<p>Arg, describe the “perfect U.” What you get, how it is supplied. Include misc things you expect.</p>
<p>“I’m still not sure what the big deal is. "
Never a big deal when its not your money”</p>
<p>Excuse me? I’m paying full fare at a top 20 university and a top 10 LAC. It most certainly is my money.</p>
<p>There are places that don’t have the same level of services. They are called community colleges. Feel free to attend them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Dorms and food are not part of the numbers we are talking about.
I dont see how you guys ended up with the position that noting possibility could be cut when even the Universities themselves dont know what their administrative costs are and how they relate to the instruction they provide. </p>
<p>The way the system is set up there never was any incentive to control costs, so there never was any point in tracking them. Since these schools are set up as non-profits as long as you can keep raising the price, which you can since 18 year olds are naive about the impact of student loans, then the only issue is which beds you are going to feather. </p>
<p>Expand sports program, happy alums. Establish a bunch of centers of Excellent in this and that, happy faculty. Build, expand, market, brand your organization. UP goes the prestige. Who is going to object- faculty and alums love it. Only it looks uncomfortably like the model Countrywide used. Cant get a job with your BA degree? Come get a masters with no money down and no points. </p>
<p>The way of the world is you get what you measure. And costs were never something that universities were particularly interested in measuring. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Free Cake</p>
<p>even the Universities themselves dont know what their administrative costs are and how they relate to the instruction they provide.
So you think.</p>
<p>The way the system is set up there never was any incentive to control costs, so there never was any point in tracking them.
So you think.</p>
<p>Crap, you know how every corporation is run, too? You’re outside the walls. I know you’d like more transparency- but in the absence of that, on what basis do you make these statements???</p>
<p>Take us back to ArgyU and tell us how it operates. After the cake.</p>
<p>So, argbargy, send your kid to a cheaper, more streamlined school with fewer services. Isn’t that the free market way? Let there be lots of options for people to choose from and vote with their pocketbooks. Unless you think the government should step in and control private universities’ ability to offer whatever amenities and services they desire?</p>
<p>High Point U is one that has been discussed on CC as a place that offers lots of “pretty” amenities and a country club atmosphere. My response is - so what? If that’s what people want to buy for their kids, why should I stop them? </p>
<p>You know, it’s not as though anyone NEEDS to go to HYPSM, or a top 20 school, or whatever, to succeed. They are, in a sense, luxury goods.</p>
<p>Wait a sec. Who pays for the cake? Is it paid for by tuition? Who serves it and who pays thm? How luscious is it? Are the kids satisfied with the stuff from the day-old bin?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you serious? Have you ever read an annual report? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The article:
*
"MINNEAPOLISWhen Eric Kaler became president of the University of Minnesota last year, he pledged to curb soaring tuition by cutting administrative overhead. But he hit a snag: No one could tell him exactly what it cost to manage the school.</p>
<p>Like many public colleges, the University of Minnesota went on a spending spree over the past decade, paid for by a steady stream of state money and rising tuition. Officials didn’t keep close tabs on their payroll as it swelled beyond 19,000 employees, nearly one for every 3½ students. “The more questions I asked, the less happy I was,” Dr. Kaler said."*</p>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
<li><p>kids will NOT be satisfied with day old cake. There are fat cats out there getting fresh cake with with butter cream and those little chocolate nibs. We cant allow a growing cake gap between the haves and the haves. </p></li>
<li><p>I dont know how you can worry about who pays for it, since cake is a basic human right as defined by the UN 23rd Working Sub-Group on Sustainability and Self-Esteem. Besides, we just borrow the money- dont be a fuddy duddy. Since growth continues forever it should be no problem. Or at least not a problem until I am out of office.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Never thought I’d find myself on the same page as argbargy…but working at a public university for several years showed me how little business sense institutions apply to their management. During my time there I suggested a number of ideas–some big, some small–to save money and run more efficiently, but most of them went nowhere.</p>
<p>Here’s a small example that illustrates my point. My university had 16,000 employees. Each month, everyone got two paper “leave” statements in their mailboxes (plus a third one during the two years the university was forcing unpaid furlough on staff). Someone had to generate the paper statements, sort them, and send them out for distribution to each campus building, where someone else (many someones) had to put them in everyone’s mailboxes. One statement was just a reckoning of how much leave time we had, and the other was a form we had to fill out, have our supervisor sign, and return to our HR departments. (BOTH of these statements were also available online, by the way.) So after all of these 16,000 statements got back to each department’s HR office, a full-time “payroll specialist” would have to decipher everyone’s accounting of their hours and manually enter them back into the same online system they were generated from. Does anyone think this is a good use of public resources in 2012? And it’s not just the time, but the paper. During each of the two furlough years, the university produced more than half a million paper forms that were printed, folded, stapled, and mailed.</p>
