Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

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It's sad that there seems to be little internal critique coming from within universities of the complete takeover of schools by administrators. When it does happen it's almost entirely the result of some external rumblings or a direct affront like this being twisted.

I guess it's because these same administrators ultimately control the narratives (and budgets, jobs, etc) coming from the schools, creating a self-protecting cycle which only generates more administrative power.

So when attempts to curtail their power happen they can twist it to make it seem like it's an attack on teachers, students, and research - instead of the separate group of people who consume the greatest amount of resources within the school, who don't generate the positive research and economic utility for which universities are typically known.

Which is a shame, because there are probably no better people to stand up for this than the professors and researchers. Plenty of research has shown these people and their work aren't responsible for the massive increase in tuition and costs associated with schools. Yet the problem is perpetually the amount of revenue and income the school can make, not how it's being used.

> It's sad that there seems to be little internal critique coming from within universities of the complete takeover of schools by administrators

This is just patently false.

The criticism of admin bloat by faculty and students precedes the right-wing press criticism by decades, is far more harsh, and is still going strong.

The whole damn criticism, as it exists in the popular press today, can be traced quite directly back to academia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Ginsberg_(political_s...

Or a more recent example, https://home.isi.org/sites/default/files/MA59.3_Seery_Sympos...

And from the student perspective, the recent votes at places like Chicago to unionize (and, more importantly, the justification provided by the student groups that organized those votes)

Far from complicit, faculty and students are leading the charge, and have been since the 1980s.

BTW, if you wanted to curtail administrative bloat/power in universities, there are ways to use the tax code and science funding policy to do so. and lots of serious policy proposals by the people listed above would very likely have great effect.

This policy targets students instead.

> BTW, if you wanted to curtail administrative bloat/power in universities, there are ways to use the tax code and science funding policy to do so.

Can you give a summary of your proposals here? Skimmed the Seery article and it doesn't seem to have anything directly related to the tax code, but could be missing it.

> And from the student perspective, the recent votes at places like Chicago to unionize (and, more importantly, the justification provided by the student groups that organized those votes)

I'm at a school that underwent a grad student unionisation drive, and pretty much everything that the union proposed would have amounted to further empowering the administration at the expense of the academics (e.g. introducing new mediator officials with extensive compulsive power over advisors if their students should feel wronged in one way or another, hiring more staff to enforce diversity-friendly admissions and hiring outcomes, ...). At least the politicised end of the student body seems to consider the administration, rather than the academics, to be their natural ally.

This is debatable and its own rabbit hole that is beat to death on other recent stories. But anyways, I understand the point, and this is why I stated:

> and, more importantly, the justification provided by the student groups that organized those votes

I'm sorry that I can't provide more details or evidence (lest I leak bits of identifying information), but as far as I can tell, our union has not made any statement to the effect of considering excessive administrative power or even bloat an issue.

An incompetent advisor can ruin a promising grad student.

Whether the union position on who should be empowered here has merit is orthogonal to the question of whether unions are broadly for expanding or reducing administrative power, no?

Your argument is simplistic and over generalizing... but it is a good example of the ideological battles we see in society. You’d probably find high demand that would justify the hiring of support staff to represent students vs faculty and vs admins in many cases. Whether this expands or decreases an administration is irrelevant. The goal of unionization is a collective voice that is acknowledged.

U.S. university students who feel that they are getting a bad deal should go to Europe.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32821678

Think twice about beginning a bachelor, masters, or doctoral degree in this country, as you will be crushed with debt.

With a lot of work, I was able to graduate in '94 with an E.E. degree with a total student loan debt of $1,500. That is not possible here anymore, but it is possible in Europe.

If I had to do it again, I would be gone.

I was able to graduate with an EE degree, within the past five years and with no debt at Cal Poly (a university with one of the highest ROI on the west coast). <$7000/year is certainly doable if you're living at home with your parents.

To be honest, I spent a year living at home, but my college of engineering was 60 miles away. I lived near campus otherwise.

With the new tax regulation, as a U.S. citizen, do you have to pay taxes on tuition and stipends you receive when you do a Ph.D. overseas? (I'd assume so, since overseas income is taxable AFAIK, but I don't really know what the situation is).

Tuition would be much lower, I think you are credited for the taxes you would pay in country, and generally - while you have to report foreign income - you have to make quite a bit before tax would be assessed.

I thought it was "only" $100,000? Seems like a lot of engineering types would be close to that limit.

For a job after university probably, but I meant to speak to a tuition waiver at a foreign university. I doubt tuition waiver plus stipend would approach that in most other countries.

Even for the job scenario, you get a tax credit for foreign taxes paid which in most industialized countries would probably neutralize any US tax burden and then some. If the job is in a developing country, I would think the cost of living advantages would make it worth it if you were above the limit.

However, not a CPA or finance pro. I went to grad school abroad and looked into the implications of staying a bit.

> It's sad that there seems to be little internal critique coming from within universities of the complete takeover of schools by administrators.

According to the White House, everything in the executive branch is going wonderfully.

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