Last year was my 50th reunion at my small, midwest liberal arts college founded in 1824 that still gets good academic ratings. My grandfather and his two brothers attended, he graduated in 1906, my father and his brother graduated in 1952 and 1953. My father remained friends with fraternity brothers his whole life. When I attended the college had just gone coed and tuition was about $3,200 annually. Dad paid that and I could make $3,000 in a summer to pay for books, transportation and spending money. Today tuition and board is $80,000. It is not worth it. Dad used to say that tuition cost was the cost of a Chevy Impala. In 1974 you could buy one of $3,300. They went up to $15,000 at the time tuition went there. Then the linkage ended. I ended my financial support.
I remember being challenged academically. I also remember being in a labor economics class being guest taught by an instructor that came from U of Wisconsin Madison. Compared to my other economics classes he was a long haired, lazy joke. That type has taken over. Today well over half the student population is female, DEI has multiple administrators and while I do not sit in a classroom, I know it is less academically rigorous than it once was, or at least many parts of it are. One of my sons went to college, is a full time father and does nothing with his math degree, the other became a tradesman with my enthusiastic support that has an educator spouse that runs a mini farm and homeschools their three. College was and should be for the top 10% of a population. NYU for $85K for a gender studies degree is an indication of the decadence of the age and education.
Good article by Zimmerman, but a straw man lurks within his piece. The Trump administration isn't going after pure and virtuous science-as-science (like his wife's research project) out of spite, anti-intellectualism, nor for ideological reasons, and we haven't gone from research universities that were "the envy of the world" to some status below that because the boogeyman Trump seeks to destroy "science". The Trump administration is going after massively bloated taxpayer-supported research funding.
At my university, 58% of every research grant is taken by the university as overhead. A researcher gets a $1,000,000 NSF grant, and gets to spend $420,000 on the project. The other $580,000 is used by the university for whatever it wants. Not coincidentally, we have a serious case of administrative bloat around here. The number of administrative positions, as well as the % of the university's operating budget devoted to administrators' salaries and benefits, has increased dramatically since I started working here 31 years ago.
And, of course, tuition has risen at a rate that far exceeds inflation.
Yes. The funding is bloated. The tuition is bloated. At my former institution (I retired in 2025--could not stand the hypocrisy of going to work in a place I no longer respected), our Federal grant overhead approached 56.0%. To save costs, the Uni shut down the air and heat from Thursday 12:01 am - Monday 12:01 am in my building, a 14 story building with windows that could not open. Needless to say, no one worked Friday, and my students and I shivered or sweated Monday mornings in class. So our overhead rates didn't even keep the electricity on (though I do think the shutting down of systems was a woke bow to 'climate change'). I was one of the few who cheered when the Trump administration slashed overhead rates to 15% and finally made them lower than industry IDC. Of course, that all reverted in court.
Of course, AC is just a tiny complaint. The general disregard for supporting and bolstering research has been wiped out for years. The one place without administrative bloat is grant pre-award support.
More staff than faculty these days--many of my former colleagues are fleeing academia, at least in my particular institution.
I've commented and written several articles to the effect of "Academia has brought this on itself." I knew things were going downhill ethically and morally at the community college where I'd taught for 20 years (I was a part-time instructor at several So Cal community college districts but SOCCCD was my primary district). The school had hired a new President and all of the decent, good faculty really liked him. Morale improved. The group of us who participated in professional training and curriculum development, and who were actually educating ourselves in online education and OER, were very happy and putting together many new projects or improving classes. Then when his contract was to be renewed - kaboom! He was fired and we all received an awkward e-mail. He was accused of sexual harassment and the Board terminated him. None of us were sure which snakelike Admin accused him (I do, now). How ironic - because a) he didn't do it; b) real offenses are hardly ever punished. What you just wrote reminds me painfully of the last Department meeting I attended. A bunch of assholes sitting around congratulating themselves for making Powerpoints about "diverse" students.
