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In the overall budget, the coach's salaries would disappear in rounding. Sports teams bring in a huge amount of revenue in ticket sales, concessions, broadcast rights, gear sales, even parking.
In some states the college football coach is the highest paid state employee. Higher than administration.
Inflation-adjusted, college profs make pretty much the same as they made in 1975. The people in the trenches actually teaching students aren't the cause of the soaring costs, it's everything else. The heavy hitter is all the high paid non-teaching, student services, and administrative positions that didn't exist 40 years ago. You had department chairs who taught, deans of colleges who had a big head count, and the university President who didn't make enormous money.
Agreed, especially about the many layers of administration.Also adding to costs are new buildings and facilities, fancy housing in particular, which they claim are needed to attract the students.
I don’t think the people that actually teach are overpaid.
Agreed, especially about the many layers of administration.Also adding to costs are new buildings and facilities, fancy housing in particular, which they claim are needed to attract the students.
I don’t think the people that actually teach are overpaid.
The real problem with higher education is administration and building costs. Colleges have top heavy staffs full of administrators earning six figure salaries. Some of them help comply with state and federal laws. Some of them are involved in fundraising. The point is though that most of these jobs did not exist twenty and thirty years ago. Now, they exist in droves and the cost has to be paid for in some fashion.
Building costs are the other huge factor. You can't go to a college or university without seeing new buildings going up everywhere. The colleges justify in terms of a 'competition" between themselves and others institutions. College A has to have a new athletic stadium because College B (fifty miles away) has the same thing. College dorms used to be very spartan. Nowadays, they resemble luxury apartments and have all the latest features. Colleges justify the expense of building these dorms in terms of trying to "attract the best students out there".
Perhaps, such facilities do attract the "best students out there". However, the cost of tuition and residence at such institutions is already pricing a huge segment of young people out of the market.
There is a solution to much of this problem. Its just that people are too cowardly to use it. Citizens in each state can simply instruct politicians and the Board of Regents to refuse to approve any tuition increase that is more than the rate of inflation. Force public colleges and universities to live within their means.
What I don't buy is the idea that somehow scholarships and grants can make up for all of this. Only a small percentage of students qualify for this financial aid. The rest are stuck with what has become an intolerable situation.
Community support of higher education is an almost unqualified positive. Anyone who wants secondary education and qualifies for it should be able to get it, regardless of economic status.
Which is why I maintain that easy gummint money alone is not the cause of grossly inflating college costs. It's certainly the fuel for that fire... but the real problem lies elsewhere. (Where? Largely in this stupid cycle we've allowed to evolve where head janitors need a four-year degree to get hired. Maybe some segment of degrees has always been something of a job ticket, especially for fields that require intense education and training... but the current idea that you can't hire a junior anything without him/her waving a fairly worthless - but probably insanely expensive - piece of parchment is just arrogance and ingrained laziness.)
Yes, the 4 year degree qualification is a bit of a bad joke. Ironically, I work in a college and have had bosses that didn't even have one, who made two or three time what I made. We've also had administrators who had diploma-mill degrees, making in the 200k's. Even the people in charge of the colleges seem to recognize that what they are selling isn't inherently valuable.
TPerhaps, such facilities do attract the "best students out there".
I'd bet against it. They do, however, do the job of attracting as many "qualifying" students as possible.
College rivalries used to be about genial trash-talking and healthy sports competitions. Now, it's admin-v-admin with the losers weeping over lost student... revenue. ("Oh, no! We need a new stadium and hot tubs in every dorm building!")
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There is a solution to much of this problem. Its just that people are too cowardly to use it. Citizens in each state can simply instruct politicians and the Board of Regents to refuse to approve any tuition increase that is more than the rate of inflation. Force public colleges and universities to live within their means.
You can't cure cancer with a band-aid.
Forcing an entity (nation, state, corporation, factory, school or Little League team) to "live within its means" by simply choking off revenue hardly ever has the desired consequences. Look at the hallowed grandpa of that thinking, Prop 13: it spread a very limited and subjective kind of cancer statewide, top to bottom.
