On top of this, the jobs I've been applying to this year are offering criminally low salaries. My spouse has a B.A. and then went back to school for a two year degree in something that is actually useful. S.O. took less time to the degree, has significantly less loans (think $100 per month for the next 10 years), and started off making more then these faculty jobs I'm applying to are offering. So yeah, S.O. is now my sugar-spouse. I don't give a shit. Ten years getting a 'higher education', the joke is on me, whatever.
My question is, where is all the money going? I've been inside the university system for the past 15 years and I still can't figure it out. The SLAC I attended as an undergrad has increased per-year tuition almost 20K since I attended in the late '90s. They call to beg me for money, and I let them know I'll get right on that, in 30 years, just as soon as my loans are paid off. The R1 I attended as a graduate student can't legally raise student tuition fast enough, so they make up fees for everything. Class fees, technology fees, toilet fees, administrator fees, etc. They love that shit. My only intuition for the cost increases is that in the 5+ years I attended, I witnessed a constant parade of new administrative offices, full of new assistant and vice-assistant deans, vice presidents, and various other adminicritters. They certainly weren't hiring new faculty members or increasing RA/TA pay.
If not to the faculty and not to the students, where the fuck is all the money going?
At the R1 it probably went to "break even." As state funding gets cut, the "savings" get passed along to the end user.
ReplyDeleteNo idea. My own personal hunch is that much of it is going to attracting new students, i.e. marketing and buildings projects. Where I live, local colleges have been trotting out a lot of glossy TV advertisements to attract Susie and Johnny to these technologically tricked-out Club Med havens of higher education with brand new student unions and athletics facilities. Few 18-year-olds choose a college based on the currency of the degree or the quality of education; most want to know that their first extended trip away from home will be comfortable and enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteAs a TA, I find it frustrating when my students say things like "I'm paying so much money to go here and these classes aren't satisfying my needs and blah blah blah." The attitude is annoying and entitled, but I understand their frustration. They ARE shelling out a ton of money. What they fail to grasp (what no one tells them) is that a ridiculously small fraction of their tution goes to actual instruction. They might be paying a ton of money, but I'm not seeing any of it. If they want to see what they're paying for, they should take a stroll to the new athletic center, or go watch the cable TV that's beamed into every dorm room, or enjoy the fact that the university poured a ton of money into "wiring" every room on campus.
Adminicritters. Ha!
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's going to assistant professors in business. The state U up the road from us (not even the best state u in my shitty state) just hired an acquaintance of mine for three times my salary as a fresh-out-of-school PhD. I got my PhD more than twenty years ago.
Such stories make me want to work a lot less. But not yet. Not yet.
I didn't originate the term, but I do enjoy using it.
DeleteAn institution I've been previously affiliated with occasionally pops up on the ad sidebar here, coaxing me to, "Finally get that MBA you've always wanted!" It must make them big bucks. I suppose they can then turn around and pay those big bucks to the business proffies.
I don't know, maybe here? http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/02/14/cal-state-prez-salaries-top-facebook-execs/
ReplyDeleteAdministrative bloat?
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, administrative bloat?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all&print=true
Small change compared to these: http://chronicle.com/article/On-Campuses-the-Income-Gap/129980/
ReplyDeleteI could pay off all my loans and still have money left over for my shit hole apartment.
The question isn't really where all the money is going. It's going to the same places it's always gone to.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is where the money comes from, and the answer is simple (at least out here in CA): Significantly less funding from the state.
True, state funding has decreased for almost all R1s, but the private SLACs don't have the same issue. So what is their deal?
DeleteWe must have more administrators and more data driven tools by which we can measure our progress with numbers, for administrators and numbers are the only aspects of education which matter. Our tuition has not increased significantly over the past five years for our in-area students. Our faculty is shrinking as people retire or are all but forced out through draconian practices. When those people leave, they are replaced by adjuncts. Administration keeps telling us the state is shrinking our budget, so we must "do more with less." Our classes are getting larger, and we offer fewer sections. Yet, as you point out, there is ALWAYS money to create administrative positions, buy fancy expensive new equipment no one wants (because it's allegedly more efficient), redo administrative offices, and purchase more and different surveys, programs, and consulting services to redesign learning and make everything into a number.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone noticed there is no such thing as an adjunct administrator? Couldn't some of these initiatives and programs be run by a team of freeway-flying, suit-wearing EdDs in educational leadership, each working 10 hours a week and being paid $25 an hour with no benefits?
