Not so. From the OP:
Yeah, you’re right — I realized that after posting. The main error is in assuming that the professor teaches 25 credit-hours per year, and that students take 15 credit-hours per year. At my institution, a full course load is more like 27 credit-hours per year, and a full teaching load for a professor is 21 credit-hours. In other words, “supply” is more limited than the OP postulated, and “demand” is much greater.
The basic weakness in this oft-cited contention is that it’s based on the average earnings of those who do and don’t attend college, but is not controlled for differences in the two populations. It isn’t reasonable to think that the two are identical except for the time spent in school.
I realized after my first post that my department’s budget is actually available to the general public (Texas House Bill 2504 requires the school to host all sorts of things, including each instructor’s CV, education credentials, course syllabus, etc.
Our budget is at the very bottom of this page English Dept
Remember, this is strictly the English department:
Full time faculty salaries: $682,291
Full time faculty overload payments: $15,000
Adjunct salaries: $90,000
Summer faculty salaries: $28,800
Departmental fringe benefits: $32,020
Contracted services: $9,133
Office supplies: $1,500
Instructional supplies: $1,400
Allocated charges: $15,000
Dues/memberships: $100
Repairs: $1,380
Total: $876,624 for the ENGL department, one of 21 departments in our division. We offer remedial English up through a few sophomore literature classes. There are 4 other divisions, with most having 10-12 departments within them.
Our department obviously will have bigger numbers because we instruct core courses that every academic major must take. Glancing at the math department, their numbers are roughly similar to ours–their full time salaries alone add up to almost $703,000 and overloads is nearly $50,000.
What’s not included in departmental budgets are some of the items I mentioned earlier–our smartboards, computers, class projectors/ELMO’s, etc. come out of the Division’s budget, which doesn’t seem to be posted online.
Still, even a little department at a little school can have pretty significant costs.
[quote=“MikeS, post:22, topic:552784”]
And even this is overstated, I’m pretty sure, for the elite universities. Assuming by credit hours you mean the time actually in class, then at Yale, for example, most full professors are teaching 4 courses per year with 3 in-class hours per course or 12 credit-hours per year.
I’m aware that there are some inherent problems with the specific statistics, although I’m not sure how you would even begin to truly tease apart all the factors that separate financially successful people from others. But I still think it’s pretty clear that college grads typically earn more than non-college grads - most of the high-earning jobs in our economy (doctor, lawyer, surgeon, professor, etc.) require a good education. Of course there are individuals who are exceptions to the rule on both sides, but to me a university degree is a good investment.
The actual in state tuition is $5400 per year- not unreasonable at all. People pay more than this for daycare, and my kids’ high school tuition was also more than this. Their tuition at a public university is just about $5400. The OP is talking about a public university and in-state tuition will not cover nearly all of the costs - the out of state tuition probably does, but that’s about $16,000. The OP may not realize that his link was to a page giving the cost of attendance used for estimating financial aid- this means that the room and board figure reflects average costs for living on or off campus, not the fees charged by the university. Living in a dorm and having a meal plan will still cost about $7000, but so will living off campus- $6000 for rent and $1800 for food for nine months already gets you to 7800. Get a roommate, and you’re still at $5800 - assuming that $200/mo is realistic for food, and I don’t think it is. And than there’s electricity, internet service, cable ,etc- all of which are probably included in the dorm room, but not in the apartment.
I think part of the reason that college has gotten so expensive is the amount of money schools are spending on building projects. My alma mater is a geek school with very little in the way of arts programs and yet the newest and most expensive building on campus is a lavish $200 million performing arts center. Similarly, NYU and Columbia University are both undergoing multi-billion expansion projects in Manhattan. (Harvard University was as well, until its endowment really crashed.) And what’s worse is that a lot of this spending is done through debt financing which commits the schools to years of bond repayments.
I’m on the Board of Trustees of a University. I have some observations.
First, not everyone pays full tuition. Some schools offer significant discounts (i.e., scholarships) as a way to keep the classrooms full and achieve other goals (diversity, sports, etc).
Second, the cost of Administration is significant, but they have much more to do than a generation ago. We just hired a full time “compliance officer” to make sure we don’t violate any federal or state regulations. We have more HR, legal, and accreditation issues than you would expect. We’re relatively small, but need a full time CFO, development officer, alumni relations officer, and of course, an Academic Dean. All of these people need some staff.
We also have to pay our bonds, maintain our facilities, send people to conferences, etc
The main cost, by far, is salaries for professors and adjuncts (and they all deserve more than they’re making). Includes not only salary, but benefits such as retirement (another 15%) and medical and dental (which we pay 100%).
***However, *** let me tell you a secret. There is no direct relationship between tuition and what it costs to educate a student. (as others have said, tuition alone would not sustain most intitutions) I was amazed to learn that tuition is set based on what other “comparable” institutions are charging. (maybe they know what it costs). Between financial aid and tuition discounting, we find a way to get students in the door that we want. We then use enrollment figures to determine our revenue, which we, in turn, use to make our budget. In other words, we set the cost of the education based on what the market will bear, get as many quality students as we can, then we decide how much we can do with that revenue.
I’m not sure what this adds to the conversation, but I recently ran across my bill from spring semester 1970 at Carnegie Mellon.
Forty years ago, tuition, room and meal service was $3260 per year. So, for a four year education (minus books and spending money) was a bit over $13k. IIRC, 13k was not an unreasonable starting salary for an engineering grad in those days.
From what I know of costs today, I don’t think it is possible to get an engineering job with a salary that is the current equivalent of the four years of tuition, room and board at CMU.
