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Higher Education: Not a Worthy Charity
As part of their annual alumni gathering the UCLA Anderson School of Management posted a boast on Instagram about how the class of 2002 raised $1.2 million for the school. I certainly support charity, but this boast really struck me – is this the best place for these talented people to be putting this amount of money? Are colleges and universities, as they currently operate, good places for charitable dollars?
Let’s put some perspective on the economics of attending the Anderson School (I am only picking on them because I am an alumnus). The current cost of the full-time program at UCLA is $96,966 for residents and $109,540 for non-residents. The executive program costs close to $150,000 (note the link shows the cost of one year of the two-year program). I am a 1986 graduate of the UCLA management school full time MBA program. My total tuition costs were $3,000. Tuition increased 3,133%, a 12% compound growth rate. Inflation adjusted tuition would be $6,674, a 122% increase with a 3% compound growth rate. In 1986, UCLA was ranked #8 by US News. Now it is ranked #15.
On the cost side, I could not find much information on the Anderson School, but spending at the University of California has grown massively (health care and hospitals are part of that) like it has at most universities. And the spending is not on education. The number of faculty has stayed relatively constant while the number of administrators has grown steadily. From 2000 to 2015, enrollment increased 38%, faculty numbers stayed flat, and administrators more than doubled. From the LA Times: “The number of those making at least $500,000 annually grew by 14% in the last year, to 445, and the system’s administrative ranks have swelled by 60% over the last decade — far outpacing tenure-track faculty.” Again, health care plays a role in that unbalanced growth but this article in the American Spectator details how politically correct “research” pays extremely well. Does a donation go to something that delivers social value?
I won’t go into the corrosive politically correct, anti-free speech environment that has taken over many if not most universities. Others have written about that. But is that something we should support with charitable dollars?
Mrs. Clavius and I stopped out donations to UCLA when the Faculty Senate voted in kangaroo session to condemn the second Iraq War. This action was never disavowed or criticized by the administration and not reversed by a more proper convening of the Academic Senate. Since then, they have eliminated the requirement to read Shakespeare to get an English degree. Yet another reason not to support this institution.
Our older daughter is just finishing up a degree at Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington. She has had a wonderful experience at this Jesuit institution. We had been generous supporters of the university until they hired Melissa Click, the infamous “get some muscle” woman from protests at the University of Missouri. The hiring was done after a “nationwide search” revealed her to be “most qualified” candidate for the position. That cost us our faith in the administration and cost Gonzaga further donations.
I firmly believe one must donate to worthy causes as much as one is able. I am afraid that higher education no longer qualifies as “worthy” for me.
Published in Education
Yes. And the worst part is that pretty much the only use for such degrees is to teach it to other dumbasses, thus perpetuating the cycle.
Very well put. And absolutely true.
Often, the education of the real world and of hard knocks is far more valuable than the education from the institution. If only the institution would recognize that.
To be fair, some are running major medical centers in the UC case. But not 455 major medical centers.
I loved my time in law school.
I benefited enormously from it, both intellectually and materially.
But I would not give my law school a dime.
It is affiliated with (reportedly) one of the ten best endowed universities in the world, reports the annual cost of attendance in 2017 as exceeding $84,000/yr., and shows little sign of trying to make the undeniably wonderful and valuable education it offers available to students who can’t or won’t pay.
Instead, it lives at the trough of public education finance, extracting every dollar it can induce a student to spend, steal or borrow, to see its endowment grow.
It is a fine institution. It does an excellent job of providing the service it offers. But the same could be said of the law firm I slaved away in for so many years to repay my loans, and neither of them – the university or the law firm – was a charitable institution.
First and foremost, charity is a mindset. When your real objective is the achievement of a mission, you are a charity. When your real objective is maximizing monetary accumulation, you are not.