Public subsidized? Government spending on schools is enough; maybe too much.
Tech can afford to train their workers, regardless.
Tech can afford to train their workers, regardless.
Utah spent $6,555 per student per year in 2013. This isn't a lot. New York spends $19,818 per student per year. This is a lot and I'd say a lot of this money is misspent. A former teacher told me that because he raised his hand on a misbehaving student, he was assigned desk job of some kind where he'd just sign in and stay cooped up in a room all day. I don't think there is too much money in education as much as there is too much bureaucracy in education. The "support structure" is too damn big. We don't need so much administrative overhead. We do not need to spend millions on a sports stadium. We went too far on trying to get schools to create well-rounded individuals.
Now comes the unpopular bit: We need to scale back on "no child left behind" as well. No, not in the sense that George W Bush bill, in the sense that public school system does not have to educate every single child. No, not every school needs therapists and counselors and what not. We need smaller class sizes so teachers know the names of their students.
Are you kidding? Almost every public school I know of has to run fundraisers because government funding is not enough to last through the school year.
Administration spending has massively increased over the last 30 years. Spending on faculty that does teaching hasn't. Somehow we managed to run colleges 30 years ago w/ half the administration.
I think people see higher education as a huge bill that just has to be cut because it's big. It is much more complex than people think. I have been a part of this system literally my entire life, starting from my birth while my mother was in law school.
If you have suggestions on how to reduce the cost of higher education, I am all ears. Just know that people who come in and think they can run it "like a business" are a laughingstock from California to Cambridge.
Yes, college is a huge bill that needs to be cut. It's both unethical and horrid for our economy to saddle students with so much debt when they're starting out in life.
How to reduce costs: line administrators up in a row and have them count off 1,2. Fire either the evens or the odds. Return to administrator staffing levels from 30 years ago. What doesn't get done doesn't get done.
see eg http://ucbfa.org/2013/01/uc-management-bloat-updated/
at berkeley, base year 1991, management grew 252%, while non-management (ie productive workers) grew approx 42%.
I also think we should cut most sports -- why do our colleges need to serve as an amateur league for the nfl? -- but that opinion is not widely shared. Nonetheless, the amount of bloat that has crept in to what is purely overhead is stunning. Note that none of this has to do with "running like a business" except that business wouldn't tolerate this level of management overhead; it's wildly excessive.
Hmm, perhaps the cost of these things should be separated from the general tuition, thereby allowing people to pick and choose according to what they will pay for. Therefore staffing will scale to demand.
"Teachers outnumbered in schools by administrators, support staff in many states, study shows"
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/28/teachers-out...
What we are seeing is the rise of more coding "bootcamps", roughly semester-long courses to get someone started with coding. Maybe federal loans/grants can be allowed for these, but definitely not giving companies subsidies to train their workers.