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Comment by jstepka | Hacker News Reader

businesses go through these challenges all the time.

the fat that gets trimmed is what makes them better.

I agree that universities should do more to control costs. I'll push back just a bit that trimming all "fat" would make universities better. Where I am, the "fat" proposed for trimming is support for study abroad, music education, research conferences, and other things that enrich the lives of students and (hopefully) benefit society as a whole.

That’s sad, since that seems more flesh that fat to me.

The real “fat” is the admin bloat at most universities. Most schools will continue to be in a precarious financial situation until that fat is cut, imho.

The fundamental problem is that music teachers tend to care about music, while administrators tend to care about protecting their own jobs. So any budget cuts tend to cut services, rather than reducing the overhead. This dynamic plays out everywhere with overgrown middle management.

Music teachers care about their jobs just as much as administrators. It's just that administrators make the big decisions and they care about their jobs more than the jobs of others.

This seems to imply that once managerialism metastasizes in an organization, it's chronic and likely fatal to any other mission.

As far as students are concerned, a bigger problem than administrator pay is professors who are more interested in teaching than research, and even when professors are interested in teaching, they might not be good teachers.

My Alma matter, also a regional university charges 47k a year in tuition.

Assuming I take 12 classes a year and my classes average 15 students each, that puts the cost of providing a single class at $58,750.

What the heck is going on for universities to have such an insane cost structure.

$250,000 per year administrators, $30 million dollar buildings and "lazy rivers". If we had a statistic for what percentage of your buildings were for academic usage, you'd find the amount is low.

"Paying for the Party" is a neat book here based on real life information from colleges.

Not always, the fat that gets trimmed is what makes things enjoyable in the first place.

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