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by zmgsabst 493 days ago
This is 0.25% of the national deficit by cutting indirect expenses from 30%+ to 15%.

When the country is $1,830,000,000,000 further in debt every year, universities will simply have to figure it out.

I suggest cutting their bloated administrations, to free up tuition and endowment funds for their actual purpose.

2 comments

> This is 0.25% of the national deficit by cutting indirect expenses from 30%+ to 15%.

The federal budget (save DOD and entitlements) is stuff like this.

Saying “oh well, it’s just 0.25%” is the reason why nobody can tackle the deficit.

Do this 100x and you’ve suddenly reduced the deficit by 25%.

Schools are going to follow the same playbook they've been following since 2008 as state and federal funding has dried up.

They'll lean on international students first like they have for decades, but those numbers are going to be down. They'll follow that by leaning on undergrads, but those numbers are shrinking too because of cultural and demographic shifts. Then they'll cut graduate funding (again) to try and get more blood from the stone. Then they'll try cutting the "extraneous" departments that don't bring in money or grants (read: everything except engineering, medicine, law, and football) again. Then they'll cut the departments that do bring in money. Then they'll do the work to shoulder the costs directly.

If you want reform, cutting funding doesn't work. It hollows out the entire institution before it even starts addressing the administrative issues. Reform needs to come from a different direction.