[cyrksoft]

I'm surprised how very few departments within most universities actually make money. If you had a company where most products lost money you would stop producing them. Universities have a lot of departments and degrees that bleed money. I don't understand how anybody thinks that you can have good wages like this.

I worked as an Econ professor and visiting academic in top Business Schools in Latin America and the East Coast (USA), and I can tell you that Business Schools make A LOT of money. They charge whatever they want and people (in most cases, their employers) pay them. In many cases Business Schools can amount up to 40/50% of the universities' revenue. That is also why business professors are paid a lot more. I personally know people at London Business School making more than £ 200,000 a year. Salaries at INSEAD are very similar as well. Of course, salaries at top US Business Schools are even higher.

My point is that you cannot run a business where one or two products make money and the remaining 90% bleed it. That is, if you want to run it as a business and attract talent and pay nice wages. If you want to run universities as some type of public good, then good luck. Pay everybody the same and offer as many degrees as you'd like. Good luck hiring competent people...

[foldr]

> If you want to run universities as some type of public good, then good luck. Pay everybody the same and offer as many degrees as you'd like. Good luck hiring competent people...

This is quite a bizarre statement, since universities have been run as a public good for centuries. The idea that they should be profitable businesses is relatively recent. I doubt that the classicists at Magdalen college have ever turned a profit over the centuries, but that doesn't mean that they had trouble recruiting competent people.

[cyrksoft]

You are using one Oxford college as an example, that is not representative at all. Most universities have very little (if not null) prestige associated to them. If you will only recruit top talent at Oxford and Cambridge, why have the rest of the universities? How do you plan on funding them?

[foldr]

Again, your rhetorical questions are straightforwardly answered by history. Humanities departments have survived for centuries at relatively non-prestigious institutions. It is clearly possible for societies to fund such things if there is the social and political will to do so. It may be that there is not, at present. Nonetheless, it is a vast oversimplification to suggest that recruiting talented academics in the humanities is essentially impossible merely because humanities departments are not profitable businesses. You might as well say that a country can't have armed forces because the soldiers don't turn in a profit.

[cyrksoft]

My questions are not rhetorical, so you could answer them. Money has to come from somewhere. If your answer is subsidies, then decide either to increase taxation or to cut funding to something else. I believe it is wrong to force people to subsidies academics producing nothing. You cannot tell me that a History PhD studying the life of a 15th century Pope provides much value to society.

That things worked in a certain way for centuries means nothing. Humanities academics are easy to hire, they are many, many PhD graduates, and very few open positions. Also, they make more money in academia than they make in industry. With not money outside options, it is easy to fill those roles.

I'm not suggesting cutting all funding, I think they do provide value in society. However, they shouldn't be demanding salaries that they cannot produce themselves. The fact that Business School professors (as an example, the same could be said by CS professors) make a lot more, doesn't mean that Humanities professor should make the same.

Also, having governments fund most of their budget has many risks. It is very hard for it not to become political and a tool for those in power.

[foldr]

I absolutely can tell you that a History PhD studying the life of a 15th century Pope provides value to society. The value of such work has been recognised for centuries.

Lots of people demand 'salaries that they cannot produce themselves'. For example, soldiers, nurses, firefighters, etc. etc. I'm not sure why you have it in for academics specifically.

Universities in the UK and many other countries have been heavily subsidised by governments for a long time. In general this does not seem to result in universities becoming a tool for those in power. Quite the opposite in many cases.

[cyrksoft]

Which value and recognition are you talking about? Their papers are almost never cited [0].

Soldiers, and defense in general, are part of the main things a government should provide (we can discuss how much, but that is another discussion).

I am not sure why you say nurses cannot produce salaries. Nurses work in the private sector and provide substantial value.

I do not have it in for academics specifically. In fact, I used to be one. What I am saying is that they are mostly disposable and think of themselves as some superior value.

In the UK in particular, education used to be tuition-free. Now they are running more as a business. I do not see the point of forcing subsidies on people who produce something that not even other academics are interested in. You are basically paying people to sit in a room and discuss something by themselves. Why does a minimum wage worker have to subsidies that? We are all getting hit by inflation, some more than others. Academia is a job with zero risk involved. I don't think it is fair to keep subsidising the dream of a few while having so many better uses for the money, or even reducing the tax burden on society.

[0] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/23/ac...

[j7ake]

Isn’t VC funds structured such a way that one or two startups make it while 90 percent fail?

University outputs seem to be comparable in this sense.

The patent for Gatorade alone has brought in probably 100 million to U of Florida.

[cyrksoft]

That might be the case. But universities are not startups.

In one of the universities I worked at they had a four-year long History undergraduate degree. Between 5 and 10 students chose it each year (the entire university has around 5,000 students, give or take). That means that there are around 30 students combined. For these 30 students, there were more than 40 full time academics! There are more professors than students. All this is possible because they had 2,000 undergraduate business students, and 1,000 business postgraduate students paying 3x or 4x what a History student paid in tuition fees. I know this might be an extreme case, but it is not that rare. You cannot run a sustainable business like that. Of course History professors made a lot less than their business counterparts, and they complained a lot.

[j7ake]

Universities are not startups but the basic research since WW2 has enabled the startup culture that is so vibrant today in California and Boston.

The success of this basic research feeds back into society with substantially increased tax revenue and reputation to attract the best minds in the world.

[cyrksoft]

> The success of this basic research feeds back into society with substantially increased tax revenue and reputation to attract the best minds in the world.

I would love to see a source on that, particularly the tax revenue increase and return on investment.

I think it is wrong to fund so many researchers that contribute almost nothing to society with tax payers money. Why force minimum wage workers to give part of their income for academics to sit around and think about something that will probably have zero to no impact, while risking nothing. Let's face it, most academics accomplish nothing and have no impact whatsoever with their research. And I am saying this as an Econ researcher. I believe I contributed nothing to research in Economics while working in academia for 30 years. If I had any contribution whatsoever, it was either by teaching or by my consulting jobs.

[raziel2701]

Why are you judging universities as a business? Profit is not everything my dude. You seem to be biased due to your background as an economist.