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Where money disappears at universities


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2019 Aug 7, 10:39am   2,159 views  8 comments

by Bd6r   ➕follow (2)   💰tip   ignore  

Long but interesting read if you are interested in Higher Ed. Kind of answers where money goes at universities - it is not education or teaching for sure.

https://hechingerreport.org/increasingly-skeptical-students-employees-want-colleges-to-show-them-the-money/

EAST LANSING, Mich. — One of the most active student clubs at Michigan State University meets every other Wednesday in a room above a buzzing cafeteria.
This club doesn’t organize intramural sports or plan keg parties or produce the yearbook. It pores over dense financial documents to examine how the university handles its money. One kind of risky deal they unearthed, the students in the group say, cost the school more than $130 million at a time when tuition was increasing much faster than the national average....

At many institutions, financial data being scrutinized in this way increasingly suggest that model is built on low-paid part-time instructors working under top-heavy bureaucracies. It implies that these are being funded partly by endowments that are spending smaller proportions of their returns on financial aid and faculty salaries while larger proportions are funneled into questionable investments.

“Students want to know where their money is going. When we break it down for them, they’re shocked,” said Andrea Cardinal, a lecturer who teaches art and design at the University of Michigan, which she also attended. “I was, as well.”

This appears to be fueling a spiraling cycle of scrutiny.

“People just didn’t have an understanding of where the money was going, and now that they do it makes them really angry,” said Brigid Kennedy, one of the leaders of the student group at Michigan State that’s looking at that institution’s finances.

A network of student groups affiliated with the Roosevelt Institute, including that chapter at Michigan State, report that 19 public and private universities it studied lost a collective $2.7 billion as of 2016 through a complicated financial instrument called an interest-rate swap.

The students at these universities in Michigan have done something else almost unheard of in this era of political polarization: gotten the College Democrats and College Republicans to work together, in this case on a demand that students and faculty be added to the universities’ boards of trustees. In Michigan, that would require a constitutional amendment.

“We want to see greater transparency in how they spend our money. And it is our money, most of it,” since such a large percentage of the budget comes from tuition, said Manon Steel, another student at Michigan State, in that conference room above the cafeteria.

Of the money that is being spent at the University of Michigan on daily operations, $85 million went to salaries and benefits of lecturers, the 1,700-member lecturers’ association found. (“UM Works Because We Do,” shout the placards leaning against a wall in the union office.) But the university collected $462 million from the tuition students paid to take their classes, leaving what the lecturers contend is a $377 million-a-year surplus.

Comments 1 - 8 of 8        Search these comments

2   Ceffer   2019 Sep 10, 7:41pm  

Universities are riddled with Commie Fucks. It's all free shit to them.
3   rjfont   2019 Sep 11, 2:56am  

There is no doubt that the entire higher education system is one massive bubble. That bubble is kept afloat by the massive government subsidies and loans given to students who can't repay them. But no ripped off student wants to blame the school for their troubles due to buyers remorse. Nobody will admit that 80 grand and 4 years of their life were a waste - all for a useless bachelor's degree in drama. Well perhaps it's the governments fault. So let's bail out the schools by paying off the loans for everyone. Let's make the bubble even bigger and reward bad behavior.
4   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Sep 11, 3:50am  

Around 1980, 80% of ALL University profs were full time, salaried employees - most of them tenured.

Today, 20% of University profs are full time, salaried employees - and most are untenured - with most of the untenured part-timers teaching core courses like Math as well as Liberal Arts (which of course fosters anti-American bitterness, as well as Math is hard enough for most without having to be taught by a Chinese TA who barely speaks comprehensible English).

Yet, tuition has skyrocketed despite an increase in student volume.

Admins, man. Admins.
5   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2019 Sep 11, 3:53am  

More diversity officers. And pump up the gender studies department.
6   Bd6r   2019 Sep 11, 8:13am  

HonkpilledMaster says
Admins, man. Admins.

willywonka says
More diversity officers. And pump up the gender studies department.

1. Admins...who hire more admins who hire more admins.
2. Athletics
3. Gold-plated facilities (gyms, climbing walls, Olympic swimming pools, fancy dorms) for spoiled students.
4. Focus on "happiness" of students as opposed to acquiring knowledge. 1-3 ties into that.
5. Too Many Students. Not everyone can study - and to hire more admins we need more students, so lets water down courses, pass everyone, herd students into easy yet useless subjects of Genderqueer Lesbian Studies and make mockery out of the whole system. Decrease intake by 1/3 and suddenly you will have hard-working students, less money needed, and graduating students will have jobs!
7   NDrLoR   2019 Sep 11, 9:12am  

HonkpilledMaster says
untenured part-timers
Called "adjuncts" I think.
8   Ceffer   2019 Sep 11, 10:51am  

Nothing worse than being taught math by a Chinese Immense Hirsute Lesbian with an incomprehensible accent and an attitude.

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