<p>
[quote]
The causes for tuition increases are many, and most are poorly understood. (For examples of the blind men describing the elephant, see the current issue of the New York Review of Books.) Any labor-intensive industry will improve productivity more slowly than a capital-intensive one, so education will naturally have slower productivity increases (read: faster-rising costs) than the economy as a whole. Add to that the fact that education and health care are pretty much the only industries in which technology is a net financial drain. (Private industry adds technology when it thinks the technology will improve productivity. We add technology when private industry does, so the students will be able to use it. For us, its pure cost; it doesnt speed up the teaching any, but it does require additional support staff to maintain it, upgrade it, etc.) Add to that the various unfunded mandates placed on education over the last few decades (ADA compliance, health & safety regs, etc.), exponential increases in underlying health insurance costs for (non-adjunct) employees, the unstoppable aging of the faculty (thanks, Justice Rehnquist!), decreased public-sector support, increased marketing costs...
<p>and he goes on to discuss many of the things parents on this board have been talking about (like transparency in tuition/financial aid info, etc.) from his perspective of a thoughtful and beleaguered college dean trying to deal with serving students' needs while balancing the budget under a lot of constraints.</p>
<p>I've been reading his blog for a while--he comes across as an insightful, thoughtful, resourceful and caring-but-overburdened administrator.</p>
<p>Sorry, I have to disagree with Dean Dad about the "cost" of technology. It is not just implemented by universities so the students can use it. Here are a few areas where I would expect that they should actualy be able to drive down costs:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Admissions, Accepting the common application should reduce the human processing cost per application over the old method. Further, applications may be up along with the associated fees enabling more "revenue" for each of the schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Grading, less copying from one form to another and less labor intensive.</p></li>
<li><p>Homework submission and distribution of a course syllabus. The college print costs should be down dramatically because the school has outsourced the printing to the students.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Technology should never be done for the sake of having it. It should be adopted because it makes your operation more efficient, i.e. using an old example, instead of traveling you can use the phone to tak to someone, a tremendous cost savings because of reduced travel costs and time savings.</p>
<p>On the technology side, those who build it should really be building use cases that show cost savings from to the adoption of technology. For example, is it better to have a computer and a word processor or a typewriter and white out? I think it can easily be shown that it is much more cost effective today to have a computer and word processor than the other way around . . . though this wasn't true when PC's first came out.</p>
<p>My suggetion to Dean Dad is to look closely at how technology can be applied to drive down your cost of student acquisiton and associated ongoing expense per student as metrics against which to measure the adoption of any new technology. It should really make you less over-burdened.</p>
<p>The cost-cutting benefits of technology are vastly offset by the costs associated with installation and maintenance of technology. When I was a graduate student at Harvard, there was no computer support center. Now it occupies a whole basement floor and employs scads of students, supervisors, etc... who provides tech support for faculty, students, staff. These positions did not exist 30 years ago. Colleges are spending money on wi-fi, the elimination of dead zones for mobile phones, etc... Rapid technological change means constant upgrading and constant expenditures as machinery gets obsolete, is not compatible with new models, etc...
Savings, by contrast, are only marginal.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My suggetion to Dean Dad is to look closely at how technology can be applied to drive down your cost of student acquisiton and associated ongoing expense per student as metrics against which to measure the adoption of any new technology. It should really make you less over-burdened.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My sense is that Dead Dad (and hard-pressed administrators everywhere) have been trying very hard to cut out the fat in their budgets wherever they can by automating what used to be done manually.</p>
<p>However, the cost savings are often difficult to achieve--it may be that the work was done previously by unionized employees, who can't simply be laid off. And much routine clerical work in admissions may be done by work-study students, whose salaries are heavily subsidized and are actually part of the financial aid budget. So, if computers replace them, the college still has to find a place for them to work. (I note that some colleges are now using their work-study funds to pay their students to do local community service, like tutoring kids in inner-city schools, which is wonderful, but it means that if students who used to get paid to process applications in admissions and have now been replaced by computerization now just get shifted over to community service, the colleges' costs don't go down!)</p>
<p>The low-hanging fruit has been picked.</p>
<p>At many colleges, especially public colleges like Dean Dad's, the budget gets balanced "with a lot of rubber bands and chewing gum," so to speak. (Meaning extensive use of adjunct faculty paid a pittance, with no health benefits. Meaning lots of deferred maintenance.)</p>
