[beloch]

1. Apprentice in a good trade and you can earn more than the average professor. Seriously, my plumber makes more than than the prof who taught me quantum physics.

2. If you're at all cut out for college, you can get scholarships.

3. Even if you're not brilliant and just persistent, you can get loans.

University administrators and their associated bureaucracy have been expanding for quite some time now. It's actually rather sickening. I went to a conference and inadvertently lost the receipt for a $20 supper that sparked of a month-long shit-storm of gargantuan proportions when I tried to claim it as a travel expense. I think the University must have spent upwards of $2000 in man-hours lost. I honestly would have just paid the $20 had I only know what I was setting in motion! They weren't even coming down on me! They turned on each other like a starving pack of wolves, desperate to establish who was the alpha!

It's worth asking how we can step back into sanity from our current, ludicrous position. Recently, several University of Alberta professors organized a protest in which dozens of professors have applied, in groups, for the position of president of the University. They argued that any of the many groups applying for this position could do a superior job to any single person, and they'd each be getting a raise despite splitting the salary of the position! While the obvious message is that top administrators make far too much, I actually hope the UofA hires one of these groups. An absolute bloodbath for the administration of the UofA would likely ensue! Perhaps those claiming $20 for dinner at a conference will simply be given the $20 without touching off a grand inquisition that costs thousands!

[Loughla]

I agree that higher education administrative costs have gotten higher since the 90's, BUT (and that's a big but), as far as your $20 goes, there's a reason you've been rung through the ringer. The institution didn't do that to assert dominance over you. They did it to be in compliance with the law and audit requirements. No one wants to track down $20. They have to because of rules imposed on them from outside forces.

Institutions who receive public dollars are audited at least yearly to ensure compliance with state/provincial requirements, and somewhere around every 5 years on federal statute. These audits include ensuring checks and balances on money paid out to staff/students for any reason, including travel and conference costs (fun fact, many federal programs have travel costs that are based on staff pay, thereby limiting the amount of 'excess' spending the programs can do on travel. . . .because everyone knows we attend conferences in Michigan for fun. . . ).

Anyway, it may seem like a small deal to you that you lost the receipt for $20, and in the grand scheme of life, it is. BUT, in the direct application of audit completion and legislative compliance, that $20 is the first step to lawsuits, persecution and public shaming of the University when it turns out that every employee was allowed to slip $20 past the business office. Controls are controls on everyone, they are impartial and they apply across the board; the same rules apply to the lowly grad. ass. as they do to the provost and president.

Is it senseless to have that much work and that many hours spent on on $20? Yes. Is it senseless to have that much work and that many hours spent to ensure that tax dollars are spent reasonably and within the bounds of the law?

No.

Source: I am part of those 'sickening' higher education administrative costs, and I have personal experience consulting for federal audit compliance at public colleges in the states.

[araes]

TL;DR: You were subjected to a $2000 ordeal over a $20 charge because the audit and compliance system is broken and has no concept of measured response. Because layer after layer of bee watchers have been hired at six, seven, or eight figure salaries to ensure that every other layer of bee watchers is properly covering their asses in case that deli sandwich you bought turns into a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the good bees have left, and no one has noticed that each spoon of honey costs a hundred grand, while tasting oddly like corn syrup.

[Loughla]

Right, wrong, or indifferent, how do you suggest we ensure tax money is appropriately spent, outside of audits?

And I think you vastly overestimate the cost of staff accountants, business office staff and compliance officers at colleges and universities. Those 'bee watchers' aren't making six, seven or eight figure salaries. More like 35,XXX-55,XXX; a very reasonable figure for accountants.

[araes]

Ha, no issue with the red herring of accountant pay rates, just with the number of them there are. The ones I have real issues with pay for are the mucky mucks near the top [1], the increasing numbers of them there are [2], and the effect they have on tuition costs [3].

On reform, I'd say something similar to the IRS approach on taxes. Spend effort where there's a return on investment. IE, they're not going to audit people below the poverty line because they're sane, and the cost of the audit will be more than the return on back taxes. Similarly, don't audit $20 lunches, because five minutes of my time is worth more than the average we'll discover in errors.

In addition, an overall lower audit rate, but with randomized chance of audit that increases logarithmically as the charge goes up. Kind of similar to how the FAA checks pilot logs.

[1] http://www.post-gazette.com/image/2014/05/18/20140519college...

[2] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2...

[3] http://watchdog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir...

[Loughla]

I'm sorry about how lengthy this is, really I am.

Not sure how accountant pay rates are a red herring. You stated that they make 6, 7 and 8 figures; that's not accurate, I don't have hard statistics to back it up, but it just can't be. Also, the average institution (for my state) employs 1 staff accountant for every 500-600 students physically on campus, or every 800(ish) students counting on-line and commuter averages. That seems reasonable to me considering they do all of the accounting for the entire institution, not just student accounts.

