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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Individual computers got cheaper but the numbers increased dramatically. Few collages had high speed networking to every dorm in 1980. WiFi is a similar new expense that they suddenly ‘needed’ to pay for and staff people to maintain. My point was not that computers where the only issue just that they where a specific example that grew much faster than inflation. IT was really expensive.

Many schools lack donors and actually needed to pay for new facilities. 12.1m students in 1980 vs 21.2m in 2010 means quite a few new buildings across the full range of collages.

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This particular example is an added expense but doesn't strike me as an extraordinary one, and brings with it many administrative savings to do with applications, enrollments, grading, payments, educational resources, and so on.

These are things that would have required more physical space and more personnel in the past. Schools have transitioned a lot to a more self-service model but it has not translated into savings for students or their families as far as I can tell.

I think your overestimating the effort those tasks required. Grading for example seems like a significant administrative burden ideal for automation. However, collage administrators don’t calculate grades per student, at most their doing a quick GPA calculation based on final letter grades.

Teachers actually calculate grades, but that’s again vastly less effort than grading assignments. to the point where many just use pen and paper to record results. Many attempts at automation have increased teacher workload and require support staff.

Schools are seeing benefits from these computer systems, but they rarely reduce costs.

PS: Another consideration is collages are seasonal. Reducing the effort for some task may aid the workers. However, 100 administrators twiddling their thumbs costs just as much and schools need to staff for various crunch times not average workloads.

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