[ibgeek]

Most universities publish a high-level breakdown of their expenses through the government IPEDS database. For teaching-focused institutions like mine, a vast majority of the money is spent on salaries. We are committed to keeping class sizes to 20 students or less and hiring experts to keep teaching quality high. That means that there haven’t been any increases in efficiency other than extracting more labor from faculty. This also seems to be true in other areas as well. Startups solve business process needs by purchasing services (e.g., Bamboo HR, expense reporting software, DocuSign, etc.). Universities still have people doing all of these things manually.

[galdosdi]

If that's true why does college cost an order of magnitude ($60k per year) more than a public high school in a top state (eg NJ/MA, $15k per year) with similar class size ratios, less class time per year, and only slightly higher pay?

Additionally, if professor pay is too high, there is probably room to cut it without much harm, considering there is an oversupply of grad students who would love to make tenure but don't have a chance due to so few slots available.

1 full time professor can provide an education to 20 students. You can pay this professor $100,000, and spend another $100,000 on taxes, overhead, etc. That's $10,000 per year. Where's the other $50k come in?

There is lots of waste. Replace these fancy campuses with a building like an inner city high school and replace the many administrators with a volunteer faculty committee and a couple of paid administrative assistants.

Run colleges like high schools but with higher paid, better educated teachers. The damn building and other luxuries don't matter. All a good teacher needs is 4 walls, paper, and a classroom of willing souls.