from Hacker News

Colleges spend like there’s no tomorrow

by chrisaycock on 8/10/23, 10:59 AM with 8 comments

  • by ak47lover on 8/10/23, 11:19 AM

  • by sam345 on 8/10/23, 2:01 PM

    >>The spending is inextricably tied to the nation’s $1.6 trillion federal student debt crisis. Colleges poured out money in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects.

    Exactly. Get rid of and severely cut government subsidies, let the universities declare bankruptcy,cut useless administrative costs and staff, and lower their prices to match actual affordability equilibrium. We wouldn't have this problem if scholarships and loans were private and universities actually had to show a return on a student's investment to earn their attendence.

  • by sneed_chucker on 8/11/23, 10:11 PM

    Frankly, this should be obvious to anyone who's ever been on an American university campus.

    There's all this random crap that the school somehow has money to fund, it's insane.

  • by sam345 on 8/10/23, 1:54 PM

    Ain't it the truth. But does anyone care? Not those who spread the debt over 10 or 20 years, not those who are heavily subsidized by grants, artificially low interest, or debt forgiven. Not those who can't understand the obtuse college bills. Not those who have no choice when low entry jobs require college degrees because high schools graduate illiterates. No end user cost shopping leads to spending like there's no tomorrow. At one state school campus I heard one student dean state matter of factly that she had thousands of employees reporting just to her. These were simply managers of various student group extracurriculars. What ???!

  • by cs702 on 8/10/23, 2:13 PM

    Administrators are spending like there's no tomorrow, sure -- but only on things that aggrandize their own reputation and domain. For a long while, administrators have been willing to curtail spending for attracting and retaining the best possible professors and the most promising researchers, including graduate students.

    Spending more on things that will surely make administrators look, feel, and be more important: Yes. Investing on things that won't: No.

  • by mips_r4300i on 8/10/23, 8:04 PM

    My alma mater tried calling me for money. I asked the poor student on the phone how much he was being paid. He wasn't. So I asked him why I would want to pay more to a building that had already extracted a huge amount of money for not much gain.

    They must be targeting 60 year old boomers with rose-tinted nostalgia of their youth.

    The amount of waste and prioritization of administration goals over actual teaching and research turned me off from ever contributing back.