“So while visiting this planet, you volunteer to work at the Rumpleminze factory, earn some Clarey Bucks and buy some Rumpleminze because…well…there’s literally nothing else to do in this lovely planet. After a while you get bored and decide to fly back to Earth and spread the good word of Clarey World. You also sing the praises of the galactic quality of Clarey World’s Rumpleminze, and soon people also want to fly to Clarey World to sample its Rumpleminze.
But oh no. There’s a problem.”
I spent many years in the post-secondary educational system both as a student and an instructor.
I have to agree with Captain Capitalism that there’s too much money which, in itself, is bad enough. Worse, however, is the fact that it’s poorly spent. And why not, if there’s guaranteed operating funds from the government. (It wouldn’t look too good if a campus has to close shop because it can’t get enough money to keep the lights on, would it?)
One of the major objectives of each post-secondary institution is “bums in seats”. In order to attract the necessary warm bodies, those places have to offer facilities, services, and courses that those students won’t go somewhere else. Whatever one institution offers, its competitors have to either match or exceed, so guess where much of the money to pay for it comes from? If the students complain about high tuition, the administrators wiggle out of it by claiming that they’re only providing what was demanded.
In addition, academics rarely risk their own cash to do their research, relying, instead, on external funding. There again, they’re using someone else’s money, so why should they worry if it’s wisely spent? (Gee, that sounds like socialism, doesn’t it?)
Much of an academic’s job is money-harvesting, schmoozing with granting agencies in order to get funding. However, once they get it, the money isn’t necessarily under their control. My Ph. D. supervisor told of a former department chairman who insisted that all external funding went into a common pool. (I can imagine the accounting nightmare that would result.)
There was a time when I really hoped I would become a university professor. The more I find out about how things really work in academe, the more I’m glad I never did.
one of the first things I learned in economics, is that when you have too much money chasing a limited supply of goods the price of those goods goes up.
Dang. Now I want some rumpleminze.
Obama’s FAFSA calculations squeeze every last dollar out of so-called “rich” parents. Obama succeeded in transferring the wealth of prime college student families into the pockets of radical leftist professors like Terrorist, anti-American Bill Ayers. Add to that massive scholarships and loans made to “underserved” communities … and you’ve flooded our colleges with malcontent “students” who are struggling to keep up (academically) and compiling massive debt. Obama created a dysfunctional college debt bubble … which will probably end up like the S&L bubble … all “purchased” by the Federal government, thus completing the full transfer of $$$$$ to the “underserved” communities. If SHE were elected President … the college debt would already have been “purchased” by the Congress … with Mitch McConnell’s full blessing.