Rising Collge Tuition

Related to this post, we read this article about rising college tuition and what you can do about it.  Note the part about “amenities.”  Providing such fluff is not only an incentive to draw students in, it is also a justification for the rapidly proliferating administrative parasites.  After all, why does a college or university require 10,000 deans (slight exaggeration) and more “student affairs” personnel than there are grains of sand on a beach (another very slight exaggeration)?  To provide those “amenities” and “enrich the student experience.”  It’s not only the “student experience” that is getting “enriched,” that’s for sure.  And the article touches upon another issue: education inflation; today, a college degree is required for jobs that in the past required only a high school diploma.  Eventually, one will need a PhD, MD, or JD for even the most mundane entry-level job, and then even that won’t be enough.

The cornerstone article may be useful to you, so take a look.

Why Not Adjunct Administrators?

At left, is that an academic administrator? 

By http://phil.cdc.gov/PHIL_Images/20031208/87d4bff74e41427cb278526bd9cbe76a/5260_lores.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=776561

Following up on this and also on this, I ask: why not have adjunct administrators?  Well, other people have already written about this.  See this summary:

Rather than fill universities with adjunct instructors, why not replace them with adjunct administrators?

Most of the growth of university costs comes from administrative bloat. Non-faculty staff has grown at more than twice the rate of instructors – you know, the people who are the ostensible reason a university exists. As tenured professors retire, administrators kill those tenure lines and replace them permanently with part timers. Administrators do this so they can gorge on a higher salary while demanding more from the refugee ration-packet salary of academics. Think I am not being generous? Some administrators earn $300,000 a year to fundraise for new football stadium skyboxes. Vice Presidents at the University of Maryland saw their salaries increase by 50 percent between 1998 and 2003, as faculty positions were slashed. All the while adjuncts try to get by with the help of Medicaid or food stamps.

Worse of all, administrators isolate themselves from students behind security doors but meddle more and more in faculty and student lives.

Indeed.  A problem is that hiring and “cost-cutting” decisions are made by administrators themselves. Guess whose positions they have an incentive to protect?

Rent-seeking behavior, anyone?

The same principles apply as to why we have outsourcing and H-1B job replacement for workers, but not for management (or lawyers, economists, politicians, mass media, etc.). Economically, it's always easier for administration (of all types) to focus on the mote in the worker's eye than the beam in their own.

The American dream: code blue

America, its lifestyle and opportunities have been the dream for many.

America became my own salvation when the communist bloc in Eastern Europe began to fall apart, and there were no jobs, food was scarce, and electricity was sporadic. At that time, I had a newly-minted MS degree, very little English and no prospects for work. So, I studied English on my own, took the required standardized tests (for the first time in my life) and applied to PhD programs in the U.S.

I was lucky - I was accepted in one out of the three universities I applied to. I petitioned to waive my application fee; I hardly had the money to cover the fees for the standardized tests. My parents borrowed money for my airfare and for my first month of expenses in the U.S. After the first month, I had to support myself with my stipend for the work I did in the graduate school.

Looking back, I believe that America saved me from the prematurely aged, toothless and nervous wreck I could have become in my own country. The reality in a disintegrating socialist country killed many. It killed my best friend. Sometimes I doubt that I would have survived, if I had stayed home.

America gave me a PhD degree, job, and family. America gave me opportunities and hopes.

However, would America give the same to my child? What does America offer to the young generation today?

Today, college is a barrier that everyone needs to jump over, but once on the other side, there are not too many opportunities to apply the college degree to. Instead, the graduates are staring at an ugly debt.

And even when one finds a job, how many college-degree jobs are stable today? I think, none. Even my present job is about to expire within the next few years, as academia contracts into a quasi-online model that employs adjuncts, teaching assistants and an exorbitant number of administrators. This would be the end of my career as a PhD graduate.

When I look back at my parents’ trajectory, I perceive that their stories could have been the most extreme example of the American dream. The irony is that they grew up and lived in a socialist country, not in the U.S.

My father was born and raised in a remote, small village in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to visit the place a few years ago, and I was told that there were only a few houses left. His parents may or may have not attended elementary school. After leaving the village and joining the workforce at age of 14, my father survived on very little until the political changes in the country pulled him from the bottom and gave him opportunities. The socialist system helped him finish high school and vocational school, and eventually, brought him into a military academy in the USSR. My father became a skillful and knowledgeable electrical engineer, he rose to the rank of colonel and was given a high-responsibility position in the Ministry of Defense. He was considered for a general and a leader of a military factory next. However, by that time the stress and speed of rising took their toll. My father gave in to a psychosis-ridden burnout and was unable to function at his high-ranked position.

Despite this ending, my father’s story is this of tremendous success – his journey was this from a speck of a village, through numerous towns and jobs, and finally to the capital. He put lots of effort, work, diligence and determination on this path. But he was also helped by the system. If my father was to go to a grad school in the U.S. today, he would not have had a chance! You see, candidates like him are considered an unacceptable risk for the schools. Candidates like him are not offered any scholarships. Back then – more than 50 years ago, my father paid not a single penny for his education. The education in the socialist countries was free.

