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NWR: Searching for a College
- Thread starter Bill Lundstrom
- Start date
originally posted by Zachary Ross:
I don't doubt it. I'm curious about the absolute numbers of faculty and administrators, though. You're at Purdue, right? From this page here (http://www.purdue.edu/facts/pages/faculty_staff.html), I wonder where has the non-faculty growth occurred?
A lot can be hidden in those category names. Let's take as an example "professional assistants." What are those, exactly? My guess is that their job titles are director, associate director, assistant Vice President, etc. I got my idea from an article run a year ago in our local paper (http://www.jconline.com) but a quick search of its archives didn't turn up anything.
Mark Lipton
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I don't have recently written books and studies to support what I'm about to say about rising costs...
Me either.
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Over the last 20 years there has been a substantial change to the fixed costs of running universities. ...
Multiply all this by everywhere you look (and especially science labs, VLM).
I blame the scientists. Living and dining standards for my students have not changed substantially, though I can't find the Trotskyite alcove anymore. Tuition is not up as high for us, but expenses sure are. We do have more administrators, but I don't think that accounts for it.
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by VLM:
I'd like for universities to be solely about learning and knowledge.
...something that never existed, nor ever could.
It's called France.
Except that in France, the bastion at the top is largely outside the university system, and overcrowding and underfunding in said university system makes access to first-rate instruction very difficult to come by for children whose parents don't have the wherewithal to sign them up for, say, Russian as a ten-year-old to get them a variance into the feeder school for Henry-IV, or someplace similar. The American liberal arts college, and, increasingly, small programs within public universities like mine still offer a level of education reserved in France for people who went to the kinds of school Brad and I went to in New York.
originally posted by Brad Kane:
My school had a good college counselor, but I guess that's what you get when you go to a fancy shmancy private school.
If your goal was to get into Harvard, or, failing that, a private on the East Coast.
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
I thought the jump in college costs came down to two things:
(1) Fifty years ago it was not obligatory to get a college degree to get a good job. But now it is, by middle class lights. So, there is a lot more demand.
(2) A bigger endowment is a better endowment so, like CEO salaries, all the effort goes into persuading rich alums. This results in fancy cafs, new halls, big labs, etc.
(1) is certainly true, but does it necessarily make cost per student go up? Why? (2) I think is true at exclusive privates, but costs are up across the board. As I say, think the cyclotrons in conjunction with administrative overhead goes a long way.
originally posted by Tom Glasgow:
On endowmments, few people like to give big $ for student aid or operations. Usually it's for buildings or stadiums so they get naming rights and then the students get to pay to maintain and operate the buildings.
The availabilty of financing should not be discounted, it drives consumer spending, home buying and commercial development.
This is big, for my school. We have a flagship engineering program we can't afford. In order to pay for all the labs and fill the buildings funded with soft money (naming rights, etc), we have to service massive numbers of students; public funds are tied to head counts.
originally posted by VLM:
Can you get a job at all in France as a young person?
Non. There is huge generational inequality in terms of access to stable employment and benefits. Though things are certainly better than Ireland or Spain, not to mention Egypt or Algeria.
I am not close to this, but my impression from a distance is that scientists are a profit center--they get $2 in grants, the U. keeps $1. I actually thought this was partly responsible for the growth in the sciences at big research institutions--the U. wants their $1.originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Over the last 20 years there has been a substantial change to the fixed costs of running universities. ...
Multiply all this by everywhere you look (and especially science labs, VLM).
I blame the scientists.
From what I have seen, France has the best training in the world in the humanities and social sciences at the elite level for seventeen and eighteen year olds. Trying to get into Sharon's elite programs is no joke. Then even the elite programs, themselves, are mediocre until the middle of graduate training, at which point things pick up again.
originally posted by SFJoe:
I am not close to this, but my impression from a distance is that scientists are a profit center--they get $2 in grants, the U. keeps $1. I actually thought this was partly responsible for the growth in the sciences at big research institutions--the U. wants their $1.originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Over the last 20 years there has been a substantial change to the fixed costs of running universities. ...