"Has anyone noticed there is no such thing as an adjunct administrator" is a line I'm fond of using, too. Apparently, administrative work comes in 40 hour/week, highly-renumerative quanta.
DeleteWhat Frankenstien mentions below--increases in spending because of administrative, maintence, and student service costs--is part of the problem, along with buying, maintaining, and updating expensive technical equipment (computer hardware/software).
A bigger problem here in California is the reduction in funding we get from the state. The UC and CSU systems have been much harder hit than community colleges.
The problem is compounded by the fact that when it's time to cut, it's almost always classes and teachers that are cut before anything or anyone else.
Thank you for your comment, EnglishDoc.
DeleteOn the Comment Rubric Administration Purview recently initiated by CM Admin, it was rated 72.3666666.
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See the article, "The Surprising Causes of Those College Tuition Hikes" by Kim Clark, in the January 15, 2009 issue of US News & World Report, and available online here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2009/01/15/the-surprising-causes-of-those-college-tuition-hikes
Briefly, the reasons this article lists are:
(1) Reductions in per-student subsidy by state universities,
(2) Increases in spending driven mostly by higher administration, maintenance, and student services.
My faculty center like to have little vases with a fresh red rose on every table every day. Meanwhile, the uni has a half mil deficit.
ReplyDeleteI'm over the blame the state argument. The UCs invested money in crap, including Enron and World.com. They thought it was OK to stop contributions to the pension plan for 10 years. Yes, the state should invest more in higher ed. But can you blame taxpayers for not wanting to do so when the UCs have been so badly mismanaged?
ReplyDeleteGood question. Where IS it going?
ReplyDeleteIn four years at my current church-affiliated SLAC, tuition has gone up about 20% (give or take). Pay has gone up 2%.
Where IS it going?
@Bison: I thought you were considering leaving academia? It's not easy for me, since as someone who's been dreaming of being an astronomer since he was five years old, there aren't so many commercial applications of my work, but don't you have more possibilities? Again, as I commented on one of your earlier threads, even if you do get the prize of a faculty job with tenure, do you really want it? It may quickly start to feel like a booby prize.
ReplyDelete(Yes, I'm having one of those weeks. The students in my physics class who think they're going to become engineers are the most dangerously innumerate bunch I've ever seen. Also, a gradflake from the ed school with an annoying male ego like too many science majors but who knows no science and thinks that what he's been taught about teaching is true is making a nuisance of himself in my Intro-Astronomy-for-non-majors class. At the same fucking time, some faculty shithead from the English department with a male ego like a science major but again clearly knows no science is making gratuitously nasty remarks in public about how we general-ed faculty should be running our writing exercises, as if he's to be taken seriously since so few students who have taken his courses can write: if he ever asks me to fix is computer, the answer is fugno. And I'm still not allowed to carry a gun on campus, although I am wondering about a pepper spray.)
Against all odds I'm actually in the running for a few TT positions. So right now I'm leaving all options on the table, including industry and adjuncting. It's hard to leave something I've been training in for most of a decade. I also shouldn't fool myself into thinking that job markets in industry are that much better.
DeleteIt's pretty ridiculous when you think about it. I've worked real jobs before, so I know how those things go. But most folks only get one chance for TT work, maybe two if they play their cards right. So, you can't know if you really like it until you have that job and title in hand. By then it might be too late.
Hey, Kids,
ReplyDeleteThe answer is basically: administrative bloat.
As the Ginsberg article cited above points out, corruption and fraud do take a toll. Among apparently legitimate money sinks, administrators like construction projects, since they can get their names on them. These construction projects need not have anything to do with teaching or research. Student services have grown a lot, too. Varsity sports are also rarely self-supporting.
If you want documentation for any of this, here you go:
http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/news.asp