My mom was raised in a family that was more stable financially; however, her parents also did not have too much of a formal education. My mom graduated from a specialized college to become a highly accomplished teacher in science. Again, the education was free.

Despite their education, my parents received the standard socialist salaries – at that time everyone was receiving more or less the same amount of money for being a medical doctor, colonel, teacher, or janitor. My mom and dad never got a penny from their own parents; however, they were able to establish a home and raise two children. Both my brother and I received free education and obtained masters’ degrees. At the time of graduation, we did not have a penny of debt.

Of course, whereas the socialist system was good and helpful to some, to others, the same system turned out to be cruel and unforgiving. I met some of these people - they had been raised in affluent families, they were smart, well educated, and talented. And yet, when the socialist system was established, these people found themselves under attack. After all, their mothers, fathers and/or grandparents have served the monarch! These people were banned from certain schools, they were not given jobs. Every system has its own flaws, the socialist system had plenty.

And yet, when I look at the future of this land of opportunities, I see only shrinking ones. For me, for my husband, for my child, for the majority of the population.

I do not see the solutions that great leaders should offer the greatest nation in the world.

Where is the grand vision?

Our children are the future of this country. Our priority in visioning should be to take good care of them, give them opportunities to learn, find their interests, realize themselves and be able and free of debt to apply their talents where their hearts are.

We should also make sure that these children grow up in stable families, families in which mom and dad have jobs.

Dismantling Administration

 Representative of a typical administrator. By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19854440

Related to this, take a look at this article. I’ll reproduce some parts of it, and then link to another article, and then make some comments at the end.

The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures. 

The disproportionate increase in the number of university staffers who neither teach nor conduct research has continued unabated in more recent years… 

…Universities have added these administrators and professional employees even as they’ve substantially shifted classroom teaching duties from full-time faculty to less-expensive part-time adjunct faculty and teaching assistants, the figures show… 

…Part-time faculty and teaching assistants now account for half of instructional staffs at colleges and universities, up from one-third in 1987, the figures show. 

During the same period, the number of administrators and professional staff has more than doubled. That’s a rate of increase more than twice as fast as the growth in the number of students. 

It’s not possible to tell exactly how much the rise in administrators and professional employees has contributed to the increase in the cost of tuition and fees… 

…But critics say the unrelenting addition of administrators and professional staffs can’t help but to have driven this steep increase. 

At the very least, they say, the continued hiring of nonacademic employees belies university presidents’ insistence that they are doing everything they can to improve efficiency and hold down costs. 

“It’s a lie. It’s a lie. It’s a lie,” said Richard Vedder, an economist and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. 

“I wouldn’t buy a used car from a university president,” said Vedder. “They’ll say, ‘We’re making moves to cut costs,’ and mention something about energy-efficient lightbulbs, and ignore the new assistant to the assistant to the associate vice provost they just hired.”… 

...The ratio of nonacademic employees to faculty has also doubled. There are now two nonacademic employees at public and two and a half at private universities and colleges for every one full-time, tenure-track member of the faculty. 

Centralization has been promoted as a way to reduce costs, but Vedder points out that it has not appeared to reduce the rate of hiring of administrators and professional staffs on campus—or of incessant spikes in tuition… 

…“It’s almost Orwellian,” said Vedder. “They’ll say, ‘We’ll save money if we centralize.’ Then they hire a provost or associate provost or an assistant business manager in charge of shared services, and then that person hires an assistant, and you end up with more people than you started with.” 

In higher education, “Everyone now is a chief,” he said. “And there are a lot fewer Indians.” 

And if that is not enough, how about this: 

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions. 

Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase. 

As a faculty member, I can attest to this. Faculty are downsized concurrently with a relentless expansion of administration and staff. Faculty are held accountable to how they spend every microsecond of their workday, and at the same time incompetent administrators have lower and lower responsibility and accountability as they rise in the academic hierarchy. 

The more administrators talk about “tight budgets” and “cost cutting measures”, the more administration and staff they hire, the more expensive out-of-state meetings they attend, the more of their buddies are invited to come and “train the faculty,” and the more fluff and nonsense they waste money on. Much of what administrators do is self-serving: they use the authority of their positions to the advantage of administration (of which they are part) at the expense of faculty and, above all, students (who have to pay, via tuition, for this bloated administrative infrastructure). 

What about the excuse that all these administrators are required because of the expansion of regulations? Guess what – more self-serving behavior. Who do you think are making up all these regulations? Academic administrators working for government and for accreditation agencies. Where do these people come from? Look at the situation in which people switch back and forth between government positions and corporate lobbyists – it is the same principle in academia. It’s the same general pool of parasitic, self-serving administrators that fill the academic administrative posts and also fill the positions in government and accreditation agencies dreaming up more regulations to justify even more administrative hiring. 

