[rd]

I recently graduated (class of '25), and the thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university.

There's a great student op-ed about _a_ proposed solution (firing the deans): https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...

[DesaiAshu]

Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club)

It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very heavy paycuts to remain in academia, but the result of that finger pointing is devaluing education

The right approach - in my eyes - is to share the land Harvard, Stanford, et. al. sit on with 10x the number of students. This simultaneously increases efficiency of the entire P&L while providing a higher quality of education to everyone

As we've seen with the UC system (and the excellence of IITs + Chinese research universities), high density education can be synonymous with top tier research outcomes - Ivory Towers are not needed

[141205]

Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. If we wanted elite colleges to provide the benefits that they are supposed to; then we would, if anything, want to reduce matriculation.

Stanford,—and I would hazard a guess many other HYPSM schools,—are already minting out too many students; this is especially true when it comes to non-PHD masters degrees, which are essentially an unbecoming cash cow for departments. Actual "quality of education" mostly comes from a low staff/student ratio and direct access of students to elite researchers: this difference in education mostly takes the form of better research labs to work in, with some spillover into office hours; increasing matriculation would only lead to more auditorium-sized classes that are run by lecturers or postdocs—these classes are essentially at the same level as trudging through online material.

Your proposed "solution" would have a Procrustean effect: I can't speak for Chinese or Indian universities, but while schools like UC Berkeley, UT Austin, University of Michigan, et seq... have good reputations, they have a noticeably lower reputation than the ivy leagues and certain private colleges like Stanford, MIT, and Caltech—and a worse reputation for being degree mills.

If you think that Stanford having 180,000 students matriculated will give everyone a quality education, then I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality. The only benefit that would come of it would be popping the degree bubble and prematurely ending the current moribund trajectory that universities are on; where they are already treating degrees as if they were artificial-scarcity NFTs, rather than providing the actual scarcity that is access to,—and direct training from,—high-level researchers.

[DesaiAshu]

Stanford has a $40 billion endowment for 8k undergrads. UCLA has a $10 billion endowment for 34k undergrads. Naturally, the class sizes will be much larger. The UC system does not put 100% of students at UC Berkeley and UCLA, they distribute it across several campuses and distance education and maintain a leveling system that helps promising research talent be in the room with experienced researchers

Despite rising costs, a college degree is still a positive lifetime investment for students (not to mention the positive externalities educated populations have on society at large). The bulk of US college students attend colleges who do not have the resources to build high-quality, industry relevant curriculum, train teachers to teach with modern pedagogy, and efficiently manage dorms, student affairs, and other administrative infrastructure

HYPSM choosing to share land, curriculum, expertise, and administrative infrastructure through network'd partnerships would lead to massive economies of scale and a broad reduction of educational costs. Another way to think about this - is one city of 1 million people more efficient to run per capita than 10 cities of 100k people? The answer is a resounding yes due to urban scaling. Colleges are effectively mini-cities

"I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality" -> I founded an in-person college with regional accreditation that had a lot more 1:1 and small group teacher time than HYPSM and an average starting salary on par with CS grads from these schools. Our alumni have gone on to become YC founders and can be found at most top tech companies and startups

It is a choice to value exclusivity for exclusivity's sake (eg. withholding JSTOR data from students of colleges who can't afford those costs). The best institutions (eg. YC, Apple) care a lot more about what you can build than what school you got into at age 17

[econ]

The solution is to hoard ideas, organize them, review them and experiment. I for example suspect that giving students more time for everything would improve results. I have nothing to show for this but it would be good science to run the experiment. Unless of course there are better sounding ideas that should be tried first.

[141205]

"The bulk of US college students attend colleges who do not have the resources to build high-quality, industry relevant curriculum, train teachers to teach with modern pedagogy, and efficiently manage dorms, student affairs, and other administrative infrastructure"

I would like to see a source on this: your claim appears ungrounded when considering American colleges.

[DesaiAshu]

It is generally understood in the industry that around half of universities are in significant debt / financial distress (started prior to Covid // the demographic peak // recent DoE cuts). Graduate underemployment is also quite high due to a lack of alignment (or perhaps slow alignment) of degree programs to career outcomes

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-...

https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/aug/jobs-degrees-...

