Posted on 03/04/2020 6:48:24 AM PST by karpov
I will concentrate today on the economics of higher education—why it is so costly, and a few things we can do about it. When I entered Northwestern University over six decades ago, the tuition fee was $795 a year, which is under $7,000 in current dollars. Today, Northwestern’s annual tuition, excluding room and board, is $56,232—eight times as much.
A similar pattern exists with state schools. When I started teaching at my state school, Ohio University, in the mid-1960s, the tuition fee of $450 was less than one-third what it is today, adjusting for inflation.
The higher education establishment usually stresses two explanations for rising costs. First, some economists argue that higher education is a service industry where productivity improvements are hard to accomplish. Teaching is like theater, they say—performing King Lear takes as many actors to perform today as when Shakespeare wrote it 400 years ago.
Professors require compensation increases like other professionals. As salaries rise with productivity in the rest of the economy, they must rise in higher education as well, thus necessitating higher fees to cover increased personnel costs.
The second explanation for rising student fees is that state governments are reducing their support of higher education. Where in the 1960s, state subsidies covered 50 percent or more of university budgets, now they only finance 10 percent to 30 percent of them, again necessitating higher fees.
These explanations are both weak. With respect to the first (often called the Baumol hypothesis), resources universities spend on professors and teaching is only about one-third of total university spending. A typical university has more administrators than faculty. Moreover, technological advances allow professors’ lectures to be replicated many times for large audiences electronical
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
The reality is government support for four year non-STEM programs should be ended. State and local government spending is needed for 2 year vocational programs teaching real skills needed in the marketplace - mechanics, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, lab technicians, carpenters, cabinet makers, machine tool operators.
If we accomplished all that we could repeat for government entanglement with Medicine and insurance and a lot of our moral and social degeneration reverse course.
Of course I am merely musing on things that cannot be.
Chase out the politically correct, the commies and the left in general from academia, no more student loan guarantees and no more federal funding ... that would go a long way to fixing higher education.
The Democrats are liars. They will never do that when they regain power. It will be like the Communists telling the peasants,”Fight for us and when we win, we will give you land to farm”.
The real problem is that so many degree programs have been created for things that aren’t even a valid field of study.
All the education in the world is a trifling bag of nothing without each individual learning and understanding the spiritual battle they are in, and that their individual soul matters. Without that knowledge, one is just an educated robot, ruled by tyrannical unseen forces.
>Of course I am merely musing on things that cannot be.
Oh, if only we had a Constitutional Republic & ANY side of the bi-wing-Uniparty that would support/enforce the same...
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