I don't think tuition is the problem (in this case!); it's the endless need for "fundraising". If you need to get huge gifts, inevitably you will be corrupted by the needs/wants of the gift givers.

Harvard has over $50,000,000,000 in assets. It sure doesn't seem like it "needs" to raise another $500,000,000. It's greed through and through.

Huh, and where does that big amount come from? By taking huge donations. Its like saying Apple can sell iPhone for free since they are insanely rich. They are reach because they charge large amount of money for a fucking phone. Money either increases or decreases its not gonna stay at same level.

> since they embraced price gouging on tuition in the 90's.

(Caveat that the following is US-centric.) I'd love to see the data showing actual price gouging, because the data I've seen has generally suggested that per-student spending hasn't even increased at a pace equivalent to inflation; rather, funding didn't increase with enrolment, leading to students paying for an ever-higher share of their education.

(As for private universities... fine, I'm okay calling it price gouging.)

I used to work in Institutional Research at a state university and at least for state school's tuition tracks pretty closely to the cost of education. In my time working there, our funding from the state was reduced by 30%.

Generally Non-resident tuition is the cost it takes to educate a student. Resident tuition is cheaper because it's subsidized by the state. Every year we would get less and less funding from the state and would have to shift more burden to the student. We implemented furlough days, and cut admin staff compensation to attempt to reduce the tuition burden on students. We still had to raise Tuition faster than inflation in the end.

There is no reason why my adjunct professor spending 45 minutes a week, twice a week for a few months, in some old building, should cost me and 70 other people $3000 each. The tuition problem is one of bloat and greed.

That's nearly a quarter million dollars, of which the professor is probably getting a few thousand. where is the other $200k+ going?

Yeah, that adjunct "professor" gets $3000 themselves for all their hard work

i can't tell if this is sarcasm or agreement? i mean it's probably more than $3k but it's still a very small portion of $200k+

I worked as an adjunct about 10 years ago and ~$2k per class was the pay. With a full class load that came out to a little over $2k per month. Definitely more work than 90mins per week per class though. 4 courses per term was definitely a full-time job.

So yeah, not a lot of tuition is making it to the low rung teachers.