Multiply all this by everywhere you look (and especially science labs, VLM).
I blame the scientists.
Ding, ding, ding. "Institutional allowance" aka overhead on our grants is a major cash cow for our University (and all other R-1s of which I'm aware). It's not just scientists, though, but also engineers and agricultural researchers, too. Yes, startup costs for assistant professors has been skyrocketing, too (now routinely in excess of $500K) but that hardly accounts for the alarming rise in tuition and student fees.
Mark Lipton
originally posted by SFJoe:
I am not close to this, but my impression from a distance is that scientists are a profit center--they get $2 in grants, the U. keeps $1. I actually thought this was partly responsible for the growth in the sciences at big research institutions--the U. wants their $1.originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Over the last 20 years there has been a substantial change to the fixed costs of running universities. ...
Multiply all this by everywhere you look (and especially science labs, VLM).
I blame the scientists.
Right, but the grants do not pay for the buildings or buy all the machines -- though Andy Grove and the Spitzers have helped with that. You have to pay money to get money. Perhaps in the privates, grants more than compensate. But in my public university, we could not get VLM a faculty position, for example, on soft money. As I understand it, he would have to be paid from the tax-levy budget, which means that someone in English has to teach ten thousand students to fill the labs and science buildings. Faculty in our biomed program teach one course a semester, if that. But our contract requires seven courses a year. Who does that teaching, which pays our bills? It is massively outsourced to a proletariat of adjuncts. The English department, our most glaring example, has over one hundred adjuncts and roughly thirty tenure-line faculty members.
ETA - My impression is that universities on a sounder financial footing than mine do in fact use science grants as you suggest, to help subsidize losing economic propositions like history and philosophy. This is no doubt where those endowments kick in and play their role. We simply rob Peter to pay Paul.
originally posted by MLipton:
Ding, ding, ding. "Institutional allowance" aka overhead on our grants is a major cash cow for our University (and all other R-1s of which I'm aware).
Mark Lipton
Do grants at Purdue more than make up for overhead, all the equipment, and faculty salaries?
originally posted by SFJoe:
I am not close to this, but my impression from a distance is that scientists are a profit center--they get $2 in grants, the U. keeps $1. I actually thought this was partly responsible for the growth in the sciences at big research institutions--the U. wants their $1.originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Over the last 20 years there has been a substantial change to the fixed costs of running universities. ...
Multiply all this by everywhere you look (and especially science labs, VLM).
I blame the scientists.
At my university, it is ~$0.65/$1.00. It's higher at others, but I haven't worked in a University system where it is less than $0.52/$1.00.
Cliff's university may have done some speculative building to try to have the facilities to get the grant $, but that's a different subject.
Science research dollars pay for the facilities of other programs.
originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by MLipton:
Ding, ding, ding. "Institutional allowance" aka overhead on our grants is a major cash cow for our University (and all other R-1s of which I'm aware).
Mark Lipton
Do grants at Purdue more than make up for overhead, all the equipment, and faculty salaries?
I can't speak for Purdue, but everywhere I've worked, grants cover most of salary and benefits in addition to the overhead. It's actually a sore point because the NIH and institutions are constantly fighting over what can come out of grant budgets and what is included in overhead. Computers are a big headache (NIH won't pay for them, University can be stingy).
originally posted by Cliff:
I think we're desperately trying to become an R1 to reap those kinds of rewards.
A questionable strategy. It's sort of a rich get richer world. You need some billionaire to leave you their fortune.
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Cliff:
I think we're desperately trying to become an R1 to reap those kinds of rewards.
A questionable strategy. It's sort of a rich get richer world. You need some billionaire to leave you their fortune.
That's our view in the humanities. On the bright side, I don't know about billionaires, but we have a lot of millionaires among the alums.
originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by SFJoe:
I am not close to this, but my impression from a distance is that scientists are a profit center--they get $2 in grants, the U. keeps $1. I actually thought this was partly responsible for the growth in the sciences at big research institutions--the U. wants their $1.originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Over the last 20 years there has been a substantial change to the fixed costs of running universities. ...
