> Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the money going?? (see above)
A non-trivial portion goes to legal expenses and risk management. It started with the concept of in loco parentis (in the place of the parent). University students stopped being adults and became children.
Obama's interpretation of Title IX was also catastrophic for expenses. All of a sudden you had to set up your own internal pseudo-court system and have an entire mechanism for handling even the most dubious of accusations. These things are not free.
This has snowballed into other pseudo-legal aspects and the social justice movement is just monumentally expensive to deal with. It's not a question of if a #metoo incident happens on your campus, it's a matter when. What steps did you take to prevent it? What staff do you have in place to react?
And the worst is that once you've hired these staff they're there forever. There will never will a point of mission accomplished, perfect equity, or an environment sufficiently free of even the smallest of nano-harassments for a university to rid itself of this burden.
Don't get me wrong, there's a country club and sports team aspect to a lot of university expenses, but the primary purpose of most universities is not education, research, or anything along those lines - it's to avoid getting sued into oblivion.
I’m sorry, but without some sort of citation from a reputable source, I just don’t buy this as a contributing factor at all and call BS.
I spent years as a student and working at a large research University and let’s be very, very generous and say that there were 30 people detailed to this “#metoo incident” mitigation and action squad. Of the thousands and thousands of other nonfaculty staff payroll; of the many millions the library system pays for journal access alone, let alone special collections and acquisition; of the cost of running the steam for heating the buildings, the computing infrastructure; etc., etc. how non-trivial do you expect this Title IV portion to be?
Yep. I know several college administrators who have complained that their departments have exploded in size — in one case from five “student life” admins to over 100 — over the past 10 years.
This is caused by external forces like Title IX compliance, but also by the expectation that, since students are now essentially the consumers of a luxury good, they expect impeccable and instantaneous “customer service”.
I'm not sure how much I buy most of what you're saying beyond in loco parentis causing a ballooning in staff and legal costs. Title IX related activism is a relatively new phenomenon, and I don't think we can attribute older trends in college cost growth to something so nascent (at least in its current form).
A non-trivial portion goes to legal expenses and risk management. It started with the concept of in loco parentis (in the place of the parent). University students stopped being adults and became children.
Obama's interpretation of Title IX was also catastrophic for expenses. All of a sudden you had to set up your own internal pseudo-court system and have an entire mechanism for handling even the most dubious of accusations. These things are not free.
This has snowballed into other pseudo-legal aspects and the social justice movement is just monumentally expensive to deal with. It's not a question of if a #metoo incident happens on your campus, it's a matter when. What steps did you take to prevent it? What staff do you have in place to react?
And the worst is that once you've hired these staff they're there forever. There will never will a point of mission accomplished, perfect equity, or an environment sufficiently free of even the smallest of nano-harassments for a university to rid itself of this burden.
Don't get me wrong, there's a country club and sports team aspect to a lot of university expenses, but the primary purpose of most universities is not education, research, or anything along those lines - it's to avoid getting sued into oblivion.