We aren't frivolously spending money. We raise tuition because the bills have to be paid.

The ballooning of the 'administration' staff at my wife's university over the last 20 or so years is the same type of staff explosion seen at larger public companies. Except that those companies are responsible to share holders, and thus constrict when profits cannot be maintained. Whereas the University can forgo layoffs by increasing tuition, and know that the federal (and private) loan system will fill the gap. I cannot remember there ever being even a 2% layoff of staff at the university, let alone something you'd see from MS/IBM/etc.

1. state budgets for universities are cut for political reasons not having much of anything to do with the university itself. budget shortfalls must be made up from other sources, primarily from tuition increases.

2. increased student enrollment due to increasing economic and social pressure for people to get a college degree. more students requires more facilities and more staff, which requires more funding.

3. natural aging of physical plant of university facilities, combined with other long-term maintenance costs (pensions, for example) that have historically been underfunded and now need more funding.

4. a price spiral relationship between availability of student lending and tuition costs. tuition costs increase so student lending amounts increase so tuition costs increase etc.

5. real actual greed. this isn't universally true but it can't be dismissed. some universities will just raise tuition simply because they can.

Increasing Fed subsidies tends to de-fund Colleges at the State budget level..its very counter-in-thinking as the more Fed subsidies the greater the student enrollments..

Thus if the Fed decreases student subsidies student enrollments will decrease and thus serve to reverse de-funding colleges at the State level..

ITS NOT ANY INDIVIDUAL BUDGET ITEM FOLKS..that is an illusion

At a community college, you won't see any of this.

Community colleges are not representative of bigger colleges. They aren't supported as much (as you say), and tuition is drastically cheaper.

Given that this is a global audience, and that even within the US the salary disparity across regions and industries is tremendous, could you be more specific than "not exorbitant"? My guess, from having a parent who taught at a likely even lower paying institution in rural Wisconsin, is that real numbers would make your case better than a euphemism to which people will attach their own expectations.

This was pretty obvious over the past 10 years in the University of California system -- every time state funding was cut or tuition was raised, the availability of financial aid, including loans, was used to defend the decision.

How many qualified people - currently working as PTLs or postdocs - would happily take your place for 10% less money? [1]

If the answer is 10+ (from what I recall of the academic job market, that seems accurate within STEM, outside of STEM it might be 100+) then you are frivolously spending money.

[1] Gerald Epstein elaborates on this argument, though he of course applies it to finance rather than education. https://promarket.org/rents-high-cost-high-finance-qa-gerald...

Certain cocoa farms in Africa have decided to do away with frivolous salaries by using slave labor. I am certainly not a slave but the point ought to be clear nonetheless. That we can find someone willing to do a job for x% less is not evidence that the current wage us frivolous. Woe would be the lives of most of humanity if your view were widely accepted. We don't need a race to the bottom in this area.

I understand that you want to keep collecting your paycheck while the next guy on the totem pole makes $12,000/year as a PTL. Similarly, the Donald wants to build a giant wall of ice guarded by rapers, bastards, criminals and political exhiles to prevent unskilled white men from losing their rents (while keeping the Mexicans in poverty).

I guess that in my morality, rent seekers are evil and Trump is a bad person for appealing to them. You seem to disagree.

I'm sure there are qualified people who would do my job for less. And there will likely be qualified people who would do the job less than my replacement. Eventually we can find a local minimum. Great. We saved a buck or two. There are costs (non-financial) to society for creating a system in which the race to the bottom is the norm. I do not wish to live in a such a society. If conditions are bad enough you'll find someone willing to work for less. But this incentivizes creating a situation in which times are tough for most people. I do not wish to live in such a society.

Considering my salary to be frivolous because a local min on my wage has not been achieved is not in line with how most people use the term as it relates to wages.

I didn't bring up Hitler because it wasn't relevant. Slavery is given your apparent view that anything greater than the local min for wages is a frivolous expenditure. It does not require much thought to see that the pursuit of the local min for wages can, and does, lead to slavery in some cases.

I'm sure there are qualified people who would do my job for less...Eventually we can find a local minimum. Great. We saved a buck or two.

More students can now attend college (since costs are lower) and those that do have less debt. But I guess that's less important than keeping the rents flowing to yourself.

Trump 2016! Yeaaah! Don't want no Mexicans to take our jorbs!

But this incentivizes creating a situation in which times are tough for most people.

This is exactly the situation we have in the software industry. What does "times are tough" mean to you? People with six figure salaries and indoor jobs forced to endure the indignities of a 20 minute standup?

...the pursuit of the local min for wages can, and does, lead to slavery in some cases.

By "slavery", do you refer to the normal definition (namely people involuntarily working under threat of violence)? Or do you have some less common definition?

His professors weren't rent seekers and they got paid better than me. See it's possible to live in a system in which people make a reasonable wage without being rent seekers or others getting screwed. I'm using rent seeker in the pejorative sense that term denotes in colloquial speech. It's not a zero sum game. Society was better for the GI Bill. Even those who didn't directly use it. My uncles, while not being as well off as my dad, were better off overall. They got out of poverty as the economy got better.

We had a system in which college didn't put people in penury, didn't keep rents flowing to teachers, and was an overall benefit to dociety.

I grew up in Panama. During Noriega times were tough. People did things for far less than they normally would have. After all, the value of a glass of water to someone dying of thirst is far greater than it is to me in my present condition. There's a point where the race to the bottom becomes dehumanizing. There's more than maximizing/minimizing dollars. I feel sorry for people who can't see that. I've never met you personally but from posts I've seen of yours you appear to be a libertarian with a reverence to market forces. In a world of 7 billion people I think most libertarian ideas don't scale well.

I used slavery in the normal sense of the word. Think hard enough and you'll see that man in desperation can volunteer to be indentured but when the situation isn't so bleak he will try to leave. Of course his desire to increase his wages may lead to a violent response from the employer. Especially if the practice has become normative.

Perhaps you think that rent is good, but that's a different statement. I'm sure that most Trump supporters also feel they deserve rents at the expense of Mexicans/those who might otherwise employ Mexicans.

I'm not sure what "colloquial speech" you refer to or what you mean by "pejorative sense". As far as I know "rent seeker" is a technical term used primarily by economists to refer to people who take actions to seek/preserve their rent. If you feel it's pejorative, that's only because on some level you recognize that harming others for personal gain is not a good thing.

How would an American wall keep Mexicans in poverty?

Mexicans are free to create wealth themselves or by trading with the entire remaining world. They could even still sell to the US or work for US companies, just without moving there.

If Trump was going to cordon Mexico off, there would be something to that argument. But they have access to two oceans.

I'm not claiming that Mexico is a middle income country solely because of US immigration restrictions - far from it. Pointing out their trade opportunities would be a valid counterpoint to that claim. I think most of Mexico's economic problems are entirely self inflicted (same as for the US, Venezuela, or most other countries).

And if Mexico's economic problems are self-inflicted then it makes perfect sense not to invite people who inflict such problems.

Note that I never advocated allowing Mexicans to vote; on the contrary, I'd like to disenfranchise bad American voters rather than enfranchising bad Mexican ones.

There's simply no realistic path where people move into a large, modern European* country and remain second class residents with limited influence over the government. This state won't last a single generation.

* USA included by heritage if not by geography

Well yeah, of course their kids would get to vote.