Emphasizing amenities over education also does a disservice to the faculty and students more interested in academic pursuits. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper found, perhaps not surprisingly, that demand for high-quality academics is limited to only the best and brightest students, while wealthy students with low academic aptitude have the strongest demand for recreational amenities. In such an environment, university leaders likely feel financial pressure to cater more to the lowest common denominator.
She goes on to give examples. Pointer from George Leef.
I really hate the fads in college facilities. The state-of-the-art fitness centers, the Kennedy-Center-rivaling performing arts centers, etc. Brandeis University, which is hurting for money because of the Madoff scandal, nonetheless wasted money on building a new admissions office. Swarthmore College probably has the equivalent of several buildings worth of unused facilities on its campus, and it still campaigns for more donations.
Well, Isn’t the point not to give to the biggest colleges? Frankly, Harvard and Yale could simply not take tuition or gifts and still stay open for years. If you really want help people, give to lower end state schools that actually are training more basic careers.
This is similar to giving to big charities. If you really want to help with breast cancer, it better to give to Planned Parenthood or an inner city facility than a normal big charity at this point.
In what way is Planned Parenthood not big?
That facilities is seen as a feature of college football recruiting is another point for signalling theory.
Breast cancer and planned parenthood?
The solution to Breast cancer is fundamental research. Unfortunately the NIH is the best thing going.
On the one hand, I think the facilities arms race is a bit silly. But even so I doubt the truth of this claim:
“Recruiters can use stylish buildings and new playspaces to lure prospective students, but unwary taxpayers, parents, and student borrowers pay the price.”
At least here in Ann Arbor, the capital cost of the shiny new buildings is paid for by targeted donations and/or endowment funds — a good example is the lovely new ‘Munger Graduate Residences’ building:
http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/23027-munger-graduate-residences-opens-at-university-of-michigan
The facilities are an easy target, but I really don’t believe they’re a significant contributor to endless above-inflation tuition increases. As in Medicine, the big driver of costs in education is personnel rather than facilities.
Well, the infrastructure itself might be financed by the donors, but it doesn’t end there, does it? They must be maintained on an ongoing basis, and with additional personnel.
They also may recruit higher-priced personnel. I would want to see a full system analysis before absolving any one factor. My initial assumption would be all the factors work together.
An analogy would be to how people assume rising home prices equates to rising home value in the aggregate. Everything supports the feedback loop of rising prices and increased financing and subsidies.
The more we sacrifice for our kid’s education the better they must be, right, therefor we should pay even more for them, and subsidize anyone who can’t pay the price.
I bit off topic, but hopefully useful. Friend of mine was head of psychiatric care of a mid sized state university. I think he headed a professional staff of 10 or so with another 5 non professional employees. Did counseling and suicide hotline, ect. All good work, but when did this stuff become job of university? I am sure there are 50 more similar things universities do that are not part of core function. Which is why they need so much space in addition to space for classroom and research.
Not sure how you turn back clock and get universities out of these functions.
This is probably going to ruin your life, but major US universities had psychiatrists and counseling and student suicides 50 years ago. So you certainly wouldn’t improve things by going back to the wonderful days of the 1960s. Maybe the century before that?
Suicides per capita per annum?
Andrew’
No handle, but I could write a book on “College Kids Feeling Stress In the 1960’s.” My knowledge of the current day setting is more tenuous, and I can factors pointing in all directions.
A similar effect is also evident in healthcare.
I don’t think there are any new hospitals built with anything but private rooms anymore. Even if people understood how much expense a semi-private room could save, it wouldn’t be possible in the existing buildings.
In Chicago, Northwestern hospitals occupy the most valuable land in the city. And they keep on adding. (And the location is only easily accessible to those on the east side of the city proper.)
I was reading a sociologist recently and came upon the casual assertion that, “the defining feature of capitalism is unceasing accumulation of capital.” And I thought, “No, that’s Harvard.”
RIchard Vedder’s _Going broke by degree_ is a few years old now but continues to be full of keen observations.
At some points during the book I couldn’t agree with him, but overall I learned lot and it helped crystalize some of my suspicions and hunches into declarative statements with analyical mechanisms.
I wonder if we have hypotheses to test?
Airlines started doing more “price discovery” for checked baggage, meals, etc.
I wonder what would happen if more colleges and universities
1. had entrance and exit exams to measure value added / knowledge added
2. allowed students to “opt out” of fees if they didn’t use certain facilities
3. More programs like the “you are guaranteed to get all your classes and graduate in 4 years if you do x y z”
4. easier to flunk out and also easier to re-matriculate would obviously make a big difference.
My mind brims over with ideas, some of which could be testable hypotheses…
1. exit exams, made it ea