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Comment by cesarbs | Hacker News Reader

> Government spending on schools is enough; maybe too much.

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.

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Cut down on administration costs.

I work in higher Ed as an app developer with a focus on standardizing web apps across the college and it is very very hard to get the disparate forces within to work together. My parents have been academics their entire careers and have told me throughout my childhood the very same thing. Trust me when I say that it is much more complicated than you think. There is no "cut down on administrative costs" magic wand. We have people paid to do things for a reason.

No, no we don't.

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.

Students want more than they did before. More counseling, more recreational activities, better housing. There are still a lot of other gaps too that students are demanding to be filled, like workers compensation for graduate students who run labs and get injured when things explode in their face. Universities also partake in expensive undertakings like performing research and hosting conferences and the like, the cost of which tend to increase more than the price of bread and gas over time.

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.

Want and need are different words for a reason =)

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.

> Students want more than they did before.

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.

30 years ago you may not of had all the city, state and federal compliance and policy laws that a modern day state university has now and must enforce or report on (more rules/laws/regs with no funding to support them). Additionally, I know for a fact, when there are hiring and salary freezes for 5+ years on end that faculty are the exception to that rule (not the staff).

From 2013 but probably still relevant:

"Teachers outnumbered in schools by administrators, support staff in many states, study shows"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/28/teachers-out...

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