Ideas for solutions here:

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604299.pdf

[fc417fc802]

Can we take a minute to consider that degrees aren't supposed to be aligned to career outcomes to begin with? That's what vocational schools are for. Somehow academia became conflated with both a job training program and an adult daycare service and (at least in the US) the result is a confused, inconsistent, expensive mess whose exact purpose isn't clear.

[nine_k]

As I understood the grandparent post, the idea is that a highest-level university should 10× its student throughput, and 9 other, lower-level universities would be made redundant by that.

This would make sense if all what an elite university did were providing elite-level education. Of course exclusive schools provide other benefits, often more valuable for the target audience than the education proper: a highly filtered student body, networking and bonding with the right, upwardly mobile people (either mega-talented, or just smart kids of rich and influential parents), a luxury-grade diploma that few can afford. Maybe you could theoretically 10× Stanford or MIT, but likely not Yale.

[catgary]

I see the value of the students, it just seems like an odd thing for a government to subsidize via NIH/NSF funding. We don’t really have anything analogous to that in Canada and it just seems awfully weird that it exists in the US without the “it’s older than the country” excuse that Oxford/Cambridge have.

[bpt3]

How is any of this subsidized by NIH/NSF funding? Those grants are only spent on the cost of research, either direct or indirect.

Also, a number of the schools we're discussing are older than the US itself; Harvard predates it by almost 150 years.

[fsckboy]

>Actual "quality of education" mostly comes from a low staff/student ratio and direct access of students to elite researchers: this difference in education mostly takes the form of better research labs to work in, with some spillover into office hours

I don't agree with this at all. Quality of education imho comes from being surrounded by fellow elite students so that the pace of the syllabi can remain high.

lower tier universities have excellent faculty, they are selected from applicants from the elite universities as well as excellent students from lower tier universities who have floated to the top. Their problem is, as the elite-ness of the students goes down, the pace needs to drop.

Not trying to be a jerk, but we see the same thing in athletics, elite athletes are significantly above the next tier, and so on. the worst professional team can beat the best college team, because the worst professional team is still made up of the cream of the college teams, with experience (i.e. more education) added on.

at a lower tier university, a dedicated student can still work in labs if they want, but as you move down the tiers you simply get fewer autistics and more partiers. University of Michigan is an excellent univeristy, but do you think the students are studying on weekends, like they do at MIT? no, they're not.

[stackghost]

>Their problem is, as the elite-ness of the students goes down, the pace needs to drop.

Only if the school mandates a quota of passing grades. Not sure about HYPSM but anecdotally at my (Canadian) alma mater no such quota existed: the pass rate for 3rd year fluid dynamics was in the 40% ballpark, for example.

[questionableans]

I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but neither do you. Students at universities ranked similarly to Michigan absolutely do spend a significant amount of time studying on the weekends, especially if they’re not business majors. And MIT has parties and pranks, too.

[mlsu]

I mean, is the goal of an elite college to educate? Or is the benefit to sift through the population and pluck out its masters?

I don't really care that UC has a lower "reputation" than Harvard or Stanford. The fact is, the UC system has produced more fundamental research and more actual value for the population and the world at large than Harvard or Stanford. Even if a UC degree is not quite the "golden ticket" that an Stanford degree is.

Concentrating individuals into a smaller and smaller elite benefits them and only them. The U.S. has done this with capital allocation in its economy and it has and will continue to be a century long arc bending toward utter disaster.

What do we actually care about here? Education?

[raddan]

I totally agree. Folks here seem to be under some misapprehension that elite = better education. Based on my experience earning my PhD at a public R1 and then working as faculty at a selective private institution, this is not the case. For starters, just consider the incentives for grade inflation at a private vs a public institution. Harvard has famously out of control grade inflation.

My public alma mater was a tremendous force multiplier for upward mobility. Many of my peers were first generation college students. They’re now scientists, doctors, and engineers. Few of them will become famous—they mostly just make the world tick.