<p>Interestingly, while I was writing my previous post in reply to Eagle's reply above, Dean Dad replied to her similar posting in his blog. He used the same expression--"the low-hanging fruit."</p>
<p>One interesting recurring theme he's raised in his blog are that the "chalk and talk courses" (e.g., political science, economics, English, history, etc.) are heavily cross-subsidizing the courses that require a lot of technology (like nursing, which apparently requires a $100K "patient-simulator," which in turn requires a full-time person just to maintain it!) or graphic-design, which requires expensive dedicated autocad computers and software.</p>
<p>In the old days, nursing just used real human beings as practice patients and graphic design just used drawing boards, pencil, and paper (with the latter probably purchased by the students!) </p>
<p>Presumably there are benefits to the students and/or to society (at least those initial "practice patients!") of using the technology, but they don't save the college money--they cost more.</p>
<p>A college that decides to specialize in chalk-and-talk subjects can save a lot of money vs. a college that offers lots of classes with labs and practicums requiring dedicated expensive equipment.</p>
<p>I'm guessing that instructional expenses at places like MIT, RPI, IIT, or even a community college which offers nursing classes, Xray technician classes, auto repair classes, paramedic classes, etc. which are very heavy on expensive high tech labs and such must be quite a good deal more expensive to operate than an LAC with a primary focus on humanities and social science classes like, e.g., St. Johns College or Patrick Henry College.</p>
<p>Not only the chalk and talk courses subsidizing a lot of tech-heavy courses, but so do the chalk and talk profs. They don't need lots of lab spaces with the newest equipment. Of course, they also don't bring a lot of outside research funding, either.</p>
<p>my son started at a newly built university where technology was the thing. cards to enter dorms and buildings instead of a key. completely on line communication, registration for new courses, grades, counseling etc. just a few things. to me this is a downturn. when that technology goes bad and the kid can't get into his room, nobody cares or can fix it. there is no true counseling regarding course selection or even how is a student doing, like I had. just log on and sign up for whatever. and when that system goes down, you end up not being able to sign up in a timely manner for classes. I think it's out of hand at this point. kids don't know how to write, but they type like the dickens. they don't know how to socially interact, but can IM like the wind. how about we start talking face to face to these students, schedule appointments with advisors rather than email sessions, see in person the students you are supposed to be advising. I would think as prices go up, quality improves. the opposite has happened.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not only the chalk and talk courses subsidizing a lot of tech-heavy courses, but so do the chalk and talk profs. They don't need lots of lab spaces with the newest equipment. Of course, they also don't bring a lot of outside research funding, either.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's an interesting question, whether the outside research funding covers the expense of science research faculty. </p>
<p>It's not an issue at a college like Dean Dad's, since that's a community college with a primary mission of teaching, so I doubt the science faculty have research labs or research funding, but it certainly is a potential issue at colleges that expect their faculty to do research as well as teaching.</p>
<p>Then again, some of the chalk and talk profs at the research universities may expect their library to preserve their access to extensive collections of books which require space, climate control, pest control, preservation from mold, security from theft, etc.</p>
<p>Increasingly, it seems that science profs are fairly content with electronic access to journals and databases, which are expensive, but do not require the space and physical maintenance of libraries and rare book rooms.</p>
<p>Given the demands of hurricane recovery and the Iraq war on the federal budget, I do have to wonder whether science faculty will be able to continue to bring in research funding at the same rate in the future. (Except, of course, for those faculty who specialize in fields like meterology, fluid dynamics (think--flood control!), etc.) I suspect that there will be a major shift in research priorities in the coming year, which could lead to some upheaval and displacement.</p>
<p>Actually, I don't think that outside research funding covers the cost of building and equipment. It covers salaries (at least partially) and research fellowships for students, and the cost of research itself, but not the cost of building the space or acquiring the equipment.</p>
<p>
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The cost-cutting benefits of technology are vastly offset by the costs associated with installation and maintenance of technology.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Then it isn't actually a cost cutting. My real point is that more care needs to be taken in the implemenation of technology. Pointing to the expense associated with technology is not enough. The example you provided about the amount of personel to support the computers now at H should be balanced against the cost to do things the old way, i.e. how many positions were consolidated or changed because of the technology. It really becomes a budgetting exercise where some budget items may move into other budget items.</p>
<p>I am not trying to be too critical, I am just a believer that technology can help makes things simpler. Technology is not necessarily a costor a problem, however its use can become one.</p>
<p>Technology can make certain things simpler, but we were talking about costs.
