Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a link to an example breakdown of the costs per student in a typical university?

A full course load is about 12 hours total spent in class per week, for 16 weeks. Let's bump this number up to 20 hours, to account for overhead (homework grading, office hours, course design, etc). And given a class size of 25 students, that means 1 instructor can handle 50 full time students. If that instructor gets paid 100K a year, that works out to be 2K of instructor time per student. So what other overhead is involved that brings the cost of college up to 20 - 50K per year? You have the building, administration, potentially lab equipment, and teaching supplies (chalk/markers/copy paper/etc). But I still can't see that bumping the price up that much. Is the per-student share of the building cost really that high? Or are there 10 administrative staff for every one instructor?

My impression, and I live near a university, is that few teachers make close to $100k per year and adjuncts make about $4k per class. On the other hand, many administrative positions pay in that range and there are lots of people engaged in administration.

The goal of most colleges is to grow without bound, consuming entire cities in the process. Administrative staff make up a big part of costs and instructors are paid far less on average than 100k. The real costs are in the construction of huge, fancy new buildings and luxury facilities designed to entice parents and students alike.

new construction is the main reason I don't donate any money to my college. When I went there 15 years ago the tuition was around 18k and when I left 4 years later it was 23k and they were just starting to put up new buildings right and left.

Now its 55k

Maybe it's just my university, but I spend 21 hours a week in class, even though I am officially taking 15 "units"). Most STEM classes are a 6 hour/week time commitment even though they are only listed as 4 units officially.

Also, class time is split about 60/40 between professors and graduate (sometimes undergraduate) student instructors. Class size for the student instructors is 25-30 and class size for the professors is anywhere from 100-1400, depending on the class. Some upper div classes are notably smaller, depending on the department. It's my understanding that this setup is pretty common at large public universities.

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