My current private institution concentrates already wealthy people. These folks mostly go out and become consultants. They’re consumed with the idea of becoming “thought leaders.”

Which one really provides more value? I have strong opinions.

[nablaxcroissant]

Pretty much agree but may I also add that Santa Clara County would probably not allow Stanford to increase its student body by any real sizeable amount due to restrictions in traffic, building, parking, etc, etc.

[DesaiAshu]

It would require building public transit and higher density residential housing over the next two boom/bust cycles

[kcexn]

I don't think they're suggesting we reduce the amount of faculty. They're suggesting that you ask all the faculty to share less space, increasing the efficiency of the real estate holdings. Also by reducing the number of schools, you reduce the amount of expensive ancillaries.

[impendia]

I got curious, and looked up the Harvard Polo Club. Apparently it naturally faded away as polo declined in popularity, but then was revived in 2006.

I understand that, if you have a current and active polo club running, then you either have to keep it going or run the risk of pissing people off.

But, if I can ask you to speculate, why might Harvard have revived its club in 2006?

[PaulHoule]

Probably they got a donation.

I used to have a view of a baseball field out my office window until they rolled up the astroturf to start construction of the new computing and information science building.

They got some money to build a really nice fan-friendly facility off-campus. Still the thing about baseball is that the season is early in the year and starts before the weather is comfortable for home games so they spend the first half of the season going to away games down south, far enough away that they're probably buying airline tickets instead of riding the bus the way that Ivy League (or ECAC) teams usually ride the bus to go to other Ivy League (or ECAC) schools.

If it wasn't for Lacrosse we wouldn't have anybody using our football stadium in the spring and hey, Lacrosse is both a men's and women's sport. (At Cornell we're lucky enough to have two football teams to keep it busy in the Fall)

Critics would say that Lacrosse is a boon to rich students since poor students don't go to high schools that have Lacrosse and it largely escapes the notice of the marginalization-industrial complex because those folks are aware that there is an industry in SAT test prep and not so aware that there is Lacrosse.

[raddan]

It’s an open secret that “expensive ancillaries” like polo, crew, equestrian teams, etc, are a sneaky way to have supposedly blind admissions while making sure that the incoming class still contains just the right number of students who can pay full tuition. Smart people are not all that rare.

[nickwrb]

I can’t comment on the Chinese research universities you mention, but the comparison with IITs is bizarre. They are notoriously extremely selective, and all set in lush, spacious, grounds. I don’t think they back up your point at at all.

[nyeah]

How old is typical university land, compared to the average age of land in the same city?

[georgeecollins]

I know you are making a joke, but for people who may not understand: The point is that well regarded Universities in the USA are generally old relative to other institutions in the USA. So Stanford has a pretty campus on land that was purchased when hardly anyone lived in Palo Alto. Now that land is absurdly valuable.

As in the article, it changes how you might use the land. A grove is a beautiful place to go and read or relax. But if you could replace that grove with a structure worth of hundreds of millions of dollars it changes things.

[bandrami]

It's the deed that's old; in the case of Columbia it's that it holds the northern half of the Anglican church's glebe[1] in Manhattan (Columbia is the largest private real estate owner in NYC), which is not only held tax-free but generates significant money for the University.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe (for Northern Virginia residents who have always wondered)

[bonsai_spool]

> The thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university.

I feel a better question is what entities that are in continuous operation since the 1630s do not resemble a real estate holding company? If you analyze only the extremes of any distribution you'll find weirdness.

[rd]

This is true! I hadn't thought about it like this to be totally honest. It's hard to point fingers at old institutions, especially given they're mostly located in prime real estate locations across the country (Cambridge, Palo Alto, etc.), and it's not really their fault that they need land to operate.

[tempacct2cmmnt]

Many of them are prime real estate locations in large part -because- the old institutions are there.

[raddan]

Yeah, this is a silly argument. Go walk around the neighborhoods near MIT and you’ll see company after company that intentionally positioned themselves in proximity to the campus. Many of those companies are also MIT spinoffs.

[neutronicus]

That's a common sentiment among non-Hopkins Baltimoreans.

It's a small city, so a lot of people have experiences with real estate held by Hopkins.