[alexpetralia]

Related to expenses..

"And there are several perverse incentives in the marketplace that make it hard for colleges to cut costs. The most basic one is that the U.S. News algorithm rewards them for spending a lot of money: Higher faculty salaries and more spending on student services lead directly to better rankings. If you reduce your expenses, your ranking will fall, which means that next year your applicant pool will probably shrink."

You'd be surprised at the burgeoning expenses of universities, and often meager profitability, despite record-high tuition rates. It seems, often like startups, a burn rate signals potential growth!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/coll...

[mattkrause]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that above-market faculty salaries are not a major issue.

[alexpetralia]

I would argue its headcount growth (not salary per employee), but admittedly I could not immediately find data for this.

Edit: Also upon looking through the Trinity College financial statements, a huge portion was categorized as "Other", which included consulting fees, travel, interest expenses and various other expenses.