From what I recall of those days, student loans were pretty rare. Now I read that the total student loan debt in the US is $850 BILLION.
Are we seeing the educational equivalent of the housing price run up?
Hmm. It’s working out pretty damn well for me, personally.
The ‘well-rounded bullshit’ is why we have “universities” and “liberal arts colleges”-- there are perfectly respectable schools that cater to specialists who wish to work within a narrow range of activity (specialty business schools, art schools, bicycle frame-building schools, typing clinics, adult-ed welding programs, apparel design institutes, beauty schools, massage therapy school-- you name it). If your pals wanted to save money and maintain their careful strict boundaries of “useful” knowledge they should have found one of those to teach them basic accounting and how to operate a microwave and floss their teeth, perhaps. God, I hope they didn’t have to take macroeconomics or political science or other peripheral, time wasting money sinks. Or they might have to accept that in some circles their subject has been accepted as an academic discipline and/or liberal art, so they have to go along with it and play make-believe for a bit.
The “bullshit class” argument is one I hear often from my students–I teach a core course, as I mentioned, and there are very few individuals who can expect to go anywhere in life (professionally and personally) if they cannot communicate.
I teach English. I had to take statistics in college. And two years of a foreign language. And a lab science. And humanities above and beyond my literature requirements. But none of those things were about filling my mind with information unrelated to my discipline. The whole idea of a liberal arts education is to teach students how to think, not what. Your ability to approach differing problems/questions from interdisciplinary perspectives is vital to what we should be preparing you for: success in all aspects of your life (which is why we have to take P.E. and activities, too.) You will have to think critically in areas that do not fit into a neat academic category.
My job as an educator is to teach thinking. I mediate that with a composition and grammar or literature textbook, but the goal isn’t to turn out a bunch of English majors. Art history, or music appreciation, is the same thing, just mediated via different mechanisms.
I am a realist, and I realize that it doesn’t work that way 100% of the time, but I cannot think of any college graduate I’ve talked to who does not appreciate the off-major courses he took; we might not have enjoyed them, but we do appreciate the lessons.
My degrees are in physics, and I currently work as a software engineer. So I’m as hard core tech as they come. And yet I’m glad I took “humanities” courses when I was in college. I learned something in all of them. Because of what I learned in Art History, for example, I enjoy my visits to art museums much more. I was just in one yesterday, as a matter of fact.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that the Russian I took purely as an elective would be useful to me in my work many years later, but it is. I deal with mapping software, and sometimes the maps I deal with are road maps of Moscow.
I paid exactly zero for my degrees; gotta love universal education.
The bottom line is that the average college student changes majors at least twice. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve made dramatic career changes at least three times as well. As a freshman, you simply don’t know what you’re going to need down the road. That’s why the core courses are required. When I was studying computer science in college, who knew I’d end up as a freelance writer because my communication skills were good enough for tech writing, then magazine writing, then books?
I’ve probably mentioned this on these boards before, but I used to teach woodworking to 4-H kids. When they came into the program, most of them thought math was one of those useless classes they’d never need. Until I had them calculating angles for the clock face they built, working out dimensions for embedded splines, and figuring out whether it was more cost-efficient to buy their lumber wide or narrow, S4S or rough, solid or laminated.
You may be misunderstanding what they meant when they said, “I used to think math was the most useless class I’d ever taken, but then I took woodworking!”
(I’m kidding! Don’t kill me!) ;)
The administrative division at Bologna is pushing to have more staff than academic staff. They’re already at 90%, and complain that they need more. Meanwhile Italian academic salaries decrease every year.
A school newspaper can be sold or be paid for by advertising. If it isn’t supported, it will die out, like any other business. The newspaper game (as well as broadcasting) is very simple, either have a sufficient readership, or have enough advertisements to cover the cost. Should the government float alternative weekly magazines because they serve some purpose to the community? (which it didn’t if it goes out of business.)
Foru year colleges are vocational schools! Business, law, medicine, education, research, languages, engineering and a hundred other different things. I am at University to learn a skill. (and smoke dope, drink beer, and hopefully get some pussy.)
Unless you are an English major, there is no reason to take a literature class. A lot of students who are studying their core work and major find these courses a pain in the ass, and especially with liberal art shit like Early American Literature to simply cheat and/or download papers from the internet. Then the added stress of doing well enough in these worthless courses to keep the GPA up for grad school. A lot of times, two classes will have a major exam the same time (like the midterms and finals) and if I am a business major who has an exam in Economic Theory 402 or Art History, which one should I study for?
A problem is that classical vocational schools are looked down as a lower rung from four year schools, and that there is a stereotype that “losers” go to vo-tech. This is not necessarily true, and there are a lot of good jobs for people with skills.
For example, a licensed electrician makes $25 dollars and way up.
Plumbers $50 and up.
http://www.answers.com/cost+per+hour+of+a+plumber
Car mechanics
About $20 and up (lots of overhead in this field and as they are probably in the first two.)
I think maybe that Americans need to get back to basics and learn skills that would make some income, even if the income is made under the table. What is needed is the return of the small businessman. I don’t care how crappy the economy gets, everyone is still going to need electricity, water/toilets and motors for cars/machinery. There needs to be a ground swelling of the underground economy.
You have a rather simplistic view of higher education, and I think that says a lot about your attitude presented in this thread.
So go to vocational school and learn a useful trade. You’re like a little kid whining that his bike isn’t a motorcycle. You want to have a bachelor’s degree from a university, which (theoretically) means that you’re an educated person with some exposure to culture and general knowledge, but you don’t want to, you know, GET the education or the culture or the knowledge.