Sooo, apparently there has been a significant drop off in ‘work force’ in the last year…
The link is HERE, with some interesting comments, and more comments, HERE. No, there isn’t a further breakdown on WHO is actually being let go, but I’m betting the ‘administrators’ are still there, along with the HR types… Grrrr…
The reality is that many of the ‘tenured’ professors seldom teach, instead a graduate assistant does the teaching, so you’re not even getting the ‘benefit’ of the actual professor’s knowledge.
In many cases, education, especially at the higher levels, has become a publish or perish situation, so many of those ‘professors’ actually use those GAs to do their research, write up a rough presentation, and present it to the ‘Prof’ for grade, while s/he runs it through the ‘system’ for publication with her/his name on top of the list. If the GAs are lucky, they might rate a mention as an ‘assistant’ in the final credits.
And the number of useless degrees continues to proliferate, even as costs rise yet again. Something like 55% increase in costs in the last 20 years, leading to more and more debt for those useless degrees that will have those people paying back that money over an entire lifetime, while the ‘dummies’ that go to tech school are making six figures within a year or two, and little or no debt.
Yep. Though I am somewhat college educated (six years), no degree from them. 18 months of drafting and 42 year career and counting done here. Not making the big bucks, but I enjoy the job and don’t have the pressures my employers have either. I’m content – let the credit go to others, I have a life I need to participate in.
Get the federal government out of the student loan system and private investors will presumably stop loaning money to people for degrees which are “high risk” of defaulting. You know the degrees whereof I speak. 😎
Amazing how things have changed. I got a degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1988 from University of Washington. I paid for it by working every year, applying for scholarships from various places, and then by joining the Navy. I graduated with zero debt and it had never actually crossed my mind to take out any loans. Never worked as an actual Aerospace Engineer, but fun story …
went back to become a teacher and they said I didn’t have enough math. I had to take eleven math classes, all of which extensively covered all the math I had taken as an engineering student. All of which I had to pay for by taking out student loans which took me a non-trivial number of years to pay off. Kept someone employed presumably.
I worked in college admissions for some 7+ years, half of that as a Dean of Admissions. College enrollments are are dependent on, in large part, the birthrate 18 years prior to the freshman year. That can’t be controlled, but it can be RECOGNIZED by any institution that knows how to look at data. I never saw ANY evidence of admissions/enrollment management plans based on research. With lower birthrates:
The elite schools smugly believed that they would continue to be able to skim off the cream; it just meant that they would accept 11% of the applicants, instead of 8%.
Middle echelon state-supported schools turned to the state legislature for help.*
Small, struggling schools closed their doors.
Of course, a nation-wide lockdown blew any enrollment management plans away.
*In the Great State of Georgia, we voted in a lottery. Proceeds were earmarked for education ONLY; this was written into the law. It was a great day! Have a B average in high school, and the lottery pays for your college!!
Prior to the lottery, in 1992, tuition and student fees at UGA averaged $1987.21 per year, per student. That number rose rapidly, year by year.
Last year, tuition and student fees averaged $15,995.19 per student, per year.
Over that same period, the budget item which includes student aid went from $3,617.80 to $10,598.03, per student, per year. This represents the increased funding from the lottery.
I conclude that the lottery fund has been looted by higher education. You may have a different perspective.
IIRC, when California got the lottery, there wasn’t more money for education. It REPLACED money from the general fund, which doubtless went to divert water from farmland to save the snail darter or delta smelt or leapin’ lizards, incidentally idling armies of farm workers, and farmland. I’ve been wrong before, I may be wrong again.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your [model] is; it doesn’t matter how smart your are, if it doesn’t match [measurements], it is wrong” — R. Feynman, more of less
You get different data when someone’s job is dependent on what the measurements say.
“How many acre-feet of water in that reservoir?”
“How many do you want there to be?”
Too bad none of the losses were of woke administrators.
How many of these jobs will come back post pandemic as libraries, gyms, and dorms reopen?
jrg- Heard that!
Hereso- Yep, no debt here either, Navy paid for my degree.
Pat- Not surprised at all… They’ve been ‘feeding’ at the .gov trough for years.
Jet- Yep, the ones that are gone are mostly ‘maintenance’ folks. SHOULD have been HR/Admin pukes, but they have their asses covered.
Me and my wife met in college in late 70s, which was much cheaper as there was less admin. Our two boys decided on trade school instead of college. It was much cheaper for all as trade school is about have a year of college.
Both boys decided on different trades. Both live on their own with own places, large accounts, and making about 80k-100k per year on average. The trades make the trade person create their own tool resource and that will cost several thousand over time.