[1] If you believe that college presidents have anything to do with internal controls of an institution, or have really any idea of what the audit compliance processes look like, you're stoned. The mucky mucks near the top have nothing to do with institutional audit compliance. The state and federal government does. You don't agree? Read http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-12-26/pdf/2013-30465.pd... [CAUTION .PDF]

That's one of six federal statutes that I have to be versed in, and I'm only one of four people (but it actually replaced three others I had to know in the past, yay for streamlining!!).

[2] I never made a statement about administration, and it's not really pertinent to this argument. It's correct that there are more administrators now than there were in the 70's. Again, though, what impact that has on institutional audits is really up for question, and doesn't really make sense.

[3] What's the saying. . . Correlation does not equal causation. Administration costs are going up, correct. So are the costs of every other damned thing. Pair that with a decrease in funding from the state and declining enrollment in the last 5 years and now you've got something. The answer to high college costs is not only administrator pay. Of course that's not helping, but it's much, much larger than that; attempting to shift the blame to that one area is ignorant of many factors in public education funding.

AND FINALLY. Your entire last paragraph misses the mark entirely. The institution isn't auditing the individual about the $20 lunch. They're ensuring that they have internal proof of the cost, that it is allowable to the specific fund, and that all costs are 'reasonable and prudent'. External, state and federal auditors are responsible for auditing the institution. So while that $20 meal isn't important, 50 people buying $20 meals without reason are. Again, the beauty of controls is that they apply to everyone, they are impartial and they apply across the board. You don't get to pick which legislation and regulation to enforce based on price. You get to make sure your ducks are in a row so when the state steps in, they find nothing.

Oh, and "an overall lower audit rate, but with randomized chance of audit that increases logarithmically as the charge goes up" That's sort of how it works already. The states that I've worked in have audited every school that received public money over a certain threshold annually. Federal audits only occur in institutions who receive large amounts of federal money (the largest state institutions: think University of STATE), or those who have thrown up 'red flags' in their spending. . . . such as those that have incurred many, many $20 lunches without any documentation about why these expenses occurred. . . .

[snowwrestler]

> 50 people buying $20 meals without reason are.

If you take out "without reason," then 50 people buying $20 meals is not actually a problem.

If a person travels for 3 days and claims 3 dinners at $20 each, there is an obvious reason to claim them, and no reason to audit, even if a receipt is missing. In my experience, this is how personal expenses at corporations work, which by the way are also subject to significant audit and tax reporting requirements.

> Administration costs are going up, correct. So are the costs of every other damned thing.

This is not actually true; administration costs in academia are going up much faster than almost any other cost in the U.S.

[chrisBob]

In addition to scholarships, which are merit based, many schools also have good financial aid, which is need based. I think colleges advertise this poorly but it makes a huge difference.

I am at Boston University now and while the sticker price is $55k/year the average american student pays about half of that. When my wife went to Princeton they used the FASA form to to calculate how much your family could afford and gave you a grant (gift) to cover the portion that should be student loans. In this way the fancy Ivy League schools can be cheaper than most other schools, and this is available to every student that is accepted.

[smeyer]

When you say that "the average american student pays about half of that", are you counting student loans towards the half the student pays or the half they don't? I've seen loans treated both of these ways before. I went to Harvard, and like your wife at Princeton, I found the financial aid incredibly generous. Their net price calculator online is a pretty good guide to their policies: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat... .

[chrisBob]

collegedata.com (what ever that is) says that the total cost to attend BU is $61k, and the average need based gift was $26k plus another $7k in "self help" for freshmen which I assume is a combination of loans and work for the school. 83% of freshmen got aid, but less than half of students over all got financial aid. Some of this is skewed by the fact that BU has a large number of foreign students who typically do not get any financial aid.

$30k per year is still a lot, but its a private university in the middle of Boston. Half of that $30k is for room and board.

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl...

[swalkergibson]

> I think colleges advertise this poorly but it makes a huge difference.

Many colleges do not have the endowments of the Ivy League, therefore, need-based financial aid awards are essentially non-existent for people who are simultaneously too rich for aid and too poor to pay outright.

For instance, in my application to Babson College in 2007, I was outright denied all financial aid because my parents (combined) made $90,000 and had a modest retirement portfolio in the $200k range. At the time, tuition was about $50k/year. Without them utterly sacrificing their entire nest-egg or moving out of their own house, paying for school on their own was entirely out of the question. Thus, I ended up going to the private loan market and got a decent rate for a $50k student loan. Thank God I was only there for a year, I cannot imagine having to service a debt of ~$1,500/month for the next 20 years.