... and this is why I despise academics and American academics in particular: Your very special brand of cowardice and feeble-mindedness has succeeded in pissing in and poisoning all of our anglophone wells of scholarship with your newfound, ridiculous pieties. Not really my problem, but sad to witness, nonetheless.
You spineless fuckwits!
You overgrown schoolboys!
PS -- I do not have a dog in this fight, so I will not respond to any replies to this comment. Just wanted to vent my spleen ... you'll have to fight it out amongst yourselves; I truly don't give a fuck.
This is well said. Going to have to send it around.
I've been writing over on mine about campus motivated reasoning in a few different posts. There's no doubt this is identity threat combined with the fact that motivated reasoning is even stronger among "smart" individuals...I won't blogwhore here, but it's definitely something I'm going to write more and more about, especially since it's (definitely) a part of the AI backlash, etc.
The IRS already examines 501(c)(3) tax returns to see if they're "reasonable" (not employing your family at extravagant salaries, etc.) Not hard enough, but they do claim to.
I think for colleges, there should be a ceiling on "administrative costs." Exceed that, and you're not a non-profit anymore. The ceiling should be something like what was typical 30 years ago.
There is a good amount of university bloat. And a university curriculum committee in notorious for finding and scouring syllabi for the most mundane things and creating a laundry list about things they know nothing about. And the fact that it takes more than an academic year for a new course to be approved or old one revised is astounding. And it's hard to speak out, and to go against the grain - when tenure/promotion is hanging over a faculty member, it's easier to go along, say nothing. In my higher ed world, the university could get rid of about a third of administrators easily, and things would function fine. But they maintain full re-named DEI office with far reaching tentacles. There are three or four offices at the university that have a good amount of control and yet are absolutely useless and full of bloat - and do...not much...and want to control every narrative. I did not think it would be this bad, but the longer I'm in it, the more my eyes are opened.
Last year was my 50th reunion at my small, midwest liberal arts college founded in 1824 that still gets good academic ratings. My grandfather and his two brothers attended, he graduated in 1906, my father and his brother graduated in 1952 and 1953. My father remained friends with fraternity brothers his whole life. When I attended the college had just gone coed and tuition was about $3,200 annually. Dad paid that and I could make $3,000 in a summer to pay for books, transportation and spending money. Today tuition and board is $80,000. It is not worth it. Dad used to say that tuition cost was the cost of a Chevy Impala. In 1974 you could buy one of $3,300. They went up to $15,000 at the time tuition went there. Then the linkage ended. I ended my financial support.
I remember being challenged academically. I also remember being in a labor economics class being guest taught by an instructor that came from U of Wisconsin Madison. Compared to my other economics classes he was a long haired, lazy joke. That type has taken over. Today well over half the student population is female, DEI has multiple administrators and while I do not sit in a classroom, I know it is less academically rigorous than it once was, or at least many parts of it are. One of my sons went to college, is a full time father and does nothing with his math degree, the other became a tradesman with my enthusiastic support that has an educator spouse that runs a mini farm and homeschools their three. College was and should be for the top 10% of a population. NYU for $85K for a gender studies degree is an indication of the decadence of the age and education.
I applaud you beginning this Substack.
Good article by Zimmerman, but a straw man lurks within his piece. The Trump administration isn't going after pure and virtuous science-as-science (like his wife's research project) out of spite, anti-intellectualism, nor for ideological reasons, and we haven't gone from research universities that were "the envy of the world" to some status below that because the boogeyman Trump seeks to destroy "science". The Trump administration is going after massively bloated taxpayer-supported research funding.
At my university, 58% of every research grant is taken by the university as overhead. A researcher gets a $1,000,000 NSF grant, and gets to spend $420,000 on the project. The other $580,000 is used by the university for whatever it wants. Not coincidentally, we have a serious case of administrative bloat around here. The number of administrative positions, as well as the % of the university's operating budget devoted to administrators' salaries and benefits, has increased dramatically since I started working here 31 years ago.
