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I think it would be a good idea as an associates back in the 1980's could give you $80,000. Nowadays you have to get a Bachelors with a bunch of filler classes just to put pocket inside of the colleges lifespan. It is dumb and a waste of time. So it is putting money into colleges so that one area of studies can gain funding. Drop funding and the colleges would have to roll back associates. With this system we have currently we are going to be forcing students to get Masters for a job that only requires an associates. Insane and sad is it not?
Generally, the standard is 2-3 classes/semester. That's because profs are expected to be doing research and writing books, as well as serving on academic committees, supervising grad student research and academic progress, and so forth. It's not just a teaching job.
The department where I used to work went through a peer-review process, and the evaluators were shocked that most of the faculty taught 3 5-credit courses/trimester, or close to it. That was considered an overload, and correspondingly, the faculty produced very little in terms of publications. An occasional book review, if that. Now the publishing requirements have tightened up, and people are expected to produce more prolifically than before. That's my observation.
I did not say universities do not need to change the way they are run. I actually said they need to be asked to change how they do things.
It is common for universities to have professors who do essentially nothing of value or who teach only one class a year. Universities exist to teach. If the professor comes up with something meaningful and writes a book - good for them. Forcing them to "Publish" something every year whether it has any significance or not is worthless, allowing them to avoid teaching classes so they can do it is contrary to the purpose of the university. If I or my children are paying for university, I do not mind paying for someone well qualified and skilled at teaching. I do not not whether or not they publish an article about some meaningless detail in an obscure online journal. that is not something I want to pay for or that I want my taxes to pay for. If people perceive a shortage of funding, pressure will be placed on the politicians. If people perceive a bloated, agenda oriented budget practice at universities, there will be no support and pressure to cut back on tax spending for universities.
Universities can close their eyes and blindly defending the current spending and practices. It does nto matter. They have a rude awakening coming. Regardless of their attempts to defend indefensible practices, they are going to be forced to change.
I did not say universities do not need to change the way they are run. I actually said they need to be asked to change how they do things.
It is common for universities to have professors who do essentially nothing of value or who teach only one class a year. Universities exist to teach. If the professor comes up with something meaningful and writes a book - good for them. Forcing them to "Publish" something every year whether it has any significance or not is worthless, allowing them to avoid teaching classes so they can do it is contrary to the purpose of the university. If I or my children are paying for university, I do not mind paying for someone well qualified and skilled at teaching. I do not not whether or not they publish an article about some meaningless detail in an obscure online journal. that is not something I want to pay for or that I want my taxes to pay for. If people perceive a shortage of funding, pressure will be placed on the politicians. If people perceive a bloated, agenda oriented budget practice at universities, there will be no support and pressure to cut back on tax spending for universities.
Universities can close their eyes and blindly defending the current spending and practices. It does nto matter. They have a rude awakening coming. Regardless of their attempts to defend indefensible practices, they are going to be forced to change.
I'm trying to parse what you think is bloat here, but can't quite figure out what you're saying. If you are saying research is bloat, remember that most research actually brings money into the university. In business terms it's a net gain for the university. And given patent royalities, can be a profit center. So if a university were run like a business, they would teach fewer classes and fewer students and put more emphasis on research rather than teaching.
As for perception, people perceive a lot of things that aren't true and then act from that perception rather than solid information. To me that's one of the key problems in this whole discussion on cost and value of education is the difference between several belief systems.
I'm trying to parse what you think is bloat here, but can't quite figure out what you're saying. If you are saying research is bloat, remember that most research actually brings money into the university. In business terms it's a net gain for the university. And given patent royalities, can be a profit center. So if a university were run like a business, they would teach fewer classes and fewer students and put more emphasis on research rather than teaching.
As for perception, people perceive a lot of things that aren't true and then act from that perception rather than solid information. To me that's one of the key problems in this whole discussion on cost and value of education is the difference between several belief systems.
This is a great post, as many people on this thread have no idea how funding for highered functions.
To simplify things dramatically, you can think of colleges in 3 buckets. Community colleges, teaching universities, and research universities. There are many nuances, and if you are interested you can read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carn...gher_Education
Looking at community colleges, the funding is more or less what people think. Faculty teach 3-4 classes per term, very little research is done, the funding comes from the state or tuition. These institutions tend to hav3 the lowest tuition costs, and lowest cost per student for education.
The next group are teaching universities. Faculty tend to teach 2-3 classes a term, and need to do some research. Sometimes these are derogatorily referred to as “directional” schools, as they frequently include a compass point in their name. Eastern Connecticut State, Central Washington, etc. Their funding is similar to a CC, but they do have a reasonable amount of money coming from grants.
The final group are research universities, R1 or R2 in the Carnegie system. There are only 220 of these in the entire country, out of a total of 4600+ institutions. Less than 5%.
The R1/R2 group are the institutions coldjensens seems to be complaining about. Faculty teach 1-2 courses a term, and depending on other factors, may not even teach that. The thing that coldjensens doesn’t mention (or maybe know) is that faculty at these institutions are required to raise money to cover their research. They need to obtain external grants to cover their salary, the salary of any research assistants, lab space, equipment, plus university overhead. These faculty almost always bring in more money to the university than they cost.
There are many other things we can discuss about the cost of highered, but research at R1 universities isn’t a significant cost factor overall.
Next door is Kansas... and their "funding" of education problems
part of deal with colleges is they wouldn't cut the funding if the colleges didn't increase tuition more than 1%, it's better than nothing
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