Some hard lessons about college costs

[BCEagle91]

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<p>I think universities are incentivized in the wrong way. They lure top researchers,
make them professors who don’t teach, then tell them to be “rain makers” who bring
in the grant money. So a lot of the budget of the U goes to professors who don’t
do the thing we pay tuition for – teach.</p>

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<p>I think that the idea is that professors bring in more money through research than they cost the school and which may subsidize their teaching. I understand that it can be hard to do a good job at teaching when your primary job is doing something else. It’s interesting that a lot of state universities have a big research focus - perhaps the research offsets declining state contributions.</p>

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<p>Yes, it’s a good thing for important research to be ongoing at the schools our kids
attend but the fundamental reason we pay to send them takes place in the lecture
hall.</p>

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<p>I think that a lot of students go to public research universities because of the sticker price not realizing what the primary focus of professors is. You can get the focus on teachers at LACs but they often have much higher sticker prices.</p>

<p>Of course there are the kids that really want to do research where they actually want the focus on research so that they will have opportunities to participate in it.</p>