Posted on 03/06/2021 12:53:44 PM PST by karpov
According to one recent estimate, American colleges in the last few years, in a period of extraordinary enrollment decline, have added 70 million square feet of new instruction and research facilities on their campuses. That is more space than in 10 Pentagons, the largest office facility in the U.S.
Yet enrollments for fall 2020 had declined by about 2 million students compared to 9 years ago. Enrollments have been falling while campus buildings are growing.
American higher education has been suffering from a huge and expensive Edifice Complex.
To pick one university, the University of Akron in the 1990s had a main campus enrollment above 27,000. The then-long serving president, Luis Proenza, went on a spending binge, much with borrowed money, for new buildings. Yet in the last decade, enrollments have plunged at Akron: The Ohio Department of Higher Education reports fall 2020 enrollment of 14,553, down 36 percent from 2012.
The school is reeling from the costs of maintaining vast unneeded space, including massive debt repayment expenses. Now, the school is trying to sell 1 million of its 8 million square feet of space—the equivalent of a dozen large classroom buildings. Do you want to buy a very lightly used state-of-the-art football stadium in an area with a declining population? Akron could accommodate you.
Why did universities like Akron all over the country succumb to the Edifice Complex? Several factors are at work.
First and foremost, colleges vastly overstated their future need for space, assuming that enrollment increases would continue indefinitely.
College presidents reasoned that not only did old buildings need to be replaced, but they had to be bigger to accommodate the near-certain future increases in enrollment.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
If the universities want to end racism, they need to start by turning off all electricity on their campuses and move into tents.
By keeping electricity on they are culturally appropriating white people’s culture.
“American colleges in the last few years, in a period of extraordinary enrollment decline, have added 70 million square feet of new instruction and research facilities on their campuses”
Give them a break. They need those research facilities for their Chinese military cadets...I mean students to hang around and steal the technology US companies are paying those universities to conduct.
Bring it Dinesh
INDOCTRINATION centers could be ghost towns.
Online colleges such as www.wgu.edu is the way to go. Inexpensive, can live at home and work part-time, and graduate with zero debt.
Universities have over-priced themselves to inevitable extinction.
Why pay a fortune to be indoctrinated into socialism, when you can get started on a career apprenticeship right out of high school, and be far ahead of your college “ educated “ peers when they graduate with a worthless degree ?
Thanks to seven lawyers in 1973, there are around 60 million fewer Americans, many of whom would have provided all the necessary students and more for the hate America first crowd.
‘Sniffle.
Universities have over-priced themselves to inevitable extinction.
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They only do this because of guaranteed student loans. I am old enough to remember there was a time when a person could pay for college by working while not in class.
As the supply of money began to flow from the poor and middle class to the universities the cost increased.
And it wasn’t that long ago, either.
Online colleges such as www.wgu.edu is the way to go. Inexpensive, can live at home and work part-time, and graduate with zero debt.
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And if the left pushes for free college, cheaper online should be the ONLY kind offered.
Sounds like a version of Parkinson’s Law of bureaucracy growth.
I graduated from a state college in 1975. In my last year, tuition was $189/quarter. It was about $169/quarter in my freshman year.
Have you seen the gyms on these campuses. They are unbelievable. Many are so large you have to take a bus 20 minutes off campus to get there.
This is what happens when you have access to unlimited amounts of OPM, with virtually no oversight of how the money is spent.
Disgusting how these morons have almost completely ignored the gift of online education.
Yes, but they need to get by the “accreditation experts” who decide whether or not the classes you take are “legitimate”. So called higher ed has a status fixation as well.
Can’t these conehead administrators read statistics? Don’t they know the fruits of pushing abortion on demand for 50 years? Or do they just expect Biden to allow 10 million Chinese communist students into the country to make up for our aborted? College pinheads want campus’s with all the amenities of Las Vegas casinos, when they’re job is to EDUCATE.
Oops, “their” job is to educate.
Western Governors University is accredited.
Let’s hope more on line courses get accreditation.
There are quite a few, and the number is growing.
A big advantage, in addition to the cost, is that you don’t have to listen to socialist propaganda. Can knock out required socialistic courses over a long weekend.
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