The media tour for my new book continues!
Last week the Trending in Education podcast was kind enough to host me. Mike Palmer and I had a wide-ranging conversation, touching on adjuncts, pedagogy, technology, disruption, and some of my scenarios.
Thanks to Mike and the TiE team for having me on.
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Bryan, you had a great discussion with Mike and I look forward to reading the book. But I wish you and Mike had done a better job of discussing the outrageous costs of college and how to make college more affordable. You mentioned the cuts in state funding, but that would be just one (arguable at best) contributing factor to the increases in costs at state colleges. Alan Collinge has pointed out that the colleges blame state funding cuts for rising tuition costs, even as they spend money hand over fist (especially on administration and sports) and also stash away money in slush funds.
https://angrybearblog.com/2016/09/uva-slushfund-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg.html
Agreed, Keil. There’s a lot going into that problem.
Start with having to hire highly credentialed professionals, who tend to be more expensive than those without. Add the Baumol cost disease for scale.
Bring in the huge growth in administrative (i.e., everyone not faculty or student).
I just don’t know what to make of the Baumol’s argument. Even economists aren’t 100% unified on it.
https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2017/article/diagnosing-william-baumol-s-cost-disease
Even if it might explain some of the rise in costs, it doesn’t justify skyrocketing across-the-board increases in costs, while at the same time engaging in blatant price gouging (textbooks) and exploiting labor (the adjuncts).
I’m sure there are plenty of other people-intensive industries, including education ones, that have not seen a steady increase in costs. My friend is a tutor for Kumon, and they have not seen the kind of price increases that colleges have. More critically, if they did, people would simply stop paying them.
This is not what happens with college, because people keeping paying the prices because college is a mandatory gate to professional employment. The all-important factor of the credential monopoly keeps getting missed in the media’s assessment of why college is so expensive.