What many of those administrators do is little or nothing of value, yet paying for them and their foolish activities contributes to the massive increases in the cost of attending college. In fact, the "diversity coordinators" actually create negative value with their stupid, pernicious "sensitivity training," sundry propagandizing, grievance manufacturing and villification of whites--especially Christian, heterosexual males.

Of course Ms Cooper-Morning should not be engaged in this sort of activity, and certainly not while on the job at U. Colorado, using their phones and her office. Though I think this may actually be preferable to dividing people along racial, ethnic, religious and sexual-orientation lines, and then inciting inter-group conflict.

"Rising college costs are an interesting phenomenon."

Two observations:

1) Administrative overhead has gone way up, probably 3 or 4 times what it was 40 years ago. And yet all those colleges and universities seemed to function just fine without it back then--probably better than now. So what added value are these administrators providing?

2) Econ 101: The more money made available to students for college, the more cavalier these institutions feel about raising prices. In an interview, Thomas Sowell claimed that for every dollar made available via student loans, tuition costs rise by about 50 cents. I'm fairly sure that figure is correct, but in any case it was very high, at least 30 cents, I believe. (BTW, I believe this is a form of corruption in that the universities, as reliable propagandists/supporters of Big Government, are in turn rewarded by Big Government in the form of student loans, grants and other gifts of hard-earned money extracted from the taxpayer.)

But I'm sure this is just the tip of a gigantic iceberg of waste. There's no good reason why "higher education" costs have galloped so far ahead of inflation the last few decades.

We don't have any money at all to waste, so we aren't just inventing cushy jobs, yet we are required to do things that require hiring people in administrative functions that didn't exist 40 years ago.

I have no trouble believing it.

Yep, we have similar things. We don't have a full-time person specifically devoted to government compliance, but it's something that requires attention. Lawsuit prophylaxis is also important.

And there's a whole world of stuff that's done to attract and keep students in a very competitive environment. Those require administration, and are often expensive in themselves, and are part of the tuition rise.

I couldn't say. I can only tell you that it all adds up. I'm sure that would vary widely from one school to another. I'm pretty sure that our technology outlays in constant dollars have at the very least doubled in the past 10 years or so, probably way more than doubled. I would guess it's increased 4 or 5x over the past 20 years. And in a cash-strapped private school like mine, there is little or no real "bloat" in the sense of positions that don't have any real function. That may not be true at big public institutions.

"My perspective is from a small private school, which is a very different situation from a big public university."

Oops. Just checked with Miss Manners and she assured me it's boorish to suggest your internet host is participating in creating "a gigantic iceberg of waste." My apologies, Mac. But I was speaking of a general trend, not all colleges, and I'd bet a small private school is likely one of your best values in terms of education per dollar spent.

My general sense is that the rising costs are caused primarily by government regulations (and other interventions), "lawsuit prophylaxis" and "mission creep" by some universities into bogus fields and/or activities that have little to do with education (it never occurred to me that technology costs were a significant problem, so I've already learned something here).

Mac, at some point in the future when you're able and so inclined, I'd be interested in getting your perspective on what exactly is happening that generates such high costs--in general, not necessarily specific to your school.

I suspect it is a concatenation of smaller things.

1. Dog chasing its tail public subsidies.

2. Cost disease of personal services

3. Escalating expectations of service.

4. Academic labor market rigidity.

5. Padding due to credentialing conventions.

6. Overbuilding driven by dysfunctional institutional governance (see Thomas Sowell on this point) and misplaced philanthropy.

7. Compliance costs.

8. Parkinson's law. One place I worked had 4 or 5 vps in 1995 and 10 a dozen years later. The publishing maven Arthur Henderson offered that the most salient thing about higher education was the manifestation of the pecuniary interests of administrators as a class: the administration is the 800 lb gorilla who sits wherever he wants to.

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Of course, inelastic demand conjoined to easy credit is driving all of this. We need much more effective secondary education and a more ready way to liquidate insolvent philanthropies and public trusts.

Maclin, you are really reminding me of why I am so glad that I have a new job. I never, ever, ever have to think about that stuff again.

AMDG

Marianne's comment was trapped in the spam filter for several hours.

There was a similar program here a year or two ago where hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, students were given laptops. What they did with them, who know?

In general technology in education is vastly overrated. Though it has put into the hands of students some useful tools unknown to my generation. For instance, I learned recently that if you select all the periods in a document and change them to a font which takes up more space, the expansion can sometimes gain you another page toward meeting the minimum without your having to write more.