<p>This is just one of many things I observed during my time there. The bigger ones had to do with unproductive staff being “impossible to fire” even though they were barely doing their jobs. And my friends who are on the faculty tell me similar stories about their departments. Do I think services for students should be cut, or that productive faculty or staff should have to get by with less than what they need to do their jobs? No. But do I think publicly funded universities have an obligation to look for ways to streamline their operations and adopt some of the best practices of the private sector.</p>
<p>Yay, Kaler. Wow, there you go, ALL schools, ALL the time- and, since it was reported, it must be accurate.</p>
<p>Same Kaler here:
"This rise in tuition has come as University leaders have made our $3.7 billion organization, with about 25,000 employees, much more efficient…When I was student here nearly 35 years ago…the legislature’s and governor’s support for the University was stronger. The state then supported about 43 percent of the University’s operating budget.</p>
<p>Today, state support is approximately 18 percent"</p>
<p>Same Kaler who said he hopes the U continues its position as- well, in essence, what many of us do value in education, not the stripped down bare essentials. Hmm.</p>
<p>Sally, but I’m sure you agree that what you see there is not automatically what applies everywhere. We don’t get paper statements- it’s embedded in an online program and the employee’s responsibility to check. Managers only need to oversee on a scheduled basis. A much as possible is being automated.</p>
<p>I wasn’t suggesting that what happened at my university (a major state flagship) happened everywhere. But nor is it safe to assume that it is the only publicly funded institution that has bloat and bureaucracy.</p>
<p>So we want universities to adopt a ‘business’ model, where we view education as a ‘product/service’ to be bought at the lowest price, and we also view students as ‘customers’. </p>
<p>So when we do the things to lure in ‘customers’, we then get slammed for that?</p>
<p>I’d like to see how many customers a U will get that hasn’t updated their dorms since they were built in the late 1960s/early 1970s, where there is no study abroad office, no WiFi and the IT support, few academic advisors to support students on their progress to degree, a gym where the weight room is an old converted racket ball court with a bunch of free weights, classrooms with chalkboards and no internet access to be used for instruction, few to no honors programs to serve all those top notch students, etc. etc.</p>
<p>I will say that when I started at my U in the 1990s, that is essentially what we had. </p>
<p>I’m all for controlling costs, and I’m very aware that there has been some administrative bloat in terms of associate provosts, associate deans, assistant deans, etc. It would be good to be careful here. But there’s other administrative stuff that just needs to happen. We do need to do better in this respect.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, at our Thsnksgiving table, the discussion from my nephew at Pton was that Harvard didn’t even offer hot breakfast anymore.</p>
<p>I think it a question of what the organization is seen as valuing. </p>
<p>I currently work for a large company with giant capex and opex numbers. Since we are literally spending billions you would think that would be accepted as a way of life. Instead, their is huge focus on expense and managing it. It is part of our rating for the year and every exec has as part of their measurements getting efficiencies in the areas they run. Bringing in expensive saving ideas is a great way to get noticed. Can circuits be combined? Can servers be VMed? Do we have ways of getting better licensing deals? Did the vendor have the correct disco date on that circuit so we get full credit?</p>
<p>The CFO even gave a webinar about how to optimize capex buys so that we end up buying the same amount of stuff over the year but pay for it closer to when revenue for it is realized. </p>
<p>There are 100,000 people looking at expense because it is better to save a dollar than earn one. </p>
<p>I am not sure that mentality is going on in higher ed. It seems to be the only field where technology hasnt driven down costs.</p>
<p>Lol, but if they hire purchasing managers you ding them for administrative expenses.</p>
<p>Pizza, a lot of the frustation is with public Us. Yes, they charge less than private, but that shouldnt give them a license to have 100s of deans, etc.</p>
<p>Who is doing that research and analysis work? Paying them? Or the happy bees do this on ther own time?</p>
<p>You are right about one thing: You don’t know whether that mentality is going on in higher ed.</p>
<p>It took about 10 seconds to find a complete list of all the UMinn jobs and functional areas. One look and you see it is a very complex place. Tell me what is admin and what are services like the Ag Extension and so on.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.oir.umn.edu/static/hrdata/Employees_and_Students_by_Department_Fall_2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www.oir.umn.edu/static/hrdata/Employees_and_Students_by_Department_Fall_2012.pdf</a></p>