Multiply all this by everywhere you look (and especially science labs, VLM).
I blame the scientists.
Right, but the grants do not pay for the buildings or buy all the machines -- though Andy Grove and the Spitzers have helped with that. You have to pay money to get money. Perhaps in the privates, grants more than compensate. But in my public university, we could not get VLM a faculty position, for example, on soft money.
Sure you could, it just wouldn't be tenure track. I have previously worked in the UC and UNC systems.
It is more difficult in the arts and sciences, but in schools of public health and medicine, my situation is common.
originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Cliff:
I think we're desperately trying to become an R1 to reap those kinds of rewards.
A questionable strategy. It's sort of a rich get richer world. You need some billionaire to leave you their fortune.
That's our view in the humanities. On the bright side, I don't know about billionaires, but we have a lot of millionaires among the alums.
In the interest of full disclosure, I was a philosophy undergrad. Formal logic makes you a better statistician than lots of math.
From what I've seen, our contract makes it difficult, though, no doubt, the lawyers could find a way if there were a will.
ETA - I was a philosophy major until I spent the bicentennial of the French Revolution in the national archives. But isn't formal logic just another kind of math? I always preferred the continentals.
ETA - I was a philosophy major until I spent the bicentennial of the French Revolution in the national archives. But isn't formal logic just another kind of math? I always preferred the continentals.
And interest and depreciation on the buildings?originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by MLipton:
Ding, ding, ding. "Institutional allowance" aka overhead on our grants is a major cash cow for our University (and all other R-1s of which I'm aware).
Mark Lipton
Do grants at Purdue more than make up for overhead, all the equipment, and faculty salaries?
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
I did not mean by my remark to claim that scientists were drains on universities. If the issue is drains, Cliff and I cost more and bring in less. Community colleges show that most places could do without us. In places--though there are fewer rather than more of them--at which scientists are required to bring in grants even to get paid, they more than make up for every dollar they spend. But the question was what causes rises in tuition. And, first, before you can have the research paying you back, you need to build those labs, and that demands investment that needs to be recouped well before the scientists will with their grants. And second, and more importantly, typical private schools do not look like those at Research Triangle Park. Williams say does not have scientists who support themselves with grants. But because they teach at Williams, those scientists have to do research and need facilities. And Williams needs them to have them so that it can have science programs of any repute at all. And those costs are not being made back with grants.
The institutional war between humanities and sciences has been out of date for at least 30 years. The money war is between administrators and faculty and between Arts and Sciences and professional schools. Talk about sclerotic, this banter about whether science or humanities is more pointless is just the twitching of the oppressed who don't realize who their real oppressors are.
The institutional war between humanities and sciences has been out of date for at least 30 years. The money war is between administrators and faculty and between Arts and Sciences and professional schools. Talk about sclerotic, this banter about whether science or humanities is more pointless is just the twitching of the oppressed who don't realize who their real oppressors are.
Didn't mean to open a new chapter of oppression studies or belittle scientists so much as continue the discussion of where the cost explosion has come from. This captures it better than I did. It also raises the question of whether the research we do makes us better teachers. I remained persuaded it does, though most of the research I've seen suggests otherwise.
ETA - We don't have lawyers or a business program, so I can't blame them; but Architecture and Engineering are expensive propositions.
ETA - We don't have lawyers or a business program, so I can't blame them; but Architecture and Engineering are expensive propositions.
originally posted by Cliff:
Didn't mean to open a new chapter of oppression studies or belittle scientists so much as continue the discussion of where the cost explosion has come from. This captures it better than I did. It also raises the question of whether the research we do makes us better teachers. I remained persuaded it does, though most of the research I've seen suggests otherwise.
ETA - We don't have lawyers or a business program, so I can't blame them; but Architecture and Engineering are expensive propositions.
I'm not a scientist against the humanities, quite the opposite. I'm just a realist about what is and isn't plausible for middle-class people to study at university. Most of this is cost based. I also think that departments need to align the number of graduate students they take with the number of jobs available. This isn't just a problem for the humanities, do you know how miserable life is for Biology PhDs?