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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

Agree with most of this, but there are good reasons to think education costs are not driver by bloated administration.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...

> More importantly, the data reject the bloat theory. Figure 8 shows spending shares in higher education. Contrary to the bloat theory, the administrative share of spending has not increased much in over thirty years. The research share, where you might expect to find higher lab costs, has fluctuated a little but also hasn’t risen much. The plant share which is where you might expect to find lazy rivers has even gone down a little, at least compared to the early 1980s.

...

> If bloat doesn’t work, what is the explanation for higher costs in education? The explanation turns out to be simple: we are paying teachers (and faculty) more in real terms and we have hired more of them. It’s hard to get costs to fall when input prices and quantities are both rising and teachers are doing more or less the same job as in 1950.

Ummm...you can't compare higher education spending with elementary/secondary school staffing, as those two graphs in the link do.

Both of these are ludicrous. The salaries for my school are public, they are for all public schools (that I've looked at at least).

I can tell you from the data from my school the administrative costs have gone up substantially. Both from number of administrators increasing significantly. The average administrative staff wage is over 250k (I know that's not a lot in tech salaries, but that is HUGE where I am. Cost of living calculator says $663,545 compared to SF). Our president makes 700k (just under 2m equiv) and gets 60k/yr salary increase.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. 60k/yr is more than the average lecturer at my uni makes. A lecturer! Not a professor. Even the CS Professors only make like $120k/yr (highest I see is 220k, which are the heads and are Full professors). So you are telling me that half the admins are worth at least twice as much as the CS professors (ones that are required to bring in money? And a substantial amount I might add). All our STEM professors are paid about that (CS is on the higher side) and all of them are required to bring in money and as far as I'm aware are paying for themselves (with equipment) and their students (all our masters get funded because all the PhDs are filling research positions).

I can understand lab costs going up but I think putting all the blame, or even the majority, on the professors is ludicrous.

And you also need to consider that hiring more professors doens't always equate to less income. You hire more professors to get more students (who pay a significant amount). I'll buy the argument of hiring professors in subjects that don't draw in enough students to justify their cost, but that's a different argument and I would argue is definitely not the lion's share.

> The average administrative staff wage is over 250k (

This is a big salary even in SF. What average admin staff is that?

University. That is the average of our university's admin salary. I don't know the median, so that could be pushed by a few high earners. But given the president's salary it looks like there are quite a few high earners.

If the salaries are public, can you post the link?

My medical school tuition was $38k for my final year of medical school. If my professors were making $250k/yr (1) their hourly rate would be $125. With a wrap rate of 25%, my institution's billable cost would be $156.25/hr. For $38K I should get 243 hours, or a bit over 12% of an FTE. Figure I got 1-2 hours a day direct time and 1-2 hours indirect time. We'll say 3 hours a day for 250 work days. But it was often "group therapy" where one faculty member would have 3-5 students and residents at a time. Still, at 1 hour a day, that comes out about even.

(1) Average US physician income: $294k, dragged down by military and public health physicians.

What percentage of the total budget of your school is being spent on each of overpaid administrators and underpaid faculty? (I honestly don't have any expectation as to what the answer to this question might be, but it seems much more important an analysis than the average salary of a given position.)

Congratulations, you have disproven statistical evidence by providing an anecdote.

This really doesn't fit the definition of anecdote. It is a counter example. You can see other comments for direct reasoning why the data in the article is wrong. There's things like the statement about unemployment not considering that unemployment doesn't count those who left the workforce, which is also at highs. Or to things like that you can't compare elementary and high schools to college.

I know your comment sounds witty, but it is lacking real value and really adds to the problem at hand. Surprisingly things are extremely nuanced and we try to just point to "simple solutions" we generally make the problem worse. Frankly because we are not considering the system and distracting ourselves from solving the problem (calling it done when we've only just started).

I don't know the answer, but it is odd that there's no curve for "faculty share" of university costs. If this were a paper in my field I'd really wonder why the key curve is missing. (Imagine a candy store P&L with no line for "cost of candy.")

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