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Comment by md_ | Hacker News Reader

There are compelling alternative explanations for the rising cost of education (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease#Educ...).

If the underlying cause were primarily administrative overhead, that should be readily apparent in the (public) budget of any public university. I’m not going to go do Silvergate’s research for him, but I’m surprised he doesn’t cite such a readily available piece of compelling evidence, which at best suggests he’s too lazy to track it down, and at worst that reality does not support his hypothesis.

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If you read your own link, you’d find that Baumol’s hypothesis is that cost disease led to an increase of professor salaries… which is not reflected in reality. Real professor salaries have decreased (not increased) over the relevant time period, mainly because universities have shifted from tenured faculty to untenured adjunct, who work on semester-long contracts.

actually the Wikipedia article itself doesn't support your statement. Even if you take for granted there are some other explanations that contribute to the cost rise, administrative overhead is clearly a big factor and that's the issue that can be addressed and he's tackling, not e.g., the relative difference in productivity of educators and everyone else which is a questionable facto.

So what percentage of budget from, say, the UC system went to administration forty years ago vs today? My point was that this should be public data, yes, surprisingly, is not mentioned.

Per https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_334.30.a..., after two minutes of googling, if I am reading correctly, the percentage spent by four year institutions on “academic support”, which includes admissions, has remained at about 8% from 2000 to 2020. That seems like a basic statistic Silvergate should have on hand, and one that invalidates his hypothesis, right?

The admin staff are also subject to Baumol's cost disease.

Some are, some aren't. If some function required the same ratio of admin to students to perform, it would be. But many things have been made more productive. Most schools have fully automated the course selection process except for the academic advisor. Schools can take advantage of automations in admissions, bursar, financial aid, etc.

I think Baumol's cost disease explains a lot of the increase. I find it suspicious that it's not mentioned in TFA. But there are other drivers, of which much higher student expectations play a part. A school patterned after a typical university in the 60s would have some charm but probably students would not enjoy the Spartan living environment or the lack of support services.

Yes, and teachers can grade some assignments electronically with a click. But generally speaking admin work has not kept up with the productivity of manufacturing positions.

In fact given that the numbers of admin staff per student and per graduate has increased, you could credibly argue admin productivity has declined.

> I’m not going to go do Silvergate’s research for him, but I’m surprised he doesn’t cite such a readily available piece of compelling evidence, which at best suggests he’s too lazy to track it down, and at worst that reality does not support his hypothesis.

Why do you assume these influences to be mutually exclusive? Upward price pressure for unnecessary bureaucratic positions does not invalidate the problems with those positions, but rather exacerbates them.

I agree they’re not mutually exclusive. But each additional real dollar cost is attributable to one cause or the other. Silver gate seems to only entertain one explanation for all inflation in education, despite very well known alternative hypotheses.

That was my point: not addressing alternative theories, while failing to furnish seemingly readily available supporting evidence, seems on its face dishonest.

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