[JDShu]

To take two examples, Blackboard costs at least in the hundreds of thousands (maybe a few orders of magnitude more) while an individual license of matlab is 3000, so perhaps with a group purchase it's more like 1000 per student? Schools also tend to spend a great deal on their course registration systems and perhaps hire external consultants to develop and maintain them. Those are just two examples, the list goes on for all the services the university provides.

I also want to note that often the administrators have to ok so many contracts (which they have no expertise in) and there are so many options, that inevitably the university ends up paying for stuff that nobody uses. At least in my last school, it was apparent that there were many sources of waste.

[harryh]

Ya, that all makes sense. My wife is in the academy and she's got some stories too.

No competition -> bad management -> all kinds of waste. It's sad. I don't know how to fix it though.