What about the “demands of students and their families?” If only those students and families understood how little the students actually benefit from a school having more Deans, Vice Deans, Associate Deans, Assistant Deans, Presidents, Vice Presidents and all of their respective staffs! That’s just another excuse…have you noticed that American academic performance continues to decline despite our expansion of ever-more administration to “help” “students and their families?” In the end, the administrators are not really helping the “students and their families” – they are helping themselves. And why are students ill-prepared for college in the first place (one excuse often cited for hiring more administration)? One reason is that these scenarios play out at the public school level as well; anyone who has a child in American public schools understand how much time is wasted with non-academic fluff at the expense of a rock-solid education.

If all of this administration could be justified by the fact that American education was a well-oiled machine that would be one thing. But that’s not the case. The administrators ultimately cause problems requiring hiring even more administration to fix. Work creating even more work, a feedback loop that will continue until colleges end up having more administration and staff than they do students (faculty have already been out-numbered long ago). It’s like a metastatic cancer and it can only end up by killing off the host. 

Solution? Faculty and students need to form an alliance to promote the best interests of their institutions and the students who attend those institutions against the self-serving behavior of runaway administration. A stand needs to be made or the student-faculty foundation is going to crumble under the weight of the gigantic administrative superstructure, whose sheer mass is much-too-much to handle.

Dismantling academia, part I

Whereas our identities will not be revealed until we are employed, it is not a secret that we hold academic jobs. My husband and I teach and do research. We interact with students every day. We try to impart useful skills and any piece of knowledge we have to our next generations.

However, academia, as we know it, is dying. It is disintegrating right in front of our eyes, and even we are unwilling participants in this process.

How is this happening?

First, there is very little money for research. If you are not highly published and high-visibility researcher today, you are lost. Your research ideas will never see the light, they will never be tested. Maybe in 20 or 30 years from now someone else will come up with the same ideas or may be not.  Countless sparks of creativity are lost today, every day.

Second, teaching in person is over. We will move all instructional material online.

Have you watched The 2015 Atwell Lecture: Stanford President John L. Hennessy? The talk focuses on the future of higher education, and follows the predictions of the honorable president. 

According to him, the students will enjoy short instructional modules of mixed media online and mini-quizzes. This online format may or may not be combined with flipped classroom activities. These are activities, in which students participate on their own - discussions of various scenarios, solving problems, creating small groups to analyze cases. 

This does not sound bad, right? However, when the president of Stanford states that all of these activities could be led by teaching assistants and adjunct faculty to save money, the predictions become sordid. 

The main reason to make these changes? Decrease tuition. Again - this sounds good (especially if you have a child headed for college). However, think about the fact that tuition has increased in the past 20 years, but the ratio faculty:students has not changed. Where does the tuition money go? The money goes to the ever-expanding administration in our schools.

The same administration is disassembling the academia, in order to decrease the payment to faculty, but not their own overblown administrative salaries.

Think about the impact: no academic jobs, no research, no real interaction between highly intelligent faculty and inquisitive students. 

Would the U.S. remain a leader in higher education?

PS
My husband decided to continue this topic in another post. 
I also decided to write PART II on Dismantling academia.

More thoughts and information on college tuition could be found here.

The Freshman 15

With the new college year starting, it is timely to consider the diet and weight of our young students.

From this Wikipedia page, one can learn that there is much controversy about the so-called "freshman 15," the notion that college freshmen tend to gain weight due to unhealthy eating habits, poor food choices, alcohol consumption, stress and other overall unhealthy habits.

There seems be a disconnect between studies on the topic, personal anecdotal observations and common sense interpretations of this topic.

My own person experience living away at college - oh those many years ago - is more consistent with the anecdotal observations than with anything else.  Besides the poor everyday habits (little rest, lack of consistent schedule, partying), and the typical consumption of pizza and soda, the truth of the matter was that the dining hall food was horrendous.

The best meal of the day was breakfast, and there the healthiest choices were eggs, hash browns, bacon sausage, white toast with butter and/or jelly, and oatmeal.  At least some of the egg meals tasted reasonably well, as long as the eggs did not feel not "rubbery".

Lunch was a step down in quality, but was still halfway edible - typically the healthiest choices (the adjective "healthy" is in a relative, not absolute, sense) were a bowel of salty soup and a hamburger with cheap gristle-filled meat.

But breakfast and lunch paled compared to the horrors of dinner.  Yegads!  Some sort of unidentifiable, tough meat, drowned in vomit-like "sauce," accompanied by plastic-like frozen vegetables, stale bread, maybe a salad with wilted lettuce and sugar-laden dressing.

At some point, the dining service started serving cereal and ice cream as a main meal for dinner - the students would line up in front of huge bins filled with Captain Crunch, before moving on the the ice cream dispensers.  The cereal was the main meal and the ice cream was the dessert, or vice versa, I can't remember.

So, the tastiest choices were relatively unhealthy, and the overall lousy quality prompted students to order from outside: the usual pizza with the ever present bottle of soda.  After the pizza, the next item on the agenda was partying and beer drinking.  Weight gain?  Are we surprised?