And, of course, tuition has risen at a rate that far exceeds inflation.
Yes. The funding is bloated. The tuition is bloated. At my former institution (I retired in 2025--could not stand the hypocrisy of going to work in a place I no longer respected), our Federal grant overhead approached 56.0%. To save costs, the Uni shut down the air and heat from Thursday 12:01 am - Monday 12:01 am in my building, a 14 story building with windows that could not open. Needless to say, no one worked Friday, and my students and I shivered or sweated Monday mornings in class. So our overhead rates didn't even keep the electricity on (though I do think the shutting down of systems was a woke bow to 'climate change'). I was one of the few who cheered when the Trump administration slashed overhead rates to 15% and finally made them lower than industry IDC. Of course, that all reverted in court.
Of course, AC is just a tiny complaint. The general disregard for supporting and bolstering research has been wiped out for years. The one place without administrative bloat is grant pre-award support.
More staff than faculty these days--many of my former colleagues are fleeing academia, at least in my particular institution.
Once you count in (non loan) financial aid, tuition has risen at roughly the same rate as inflation
I've commented and written several articles to the effect of "Academia has brought this on itself." I knew things were going downhill ethically and morally at the community college where I'd taught for 20 years (I was a part-time instructor at several So Cal community college districts but SOCCCD was my primary district). The school had hired a new President and all of the decent, good faculty really liked him. Morale improved. The group of us who participated in professional training and curriculum development, and who were actually educating ourselves in online education and OER, were very happy and putting together many new projects or improving classes. Then when his contract was to be renewed - kaboom! He was fired and we all received an awkward e-mail. He was accused of sexual harassment and the Board terminated him. None of us were sure which snakelike Admin accused him (I do, now). How ironic - because a) he didn't do it; b) real offenses are hardly ever punished. What you just wrote reminds me painfully of the last Department meeting I attended. A bunch of assholes sitting around congratulating themselves for making Powerpoints about "diverse" students.
... and this is why I despise academics and American academics in particular: Your very special brand of cowardice and feeble-mindedness has succeeded in pissing in and poisoning all of our anglophone wells of scholarship with your newfound, ridiculous pieties. Not really my problem, but sad to witness, nonetheless.
You spineless fuckwits!
You overgrown schoolboys!
PS -- I do not have a dog in this fight, so I will not respond to any replies to this comment. Just wanted to vent my spleen ... you'll have to fight it out amongst yourselves; I truly don't give a fuck.
This is well said. Going to have to send it around.
I've been writing over on mine about campus motivated reasoning in a few different posts. There's no doubt this is identity threat combined with the fact that motivated reasoning is even stronger among "smart" individuals...I won't blogwhore here, but it's definitely something I'm going to write more and more about, especially since it's (definitely) a part of the AI backlash, etc.
The IRS already examines 501(c)(3) tax returns to see if they're "reasonable" (not employing your family at extravagant salaries, etc.) Not hard enough, but they do claim to.
I think for colleges, there should be a ceiling on "administrative costs." Exceed that, and you're not a non-profit anymore. The ceiling should be something like what was typical 30 years ago.
There is a good amount of university bloat. And a university curriculum committee in notorious for finding and scouring syllabi for the most mundane things and creating a laundry list about things they know nothing about. And the fact that it takes more than an academic year for a new course to be approved or old one revised is astounding. And it's hard to speak out, and to go against the grain - when tenure/promotion is hanging over a faculty member, it's easier to go along, say nothing. In my higher ed world, the university could get rid of about a third of administrators easily, and things would function fine. But they maintain full re-named DEI office with far reaching tentacles. There are three or four offices at the university that have a good amount of control and yet are absolutely useless and full of bloat - and do...not much...and want to control every narrative. I did not think it would be this bad, but the longer I'm in it, the more my eyes are opened.
Change the 01:37 timestamp. Don’t dox yourself.
Tell us you already changed it before publication please. 😁