Yes, the 4 year degree qualification is a bit of a bad joke. Ironically, I work in a college and have had bosses that didn't even have one, who made two or three time what I made. We've also had administrators who had diploma-mill degrees, making in the 200k's. Even the people in charge of the colleges seem to recognize that what they are selling isn't inherently valuable.
I am surprised there are any college "bosses" without degrees, even in groundskeeping and maintenance - at least, within any reasonable age span I can attribute to you. My experience of the last ten years is that schools of all levels won't hire a receptionist without a degree.
My first education in this came just as degrees started being a hurdle for ordinary jobs. I was a bank clerk and worked under a manager who was both a woman in her late 40s and had essentially no secondary education. She was intelligent, skilled, and a superb people manager and that branch ran like a happy clock. However, she was absolutely smashed against a glass ceiling, partly because of her gender but mostly because her lack of a degree. She was never moving up, and IIRC she retired a few year later, on the early side.
In the same branch was a new operations officer, a woman about 30 who was one of the worst bosses I ever had. Shrill, panicky, incompetent, couldn't tell you good morning without it being a critique - someone who couldn't run a flower stand, much less a bank. But she had a Biz degree from one of the CSUs. And last I heard was a VP in lending.
Which is the start of which made me sensitive to, and suspicious of rigid degree requirements for jobs that really had no such need. But (to bring this back on topic) that's the problem - everyone who wants to do more than flip burgers better have that damned sheepskin, so our secondary ed system is happy to accommodate many thousands of otherwise unqualified students... at, of course, a stiff price.
Forcing an entity (nation, state, corporation, factory, school or Little League team) to "live within its means" by simply choking off revenue hardly ever has the desired consequences. Look at the hallowed grandpa of that thinking, Prop 13: it spread a very limited and subjective kind of cancer statewide, top to bottom.
That's an odd thing to say... California is in preparation to offer online college to all and some cities already offer FREE community college such as San Francisco... 40 years after the voters made Prop 13 law.
Prop 13 came about in large part due to the change in Public School Funding imposed under the Serrano Decision.
That's an odd thing to say... California is in preparation to offer online college to all and some cities already offer FREE community college such as San Francisco... 40 years after the voters made Prop 13 law.
No one who lived through the decade or so after Prop 13 has much regard for its consequences, other than the minority who chuckled over their absurdly low property taxes.
Most of the damage has been fixed in the last ten years, largely by Jerry Brown's policies.
When you phrase that in the passive voice instead of the active voice, you imply someone is taking care of them. Of course, that isn't true.
Their family is paying for their expenses. Fine, if you want to play word games, someone is not "taking care of them" Someone has paid for their expenses.
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Originally Posted by SportyandMisty
The following might be what you meant:
"People who have high incomes resulting from adding value to their employers can choose to pay their own expenses; and people who have high wealth resulting from disciplined investment in the past can choose to pay their own expenses."
No, that is not what I meant. I meant what I said. "Rich people have most of their expenses taken care of." I mean, "someone else is paying for their expenses." Rich people say that education is "not that expensive." It is expensive to people that have to pay for everything when they don't have a rich family to help with expenses.
How do you jump from "poor people can't afford education" to "high income individuals can afford their own expenses" ?? You are completely avoiding my point. Obviously, once an individual has an education and a high income they can pay their own expenses. I'm not talking about people with high income. I am talking about poor people with low income that do not have a rich family to help with expenses.
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Originally Posted by SportyandMisty
No one takes care of rich people's expenses but themselves.
Now, poor people, on the other hand, get deeply discounted or free tuition to many legitimate academic institutions.
No, they do not. Poor people have to pay out of pocket. Sure, sometimes one might win a lottery and get a free ride. That is just to satisfy "diversity quotas".
Rich people say that education is "not that expensive."
I don't know anyone, of any economic stratum outside the TrumpDashians, who doesn't think college is expensive. Just because $200k is a month's investment income doesn't make it negligible.
And... truly qualified students, and children of alumni, often pay less to go to a top-tier university than Joe Whitecollar's kid pays to go to University of Midwestergan. Discounted tuition, grants, bequests, scholarships - I personally know someone who went through Yale for less than $100k in his costs, in part because he was a fourth-gen alumnus.
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