Mike Rowe has noted that he has heard many people demanding free college, but he’s never heard of anyone demanding free trade school…
“I was there / to match my intellect / on national TV.
Against a plumber / and an architect / both with a Ph.D. …”
— Weird Al Yankovic, “I Lost on Jeopardy”
Local university offered an early retirement before cutting staff and courses. The school has spent itself crazy on trendy dorms and eateries while enrollment has fallen.
One dean and many profs took the ticket which included full health care till they were 65. No brainer really.
Know of two institutions that use the Pandemic as a pretext for reducing professors. Decent faculty reduction, too. Administrators should have been next, Darwin-dam it
“OK, with the changes, you’re teaching two freshman sections (in place or online) this semester.”
“You can’t make me do that. I have research …”
“Thank you for your resignation.”
“But TENURE!”
“BUT … your contract says you teach two classes per semester, Violation of contract terms; nothing there about tenure. Meanwhile, your keys and access cards, and you need to leave now. Security will help you clear personal effects tomorrow.”
Trade Schools are great but, as always, buyer beware! One son went through College America, still has debt, but never found employment in the field he trained for.
Happier news,the newly minted Army grandson is at Ft Lee, VA for 14 weeks being trained as a mechanic. His father, trained as a Medic, had no problems finding an EMT job after leaving the Army on a disability discharge.
Military training is always an option. In my case, I already knew how to fix barbed wire fences and stack hay bales. Training me to be a Combat Engineer so I could string barbed wire and stack sandbags, didn’t add much to my resume.
Flash back to 1984. I’m a senior in HS. Took algebra I, II, geometry, 3 years advanced english, 3 years russian, biology. Did football and wrestling. I got out of school at lunch to work a second shift job. Half way thru senior year, I drop out of school, drink too much, womanize too much, etc… Pops gets in touch with a navy recruiter and tells me navy reserves are taking drop outs if I pass an asvab test. Well, tests are my forte. Basic changed me, developed discipline, work ethic, and got to travel a lot on uncle sugar’s dime. Learned to weld, plumbing, electrical, blueprints, mechanical maintenance, all taught to me by the old guys in what ever shop or factory I was working in at the time. Mostly Nam and Korea Vets. Now, I do maintenance in a bakery for $27 an hour, house is paid off, truck is paid for, in a nice small Catholic farm town. 3 days off each week to do the things I enjoy, oh, and did I mention no debt? Married to my lovely wife for 19 years. Not bad for a high school drop out eh?
All- Thanks for the comments! And yes, the military DID turn a few of us around! 🙂
I think the University industry may have shot itself in the gut by backing the Dems this time.
Hearsay is that some of them have shut down, so those might’ve taken out administrators.
Not all the institutions had the surplus on hand to make a pretense of implementing lcokdown theater.
Universities possibly aren’t any great loss. However, a) this is an estimate b) there was actual economic damage done by the lockdown c) current regime and media are not interested in those numbers being honestly tabulated and distributed d) who knows?
One of the things undergraduates seemed to like was the social environment. Lockdown did temporary damage to that, and permanent damage, and we don’t know which is which yet. Terrified, complaint people aren’t exactly a lot of fun to hang around.
Other thing is parental interest. 1) remote schooling from home exposed a lot of them to a more realistic understanding of the level of nutjobbery. 2) The riots. The effin’ riots. Lots more visceral exposure to the idea that the ‘investment’ may be worthless or harmful. If you are white, do you want your daughters falling in with a bad crowd, developing the bad dye job self-hatred, and to go around burning down black neighborhoods? 3) Even if nobody admits this, now every ordinary person has more information to reflect upon about the value and accuracy of ‘expertise’.
Effects of the election fraud will be downstream of this, but, we now know that a probable majority of Americans are not hard left, and do not much agree with the hard left. To include college age types. The hardcore extremist Democrats and communists are definitely not enough to supply the enrollment numbers the universities are used to.
Look how much arson and murder last year, and they are probably going to do so again this summer. The universities cheered before.
College, now, is probably not a fun place to be. People there may be getting close to only i) people with a serious reason to be there, worth the work and the misery ii) the desperate, crazy, and stupid. i is not going to be an even cross section of all majors.
It’d been obvious for years that University was a very disruptable industry. But I hadn’t seen any pathway to making it happen. Now, it seems likely to happen soon.
Just outrageous, what a scam. And I’m glad my kids have gone tech –eldest with the Army (free). Smart move, boys. Of course I went Theology, but that was on a different planet a lifetime ago 🙂
The tuition at the college I attended is now $48K, and the mandatory meal plan is $6200. The meal plan costs more than the tuition I paid! Vocational schools all the way!