Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by N1H1L on Thursday April 30, 2020 @02:28PM (#23034294)

Also have you seen how much reporting requirements have increased for faculty? How much paperwork is needed for grants?

Just today there was a story I read about a Georgia Tech professor who is under federal investigation for misrepresentation on her continuing NSF grant. And the money involved was $40,000. And one of her defenses is that Georgia Tech provided very little secretarial services to her. Which may very well be true.

Everyone cribs about increased administrative bloat at universities, but given how massively paperwork requirements have ballooned, nobody is willing to point the figure also at that. Universities are hiring more admin because professors are often overwhelmed with paperwork nowadays.

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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by secabeen on Thursday April 30, 2020 @03:19PM (#23034943)

This is all true. The cost of research is high. And although there are some additional costs involved in educating a more broad student body, it's nothing compared to the disinvestment in higher ed by state governments. Here's the ed department's data on expenditures. It doesn't show huge increases: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_334.10.a...

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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by prepend on Friday May 01, 2020 @08:12AM (#23041238)

I don’t think secretarial services would help with misrepresentation.

And how much more help would she need?

Georgia Tech has really high admin costs with fees per semester above $1000. That’s just the explicit fees and doesn’t include the admin costs that are included in tuition.

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