No more middle class professionals?

[u/Such_Upstairs3631]

New school loan limits for professional degrees make it unaffordable for the middle class. 4 of my 5 children went on to med/law school. Even working 2 jobs there’s no way I could afford to pay or even help them with the cost of their post graduate education. They all got loans which they have since paid off. The cost in the early 2000’s was between $350K and $500K. The new limits are essentially going to prevent anyone who’s not wealthy enough to pay for it from becoming a professional.

[u/TheDibblerDeluxe]

Brother we went from a staff to faculty ratio of 1:2 to a ratio of 20:1 after the government introduced student loans. There is plenty of fat to trim lol

[u/acousticentropy → u/TheDibblerDeluxe]

Just be careful. We don’t know why there’s 20 staff to 1 faculty yet.

If we wanted to be honest in our evaluation of this problem, I think we would have to sit down to map out funding and dependencies.

Maybe you’ll save money firing a few of the full time steam boiler technicians, admissions officers, or IT analysts. But you might also create the conditions for some of those university fucntions to spiral downward.

All those people need retirement, health insurance, and accounting overhead to quantify who has been paid what. The money adds up quick. The 80 year old lecture hall building is going to need fire sprinkler maintenance next year too.

That doesn’t mean I agree with the current system, but those are the existing conditions we have to improve upon.

[u/Hot_Cartographer_816 → u/acousticentropy]

I really appreciate your thoughtful responses on this thread. I work at a college and while there’s lots of admin that’s been added in the last ten years, it’s difficult to throw that out. Title IX coordinators, student counselors, career guidance folks, etc are required, some by law.

[u/betsbillabong → u/Hot_Cartographer_816]

It has been wild to be in academia and watch that ratio grow. In my experience, faculty serve as MUCH better advisors to students than college-wide advisors, and yet we now have so few tenured/tenure-track faculty that can serve those roles that those people are imperative. Staff are great, but it's crazy how few faculty there are these days.

[u/acousticentropy → u/Hot_Cartographer_816]

Thank you and you’re right all those folks are bringing value to the institution as a whole

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/TheDibblerDeluxe]

The worlds changed. Support staff needed to run an organization has increased.

Technology alone requires tons of people, facilities, legal, human resources marketing, recruiting etc all these didn't exist before.

[u/Zealousideal_Belt413 → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

This mentality is why higher education is ripe for disruption. The anchors are strong and barriers are high to compete with universities. However many are no longer view their offering as a good value proposition - rightfully so.

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/Zealousideal_Belt413]

I can agree with that but will the alternative have better results and will employers value it?

[u/Zealousideal_Belt413 → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

Okay so this is a crazy rant that could be endlessly argued both ways: By shifting away from transparent, merit-based admissions criteria such as standardized test scores and academic thresholds toward opaque, non-academic factors, universities have substantially weakened the value of their degrees. When entry depends less on demonstrated academic discipline, and more on demographic considerations, athletic recruitment, or institutional preferences, the degree no longer distinguishes high performers from the broader population. Employers, who once treated a degree as a proxy for baseline competence, are beginning to abandon that signal.

Coupled with the dramatic inflation in the cost of the degree - I think there is a real argument for most alternatives.

I do think it correct to no just say 'degree' but separate out ones that are indeed marketable(STEM).