Columbia deans placed on leave

[marshwiggle]

So on this and several other threads recently it has been remarked that a significant problem colleges have nowadays both attracting students, getting parents to want to send kid there, etc., comes from the exorbitant cost of college these days, even public ones.  So does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be done about this?

If all of the negativity came from people who hadn't experienced PSE, or who had done so in some other manner, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But when it's the graduates themselves who are saying it wasn't worth it, it's a much bigger problem than anyone wants to admit, let alone deal with.

[Ruralguy]

I don't know, maybe a finance expert can come up with a better answer, but to me, its a matter of cutting the cost which you can only do if you either cut expenses or get a bigger source of income from non-tuition sources. Realistically, most colleges can't do the second one in a significant way to reduce costs in a meaningful way.
Therefore, you have to cut what people don't want, even if it means half of us or future "us" lose jobs. And, yes, some of that can be administrators and some can be coaches, but some of it will have to be in faculty of departments that students and parents and the like just don't care about it. Sorry. I don't mean to be mean. It just seems to be the only way I can think of.

[Wahoo Redux]

Certainly will need to lose some faculty jobs to balance the books.  But I also look around college campuses and see a great many trivialities and even things that are nice and always considered standard (like student unions and gyms) which could go or be outsourced.

[kaysixteen]

Ok, but how is it that a goodly percentage of first-world democracies somehow manage to make college education noticeably cheaper even than our ostensibly 'public' unis offer?   What can we learn and adopt from them?

[spork]

The texts included Kromm's use of vomit emojis to refer to a Columbia University rabbi's op-ed sounding the alarm about the eruption of anti-Semitism on campus and Patashnick's accusation that one of the panelists, Columbia Hillel director Brian Cohen, was taking "full advantage of this moment" for its "fundraising potential."

Is that the best they can do? This doesn't sound like it rises to anti-semitism in my book.

The deans should be fired for stupidity, not whether the texts in question were actually anti-semetic.

[marshwiggle]

Ok, but how is it that a goodly percentage of first-world democracies somehow manage to make college education noticeably cheaper even than our ostensibly 'public' unis offer?   What can we learn and adopt from them?

Most other countries don't have the plethora of tiny institutions, (private or otherwise), so all of the institutions that exist have to offer a broad range of programs to a broad range of students. The "boutique" nature of American post-secondary education depends on there being a sufficient pool of available and interested candidates for any institution's particular narrow range of offerings.

In the U.S., there are a lot of very small baskets, with only one or two eggs in each.

[Wahoo Redux]

Ok, but how is it that a goodly percentage of first-world democracies somehow manage to make college education noticeably cheaper even than our ostensibly 'public' unis offer?   What can we learn and adopt from them?

We have a massive, technologically advanced military.

[Ruralguy]

Almost no schools, maybe even literally no schools would get rid of athletic facilities. Its one of the biggest draws for undergrads at schools small and large. Outsourcing usually doesn't make sense if most of the management isn't very highly specialized (such as in food services), though maybe it would work and be cheaper. Getting rid of particular *teams* might make sense, or unused lazy rivers (if unused) and such.

However, as long as most schools want to support their programming with various levels of staff and faculty that probably don't 100% make sense concerning what students and their advocates want, costs will be high and you might lose more than you gain.

[kaysixteen]

Obviously we do have a great number of very small, often private, institutions of higher ed, and some of these probably must charge very high tuition prices in order to survive.  But this does not mean that Megamammoth State U needs to charge its in-state students anything resembling such figures to survive-- recall that most Boomer college grads, if they went to a public college/uni, back in the day, essentially paid almost nothing to do so (esp adjusted for inflation).   Some of them literally paid no tuition, such as at California State institutions prior to the accession to power of Gov. Ron Reagan, whose campaign promise to impose a (minimal) tuition for in-staters there he did in fact keep.  So we could reverse the asinine trend towards ever-minimizing the public share of the expense of running such places, if we wanted to do so.  That we do not want to do so, even here in bright blue states, is of course the result of numerous political and cultural factors (esp in Red America/ amongst Trumpanzees), many of which are very hard to deal with, but one which we can deal with is telling kids and their parents that they do not decide what a college program in discipline x will entail their taking in terms of courses and other academic reqs, the faculty does, just as the faculty of their local elem school decides what to teach in the 5th grade (in both cases subject to school boards/ boards of trustees, etc., providing appropriate oversight).

[Ruralguy]

This is where Dismalist would come in and say that if "the people" (students and their parents, where parents would be relevant) tolerate academia saying "the faculty decide" then they will live with what the faculty gives to them. If not, they'll vote with their feet.  I can say that the trend at small schools is for the students and trustees and alumns, etc, is to be *more* vocal, and while ultimately respectful of faculty curricular votes, they do want to rather forcefully get their word in.

As for price decreases, I don't think it will happen that way precisely, that is no sudden large price decreases. I just think some schools will have to project costs into the future and realize that to really get the students they want and retain them, they'll have to cut certain programs and then just not increase tuition quite as rapidly, and not tack on as many fees, or reduce those a bit. It might not be enough. But I think the old mode of increase sky high for the price discriminating crowd and then offer scholarship (which are really just discount coupons) is just not going to work at most places much longer.

[marshwiggle]

Obviously we do have a great number of very small, often private, institutions of higher ed, and some of these probably must charge very high tuition prices in order to survive.  But this does not mean that Megamammoth State U needs to charge its in-state students anything resembling such figures to survive-- recall that most Boomer college grads, if they went to a public college/uni, back in the day, essentially paid almost nothing to do so (esp adjusted for inflation).   Some of them literally paid no tuition, such as at California State institutions prior to the accession to power of Gov. Ron Reagan, whose campaign promise to impose a (minimal) tuition for in-staters there he did in fact keep.  So we could reverse the asinine trend towards ever-minimizing the public share of the expense of running such places, if we wanted to do so.

In the U.S. there is a huge public obsession with people not having to pay for things that will benefit other people. (This is clearly in evidence in debates about universal healthcare.) What is especially bizarre to most people from elsewhere, is that this obsession means that people in the U.S. are willing to pay MORE out-of-pocket than people in other places pay for the universal services. This means that in education, as in healthcare, there are huge profit incentives in the system that will prevent change.

Given that post-secondary education is much more "elective" than healthcare, it's exceedingly unlikely that any change in public attitude will happen in the forseeable future.

[Ruralguy]

Also, choices of colleges are highly path dependent, with students/parents choosing things relatives and friends did/are doing or at the very least, within 100 miles of where they live (not everyone--our school is starting to pull from a larger area, but the costs of doing so are high, and we can only really try to do that if we are living off donate money to fund that admissions initiative).

[spork]

[...]

this obsession means that people in the U.S. are willing to pay MORE out-of-pocket than people in other places pay for the universal services.

[...]

Pay more out-of-pocket for comparatively worse services. Yay for American exceptionalism. To wit:

Almost no schools, maybe even literally no schools would get rid of athletic facilities. Its one of the biggest draws for undergrads at schools small and large.

[. . .]

People get what they pay for.

[dismalist]

So we could reverse the asinine trend towards ever-minimizing the public share of the expense of running such places, if we wanted to do so.

Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State
--Benito Mussolini

[treeoflife]

So we could reverse the asinine trend towards ever-minimizing the public share of the expense of running such places, if we wanted to do so.

Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State
--Benito Mussolini

There are other models that do not go to that extreme and still work fine.