<p>I even saw one person in a “Chance Me” thread who claimed that McGill (as far as Linguistics is concerned) was cheaper than his in-state flagship, yet an international Linguistics student at McGill would be paying $17k before room and board. What state Us would cost $17k+ to in-staters studying linguistics before room and board? (That was the cheapest quality option he found for transferring, and his current U costs more than $17k yearly before R&B)</p>
<p>Hopefully that guy gets in…</p>
<p>College hopes and expectations are out of whack with reality.</p>
<p>Too many jobs require a degree to do H.S. level work.</p>
<p>College costs more than most families can pay but families (including mine) beg, borrow and whatever to send our kids.</p>
<p>If not all degrees have the same earning potential, why is the tuition the same? An engineering major pays the same tuition as a philosophy major. Why?</p>
<p>Merit scholarships are almost non-existent unless you combine it with low income or other demographic.</p>
<p>Schools look at income but neglect Looking at expenses. Someone making $100K in Alabama or Kentucky is rich. The same amount in NYC is broke as sin.</p>
<p>Community college can be a bargain but the drop rate is over 80%. Community colleges are failures IMHO because they can’t retain the vast majority of kids who start.</p>
<p>I could go on and on. I’m paying ridiculous amounts for two tuitions so I’d be a hypocrit to judge anyone. The reality is that colleges face a real estate style melt down if they don’t do something soon and fast.</p>
<p>You really just love to stir the pot, don’t you, Beliavsky? I for one don’t see the type of group you’re describing as pretty appreciably different from any other organization of students who are “like” in some way - whether that’s religion, race, culture or interests. It’s a tough enough road for those who are uncertain of their gender - I can’t possibly relate to it - and if they find each other, all the better. You just seem so curmudgeonly at times about anything that isn’t pens-pencils-computers-and-science-labs being offered at a college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At most colleges and universities, faculty have little or no real input into these kinds of decisions. There may be either a Faculty Senate or a University Senate (in which faculty, staff, and sometimes students are represented), and the President may (either because it’s required, or as a courtesy) run a proposed budget by that body before submitting it to the Trustees (or other ultimate governing body) for approval. In my experience, such budgets are usually presented at a high level of generality, not line-item by line-item. Occasionally a member of the Senate may see something they don’t like and squawk about it, but typically the Senate does not have power to approve, disapprove, or amend the budget; it has “voice” but no vote, and it typically gets to exercise that voice late in the process, after the budget proposal is pretty much a fait accompli. At most institutions, the real budgeting power is in the hands of the central administration, i.e., the president, provost, and their top assistants. Boards of trustees tend to be pretty passive unless there are major upheavals, to which they typically respond by forcing out the president and bringing in a new strongman of their own choosing. </p>
<p>I think part of the dynamic here is that every president and every provost wants to put his or her own stamp on the institution by creating and building up certain signature programs and initiatives, and leave them behind as a “legacy” to the institution. So there’s an inexorable tendency to create new programs and new offices, which of course need (typically non-faculty) staff to run them. But it’s rare that a president or provost will undertake a thorough housecleaning to eliminate or consolidate older programs and initiatives; that threatens people’s jobs, it threatens the legacies of former presidents or provosts who may still be around in some capacity or may at least still have substantial support among key constituencies, and it threatens to weaken some powerful senior administrator’s own fiefdom, so those fights tend to be bloody and to leave a lot of enmity in their wake. Few presidents or provosts have the stomach for that sort of bloodletting, nor are they willing to risk as much political capital as it takes to pull it off. So it tends to be a one-way ratchet; you can always add programs, initiatives, and staff, but it’s much rarer to eliminate them. The incremental cost of the new programs and initiatives may be quite modest, but the cumulative cost of the new with the old is often enormous.</p>
<p>I appreciate the explanation.</p>