking, the Dean for each University is on top of their campus and it's needs. Well, no. See the Dean is there to raise as much cash for the University as they can, because the more they raise, the more they earn. How much you ask? At the University I attended (which was about middle of the pack for the 26) he earned about $300,000 in base pay, plus up to another $300,000 if he brought in the funds. To put this in perspective, the secretaries that worked for him earned maybe $30,000 with no chance for a bonus. So if you could just ignore the University and focus on getting funds from wealthy alumni to doubling your pay, would you?
Another problem, Calpers! A retirement program for the state of California that is usually 2.5/55 for CSU staff, which means that each year of service earns you 2.5% of your highest paid salary for life when you retire at 55. Sounds good, but people have found loop holes. For example, a Director was hired and started by earning about $80,000, not bad considering how much a secretary was paid. Then for the next couple of years their pay increased to about $90,000, still nothing wrong. Then in their fifth year, the pay jumped to about $150,000, in the sixth year about $280,000, in the seventh year their pay went down to about $120,000 and they left. Now they have 7 years at 2.5% or 17.5% of the highest pay, or about $49,000. So when they reach retirement age they will earn that amount for 7 years of service, until they die plus any other retirement they have money in (ie 4 grand a month for life for just 7 years of service). Also Calpers allows you to change jobs and add to existing years of service. So if that person goes to work anywhere else that has Calpers, they will add more years of service, still at the $280,000 amount. Ie if they take a job cleaning erasers at $5.00/hr and stick with it for a few years they add an extra $7,000 per year to their retirement pay. So the trick, get at least a year of obscene pay, then move on and retire like a king. (Compare that to someone who earns $80,000 consistently and works for 20 years would only get $40,000 at retirement, and each additional year would only add $2,000).
Next biggest problem, everything is budgeted for. Each major area of the University has Directors who guess how much they will spend on each category. A category is something small like: phone services, Internet services, heating/cooling, water, paper costs, legal costs, travel costs, yard maintenance, key cost, janitorial costs, paper towel costs, staple costs, paper clip cost, etc etc etc. Each department has about 1000 of these categories. At the start of the year each department has all these set buckets of money. Then as expenses come in they are paid out of a specific bucket. At the end of the year any funds left over in any bucket are given back. Well they would be, but departments usually go nuts in May and June to spend these down. Why, well lets say you had $5,000 for paper costs, but you only spent $3,000; you would have to give back $2,000 and next year your budget would only be $3,000 for next year automatically. So to prevent that in June you buy like crazy so you don't get your budget slashed. Why would they do this, see the first problem, the Chancellor only sees the tops of each departments budgets, not the details. So if you spend your budget wisely over the course of a year, or if you just panic spend at the end the Chancellor never sees that detail, only the final dollar amount.
The next problem, budgets themselves. You can't transfer money from one category to another without a ton of paper work and usually a year wait. So its bet