This morning at ten o’clock I’ll be speaking on a panel at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, discussing the student role in university governance and policymaking with a White House education policy official, the vice president of the United States Student Association, and a USPIRG campus organizer.
The panel will be streaming live here, and there are apparently still a few tickets available here, so feel free to peek in or stop by.
studentactivism.net 
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November 21, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Nando
If the universities, colleges and graduate schools would not keep adding to their bloated administrations, then the rate of tuition increase would not be SKYROCKETING. I know that shills and “higher education” apologists will counter, “But the states are trimming budgets, so the public schools must raise tuition rates.”
This is an intellectually dishonest “stand.” For example, technology generally decreases costs. MOST U.S. colleges and universities are relying on Internet=based courses, i.e. “distance learning.” Look at U.S. businesses and large multinational corporations, over the past 20-30 years. With advances in IT and software, there is less need for human labor. The same goes for small medical and dental offices. Those businesses purchase new machinery, because it is a good investment.
Furthermore, MOST American colleges and universities are now relying on adjunct and associate professors – as well as grad students and TAs – to teach many courses. Those lecturers are certainly not making big annual salaries.
In contrast, big universities and small liberal arts colleges are engaged in a “higher education arms race” – via bloated administrations and capital improvements. Schools feel that they must continually expand parking structures, renovate student centers, construct new suite-style student apartments, build new basketball arenas and football stadiums, renovate administrative and science buildings, etc. This is deplorable, willful conduct.
Seeing that Congress and state legislatures, as well as chief executives, expect and demand that all of us submit to austerity measures, it is more than fair to expect that these bloated “institutions of higher learning” do the same. Require schools to trim the fat – or lose all federal Title IV funds to those universities.