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Comment by crb002 | Hacker News Reader

In the U.S. the problem is the Department of Education handing out billions of loans creating artificial cashflow. Universities raise their tuition because they know the student can squeeze the federal government out of an extra $20,000.

End the loans and the tuition crisis will abate. Yes there will be turmoil as professors making $200k go back to making $100k; but institutions will go back to a true needs based financial aid where students once able to pay $20k in loans above minimal amounts pay minimal amounts again and graduate debt free.

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> Yes there will be turmoil as professors making $200k go back to making $100k

How many professors actually make $200k in salary, outside of medical/law school schools?

The University of California has a salary schedule and, from what I know, they stick to it pretty consistently. You need 12 years as a full professor before you're making even $110k in salary. http://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/1617/...

Right. Administrative metastasis is the main cause of increasing costs, absolutely not increased spending on faculty salaries:

"Interestingly, increased spending has not been going into the pockets of the typical professor. Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970."

- https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-r...

https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/

There's literally 30 pages of UC Berkeley professors and admins making >$200k.

At UCI, the cost of living is less than Berkeley, but there are 650~ people making that much.

Interesting database. At Berkeley, the 6 highest paid employees are all coaches, with total pay of $2 million, $1.87 million, $1.8 million, $628K, $560K and $560K. Their compensation seems to be mostly incentive-based, with their "gross pay" far exceeding their "regular pay" - maybe they get a cut of the ticket revenue? Looks like sports is a big profit center for Berkeley.

UCLA's two top earners are also coaches ($3.5 and $2.7 million).

But this is not true for all the schools. At Davis, the highest paid employee is the CEO of the Medical Center, who makes $1 million, with no coaches near the top.

Some university employees are making $200k or more, but they are mostly not professors.

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