Bret Devereaux

The key traditional marker is treating students like customers and looking to compete with other universities on the basis of those customers. Which in turn leads to amenities inflation - the rock-climbing walls and other fancy student amenities you hear complained about. 14/xx

See, universities don't compete on academics - those aren't really measured by US News or whatever. And only a handful of nationally known big schools can compete on raw prestige. But you can try to draw in the best students by promising a fun student life... 15/xx

...in place of an educational one. The problem is that it leads to a Red Queen Effect - if *everyone* invests in fancy student amenities, costs go up, tuition goes up, but no university wins. 16/xx

Meanwhile, business-style management imposes all new administrative overhead as admin. functions are moved out of the faculty departments and into big centralized administrations that look more like companies. The thing is, there's no effective cost control...17/xx

...because the Pale Horse of the Business Model is federally subsidized student debt. 18-year-olds are not great at calculating long-term cost-benefit; offer them a fun time now for money paid in the future and most will take it. So more admin, more amenities, more debt. 18/xx

To be clear, basically none of this massive increase in tuition - and it is *massive* - goes to professors. Let me repeat that: BASICALLY NONE OF THIS MONEY GOES TO ANYONE WHO TEACHES. (rip your ears, I know). 19/xx

Instead - it's hard to get good data - but instructor pay has probably gone *down* over the same period. Not because professor pay has been cut, but because the teachers have been adjunctified under the business-model imperative to cut costs. 20/xx