Comment by ilamont
4 months ago
Universities spend ~$109 billion a year on research. ~$60 billion of that $109 billion comes from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) for biomedical research, National Science Foundation (NSF) for basic science, Department of War (DoW), Department of Energy (DOE), for energy/physics/nuclear, DARPA, NASA.
Let's talk about the other $49B.
I read or heard someplace that at many universities tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields, as the history department or psychology professors are unlikely to require huge investments in new buildings, specialized equipment, etc., yet they pay the same tuition fees as STEM majors. Families/students paying full freight at a private university are looking at undergraduate degrees that cost $250k-$400k all in.
That can't be the whole picture, as money also flows from rich donors, corporate partnerships of various types, and at some schools such as MIT licensing fees.
It doesn't seem like tuition can keep growing at the rates that it has to make up the shortfall from government research cuts, but what about the other areas?
Raising (already record high) tuitions that have far, far outpaced wages and inflation should be a last resort. You can start by cutting bloated admin, reduce fraudulent procurement/graft (e.g. the $700k Berkeley Chancellor's fence: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/700k-iron-fence-co...), vanity construction, study abroad admin budgets that dwarf actual student grants, and the executive compensation/perks by admin.
And this is just mentioning a sample of admin bloat, never mind the other areas.
This.
Cut spending on admin staff and facilities.
Schools do not need amenities to attract students. They need lower tuition. You could teach students out of a tent and do away with all the flashy health spas and do a better job at the core mission of empowering students.
No new buildings, no land acquisitions, no taking over facilities from the state for millions of dollars.
University leadership does not need to make $300k, $600k salaries. They should make what the median professor makes.
Universities will tell you they need all of this to compete with other universities. So to get the ball started, tax all of this as a negative externality and give it to the universities that do not spend in this way. Or turn it into scholarships.
Speaking of scholarships, stop putting a cap on admissions. Let everyone that wants to come in do so if they meet academic thresholds. Let them stay if they maintain a good GPA.
And make student loan debt dischargable. That might mean not everyone qualifies for a loan, but by making the system an "infinite money glitch", universities have grown into gluttons for tuition. They've taken this "free, unlimited money" to grow to obscene proportions. It's malinvestment propped up by an artificial quirk of economics.
I don't see how "uncap admissions" and "don't take on any new infrastructure" are compatible.
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> tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields
This is not true at my state flagship R1 institution. Tuition and fees make up a little over 10% of the institution's total revenue. General funding provided in our state budget provides a larger percentage of the total revenue to the university and federal research funding provides an even larger percentage than the state.
The essential takeaway here is that our state taxes subsidize the actual cost of providing education to in-state students. In-state students are mandated to be at least 80%-ish of students.
The professors in the STEM fields are required to raise a significant percentage of their salary via research grants ("soft" money), teaching, and service work. The non-STEM professors are more often funded via "hard" money - eg, the institution has committed to pay the salary of history professors.
I googled and apparently a little more than 70% of undergraduate students in the US attend public schools. I don't know much about how funding works at the private universities that have the other 30% of undergraduate students.
> I read or heard someplace that at many universities tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields
Diploma mill universities in my state are consolidating the smaller STEM universities and trade schools to build football and sports programs, gyms, and "lifestyle" amenities.
This university in particular [1] mints basket weaving degrees and has used consolidation to build sports programs [2] and lavish facilities for sports.
It's also been a revolving door of politician to high-ranking, high-compensation executive staff positions.
This university [3] has used funding to acquire properties from the state, such as the 1996 Olympic Stadium [4].
Neither of these universities does real, impactful research. The latter is ranked as an R1, but everyone at the "real" R1s in our state will tell you this is a fabrication. They're diploma mills and extract six figures from their student body. They turn this money into sports facilities and upper level faculty pay.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_State_University
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_State_Owls_football
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_State_University
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Olympic_Stadium
This is absurd. These universities aren't diploma mills. They're solid institutions in the "directional state U" tier.
Georgia State has an average SAT score of 1070. Nobody with a brain goes there. Just a societally sanctioned diploma scam for people who would be much better served by starting work right out of HS.
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You clearly aren't familiar. These "universities" are a step above DeVry. They might be worse in that they cost an arm and a leg to attend.
I used to tutor CS students at several different universities during my first two years at college. I would bet my arm that none of the ones I taught from KSU wound up with a career in software.
The student perspective at these schools is that they're there for the credential, not for the learning. Even at the risk of false negatives, I would actively filter out resumes listing schools like these. I would much sooner interview a non-degree holder.
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> I read or heard someplace that at many universities tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields
I'm very skeptical of this claim.
In fact up until a recent funding method change from the Trump Administration, most grant money was subject to "overhead"--a nebulous nonsensical accounting trick that allowed the university administration to get upwards of 60% of the dollars that are earmarked for grants. If you invent something, the school will take 70% of the revenue from the innovation. Much like VC, some big wins can power the school for years.
Actually, most highly productive research universities use the research as a prestige magnet and marketing tool to help grow endowments and keep up in the US News college rankings.
I would be great if the funding weren't so opaque. We may be able to find accounting info for the public univeristies. I would bet money that, Liberal arts tuition likely goes into administration, endowments, and campus improvements for student life (better food in the dining halls...)
> In fact up until a recent funding method change from the Trump Administration, most grant money was subject to "overhead"--a nebulous nonsensical accounting trick that allowed the university administration to get upwards of 60% of the dollars that are earmarked for grants.
We're better than this here. Don't spread misinformation. First of all overhead is listed as a percentage, such as 55% or 60% or whatever but the university doesn't get that fraction of the total grant. You work up the so called direct costs, ie the line item salaries of the researchers, the reagents, etc. and then the overhead is 60% of that figure. So it would work out to be 38% of the total dollars granted.
It's also not a trick. It's a negotiated amount that is supposed to avoid each grant requesting some amortized fraction of the cost of office space and other necessary but shared expenses.
I and most people agree that's it's possibly too high, but it's ignorant to treat it like a scam.
I and most people agree that's it's possibly too high, but it's ignorant to treat it like a scam.
The fact that it is so high is a scam.
It really depends on the grant. For the larger grants, it may work somewhat like you describe. For the smaller grants, they literally do just take 60% of the money (and complain that it is not enough to administer the grant while providing absolutely no support whatsoever). In theory, it's paying for salary and office space and whatnot, but those are already covered by other budgets.
It's not misinformation. You are repeating a misleading talking point. Here's what happens.
- Professor & students get a grant application for 100K.
- University charges indirects at a ratio (0.55)
- 155K gets transferred from treasury to the university account.
That extra 55K comes from the money that congress allocated for grants, so if congress allocates 1 billion dollars -> 450 million will actually go to professors for research. (less than half).
I don't know about you but the universities I went to were rarely ever building new labs or buildings. Furthermore, those large projects always have state grant money coming out of another funding pool.
Glossing over some details, but the fact of the matter is that it's opaque.
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