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Comment by code4tee | Hacker News Reader

The Pandora’s box here is that far too little of these “fees” actually went to in-person instruction vs. bloated admin and other things not directly linked to core educational activities. Unless universities slash those bloated admin and other costs then they’re not really in a position to be giving everyone a “remote learning” discount.

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These fees aren't for bloated admin. They support resources like the library, general student use fitness facilities, techology, and other student focused items. I get why students want to stop paying these fees during the pandemic since they can't use many of the resources. The issue is that most of the costs for these resources are fixed, mainly personnel and facilities. If you cut the fees, the university would have to lay off many of its staff, librarians, IT support, etc. The facilities would also fall into disrepair. There's no easy solution here.

Few would argue about fixed costs of libraries, but you be hard pressed to explain how libraries etc. are responsible for the cost of higher ed increasing far far faster than inflation to levels that are increasingly hard to justify. That has a lot more to do with the number of “Assistant Vice Provost of Underwater Basketweaving” type non-teaching non-research roles and positions that have developed over the years at many schools.

It’s a story similar to Healthcare in the US. It’s so expensive because so little is actually spent on healthcare vs paperwork and administration.

See "Administrative Bloat and Academic Freedom"

https://www.thefire.org/administrative-bloat-and-academic-fr...

is it a case of it's hard to do a job badly so we need more resources to work badly more ?

"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."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-grow...

That sounds like a cooked study, although to be honest I don't have concrete evidence, just a hunch based on what I know about the atmosphere in universities. The author of the study is a sort of a think-tank called AIR with representatives of the banking, corporate consulting and finance on the board.

How did they do it before? The fees widely outpace inflation. It’d be nice to see state schools be affordable to kids on a part time job —which used to be the case. That’s not been the case for a few decades.

That’s the thing the puzzles me. Some of these universities’ annual tuition amounts to a healthy 1 year’s salary. How did they operate when this wasn’t the case?

They didn't build luxury spa resorts on campus to impress students and US News & World Report, in a mad race for govt guaranteed loan funds.

Universities used to look like high schools, and still do in many parts of Europe (and at community colleges).

Universities can still cut quite a few costs when facilities are underutilized without letting things decay. Buildings don’t need to be kept at room temperature without people. Most computers and lights can be kept off. Parking lots don’t need to be kept plowed and salted in the winter. Grounds can generally be less immaculate without long term issues. Bathrooms etc don’t need to be cleaned daily when not in use.

> Bathrooms etc don’t need to be cleaned daily when not in use.

The university can save some money because it use less soap and bleach, but I hope they are still paying the cleaning crew.

Large orgs generally hire contracting companies who manage their own workforce.

Most such services are contracted anyway and not on payroll.

But even those services are sometimes questionable in actual value (and overall experience.)

Example: At the college I went to, the food service company that handled the cafeteria had some interesting clauses in their contract that gave them a lot of control over who else could cook food for an 'on campus/university sanctioned' event. It's been a long time so I can't remember the specifics, but I think we had to switch some fraternity events from cooking hotdogs/hamburgers outside to just bringing some Carry Out pizza.

On top of that, the workers for that company weren't paid well, the food was typically about what you'd expect from, say, bulk purchases from Gordon Food Service, and very expensive for students.

Speaking of that, IIRC if you lived on campus you had to have some form of meal plan (I assume that was also in the contract.)

The easy solution is for Unis to take an L for once and to cover costs with their enormous savings from the last 30 years of exponential growth. Those fees obviously are over actual cost to cover contingencies, a pandemic was inevitable on the time scale of a university. They probably should have gotten insurance, what do those admins do anyway if not plan for things such as this?

At most places, that money was already spent, not saved up.

You can't buy insurance for something that cripples everyone. Math isn't magic.

It’s exempted from insurance but yeah they should have some reserves

My university had a dozen computer labs that were never utilized to capacity, (One in a dedicated, multi-story building), and a library that was far bigger than any of the other buildings on campus. And, of course, all the accouterments necessary to run a physics, a chemistry, a biology, an engineering department, etc, etc, etc.

All-in-market-rate-no-discount-no-subsidies-international-student tuition was ~100,000 CAD/4 years.

It's true, though, we did not have a stadium that could sit 60,000 people, or two olympic-sized swimming pools, or four-star-hotel-accomodation dorms that we were for some reason forced to live in, but we also weren't paying $100,000/year in tuition.

With all due respect, I don't think you've seen the finances of a the typical private US University. Admin spending has grown geometrically. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureau...

Not only that, too many schools are peddling worthless degrees to very unsophisticated buyers. Any other industry would be heavily regulated for such shenanigans. Instead, the government heavily subsidizes the activity and makes special laws allowing students to take on enormous debt that they won't be able to discharge if they get a worthless degree.

The simple answer is to get rid of government backed student loans and have the schools back the loans and aid themselves. That way, they will be incentivized to not indebt 18 year olds when it is unlikely they'll be able to pay back the loan. It will also incentivize them to focus on more important things.

Not to be pedantic, but if anything it's probably the other way around. The fees are the things specifically for academic resources, and the core tuition is what's wasted on administrative bloat.

Indeed. The article uses “fees” to include tuition but yes usually it’s called “tuition and fees.”

Everything in your post is oft thrown around conjecture. Do you have sources?

Well, the article does note universities that are offering discounts. They include Princeton, Georgetown, and Williams. So, it’s possible to give concessions for the short term.

If you're sitting on an endowment big enough to fund operations for decades then discounts are easy.

Indeed, and won’t certain alumni recognize the gesture that the university made and pay them back in the long term?

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