I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on an old electric typewriter, and used reams of paper and a lot of white out (the selectric had not yet been invented). I've written books on computers and used the same amount of paper. A more efficient way of writing? You bet. BUT, since my first computer, I've bought several more as technology changed rapidly. Each computer (and printer) cost vastly more than my old electric trypewriter.
It does not mean that I would want to go back to my typewriter; but the cost savings are just not there.
If you look at health care, a lot of the costs have to do with new technology such as CAT, MRI, etc.. They are life-saving innovations, but they are also costly. So far, I have not seen the savings that technology is supposed to bring.</p>
<p>Those with a subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Education (I don't) may want to read this article:</p>
<p>
[quote]
How Much Is Too Much?</p>
<p>Soaring costs have driven the price of colleges like Bates above $40,000, but officials worry that at some point people will no longer pay</p>
<p>By JEFFREY SELINGO</p>
<p>Lewiston, Me.</p>
<p>This fall, Bates College reluctantly joined a small but growing group of institutions reaching a significant milestone: Its annual price tag passed the $40,000 mark $42,100, to be exact.</p>
<p>At least 75 other colleges, all private, now charge $40,000 or more a year for tuition, fees, room, and board. Plenty of colleges still charge a lot less. But just as headlines about $5-a-gallon gasoline and million-dollar homes drive concerns over energy and housing prices, expensive institutions tend to raise public anxiety about college costs.
<p>It seems to me we should be able to use technology to improve the efficiency of higher education. In fact we could improve the quality - everyone could have the equivalent of a Harvard-level education. Lecture courses should be easy to automate. We need merely videotape the best experts and lecturers. Some of you may not feel that would allow proper time for questions and interaction. Actually for many lecture classes there is already very minimal time. We could significantly improve the quality of responses to student questions by using email. With the wireless connections this could actually transpire during the course of the lecture. The efficiency and costs could be further increased by eliminating the lecture halls and handling the process from either study rooms or the dorm rooms. Laboratory courses could be even much more efficient than the lectures. Virtual labs are much safer and do not consume expensive supplies and do not require expensive equipment. These two simple technology approaches would eliminate half of the campus and most of the expenses. We would still have plenty of resources left over for some touchy-feely humanities courses.</p>
<p>Gee, why go to college at all? Why walk to the lecture with your friends, or strike up a conversation with someone who you didn't know but who asked an interesting question from the other side of the lecture hall? Why have to listen to the questions other students ask? Why ever leave your room? In fact, why dorm rooms? We can all just access our educations from the comfort of our homes, like the online colleges are telling us. Human interaction is over-rated, anyway.</p>
<p>BTW, Wisteria, thanks for the link. It looks fascinating. I work at a colleg which is in many ways similar to a CC, though it's a four year private. I think I will find much to enjoy and learn from in this blog.</p>
<p>I agree with you. Four classes per semester of three hours each. That's 12 hours of classtime per week. The rest is study groups, discussion and review sections, reading, discussing with fellow students and socializing. My S prefers to do his problem sets in company. "Touchy feely" is not the sole prerogative of the humanities.
As for lab courses, my S has just shelled out $90 for a lab kit. I think the prof would rather his students have a real, as opposed to a virtual experience.</p>
<p>if the choice is between interacting with peers and profs in a brick and mortar class vs. a virtual course, clearly the option of interaction is superior. But if the choice is btwn watching the profs lectures online and having no access to the material being taught at all, the answer is different. That is something MIT is trying to address through it's OpenCourseWare program to make all MIT courses free to anyone in the world via the internet.</p>
<p>MIT is to be congratulated for showing the way. But even the brick and mortar class is a very small part of the college experience. My S took a number of college classes while in high school. He never got to know the rest of his classmates, he was always rushing back to high school so he could not hang around talking to profs. Now that he is in college, he has a totally different experience. This is why, although we live close, he will be living in college all four years.</p>
<p>My husband asked S1 how college compared to his private high school, where he seemed to have a wonderful, challenging experience. His response took us both by surprise -- "It's 800 times better in college!" He felt that in hs he just went to class/ECs all day and studied by himself all night. Now, he does homework in group study areas in his dorm, and collaborates with or helps other students. </p>
<p>The biggest thrill for my H and me is to see how social he's become -- he doesn't even have time to email us, and just suggested that we postpone a planned visit because he's too busy. To see how close he's become to his dorm mates validates all the financial/emotional sacrifices we've made. He is happier than I ever would have expected, almost entirely due to the social component.</p>