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235 sats \ 11 replies \ @TNStacker 9 Jul \ on: It Is Time to Treat Higher Education as the Business It Is meta
A couple of issues with this well-intentioned article.
- Their career choices stemmed from the college education? I don't think this is the case for most. Now, saying people are making career choices without a cost/benefit analysis makes sense.
- Until the last year or two, the trend in state funding of state supported universities has been downward for decades. Blaming the problem on government spending is political fodder.
Source:
https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/state-funding-higher-education-still-lagging#:~:text=Across%20the%20U.S.%2C%2032%20states,pay%20(and%20borrow)%20more.
I have a VERY hard time believing the NEA is correct on that. But, even if they are I would say this is a good thing.
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Chose your own information source, but you won't trust those, either. We are talking about public schools so the data is collected by the state governments, federal governments or the unions. Although, the big state universities will often hire a consulting firm, like Bain, that has alumni working for them.
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Here's why I don't trust it. I haven't verified it. But for most of my life I have heard stuff like this and almost always the truth is that rate of increase has decreased. Or the way the money was allocated was changed. Or the way they measure money being spent on students was changed. That's what I'm saying.
There has been a trend for some time of spending more education money on administrators for example. Many in education push back on this, but the core problem is as the article states. There isn't a market incentive. Public education is not the real world. There are still good people in the systems but the systems themselves are rotten.
IMO there shouldn't be any public schools at all and definitely not so called public universities.
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I agree. But they can make the point better without the faulty information. Otherwise, they are only preaching to the choir. Which may be their aim. It is for so many media outlets today.
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I agree with you there. Not sure that is happening here. Maybe it is
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Until the last year or two, the trend in state funding of state supported universities has been downward for decades. Blaming the problem on government spending is political fodder.
That doesn't include federal student aid, though. It's not like many people are just coming out of pocket to cover higher tuition. It's government spending all the way down.
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Fed aid is what changed the trajectory the last couple of years. Biden upped the game so much it reversed decades long trends.
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Also, state allocations might be tied to enrollments, which have been declining steadily since about 2016.
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Many states moved away from "butts in seats" funding models in the last 20 years. Now number of degrees, time to degree, starting salary of graduates etc. drive funding models in higher ed. But understand the big, name schools are driven by research funding, which is Fed led.
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I was just speculating. None of the places I've been had their state funding tied to enrollment. I have seen some really sketchy practices around financial aid, though, which obviously scales with enrollment.
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The trend I'm speaking of goes back to the 90s. But yes from the mid 2010s to now the shift and reversal is happening.
Tennessee has a drive to 55 program to try to manage the pending "enrollment cliff," plus expand economic development.
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