The End of College Life - Wash U Prof's article in the Atlantic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/paul-weiss-columbia-dei.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c&pvid=2B8B82FC-13A6-4415-9C13-ACED357EEEE3

NY Times today. And no, I don’t have a gift link

and this very insightful comment made by a reader who is a professor —

‘I am a university professor, I voted Harris, and I wish Trump would order my place to lower tuition across the board 25% or lose access to the federal loan system. The response would be to cut services, jobs, offices, etc that had nothing to do with research or student success/learning - in other words, precisely what my institution needs to do to survive. Such an order is unimaginable under a Democrat President. I am quite familiar with Columbia: cutting tuition 25% could be done immediately, and easily, and the entire issue goes away. Public opinion is against Columbia not because it peddles pro-Hamas nonsense, it’s because it became the symbol of popular, wide spread disdain for universities that harvest the wealth of families who committed the grave sin of raising children smart enough to go to college. Universities have lost their way, completely bloated with non-essential jobs that boost tuition. Both the Right and Left are aware of it, but no one does anything about it. No sector needs a “DOGE solution” more than higher education.’

This I agree with.

So you think the government should be able dictate the cost of tuition?

Repeat after me: price. controls. don't. work.

The solution is probably more along the lines of the European commenter upthread. Stop rewarding schools for spending money on fancy facilities and bureaucracy. Start rewarding schools that keep costs low. You want Ivy but with less cost? Apparently you pick Columbia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All Americans - liberal, conservative, and apolitical - should be very concerned about the future of college given how Trump & Vance are attacking it. It is arson with no architecture. They don't have a vision for fixing it, they just want it to die.

I am paying careful attention and am very happy with the changes. These are much needed.

The people who are unhappy are those who are content to receive funds without needing to demonstrate any results.

Now the fun part - the supposed liberals who are "open" to new ideas and alternative viewpoints, think none of the above is an "acceptable" viewpoint. Because the above must have been written by a MAGA advocate and therefore not a valid view.

-A moderate democrat who voted for Kamala

Researchers have to demonstrate results. Often they are contractually obligated to publish their results no matter what. They don’t have to demonstrate success. That is an important concept in science and engineering. You can’t guarantee success, nor should you, when trialing new concepts in basic and applied research.

An epic cope!

So many jackasses on this thread who understand nothing about doing research just yelling nonsense.

Or…some of us have been around for more than 20 years and believe cost- effectiveness has not been practiced in many aspects of research in many universities.

I know that my university is cutting in anticipation of possible budget shortfalls, so that's on them.

[Anonymous]

Our brightest will flee abroad. Plain and simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our brightest will flee abroad. Plain and simple.

This is what's going to happen 100%. It will take a couple of years, but other country's gains will be our country's loss.

[Anonymous]

how do we stop trump's wrecking ball to america? he's destroying everything.

my 529 is down 15% and will keep falling because of his nonsensical trade war. so that hurts what we can even pay for. and now the quality of college (class size, faculty/research cuts) will be hurt too. so the cost/tuition will have to go up due to trump's cuts, while our buying power/college savings goes down in the opposite direction.

what can we do as parents to slow or stop trump's destructive roll? it really feels hard right now, our twins are juniors and we're feeling defeated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:how do we stop trump's wrecking ball to america? he's destroying everything.

my 529 is down 15% and will keep falling because of his nonsensical trade war. so that hurts what we can even pay for. and now the quality of college (class size, faculty/research cuts) will be hurt too. so the cost/tuition will have to go up due to trump's cuts, while our buying power/college savings goes down in the opposite direction.

what can we do as parents to slow or stop trump's destructive roll? it really feels hard right now, our twins are juniors and we're feeling defeated.

I feel this. I'm down to do anything to resist these petty and destructive moves by this president. But what specifically can we do? Other than vote in every state/federal election, which I'm planning to do.

We need to bring sense back to government. Not saying the Dems have it all worked out, but Trump and the Republicans who cave into him and Musk's self-serving actions are taking our country backwards economically, health, education, science, environment ... everything.

[Anonymous]

The colleges, especially high level schools are so top heavy with fluff and administrators.

They could make cuts without impacting students or instructions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ I could not agree more

Well, that professor is right up until the last sentence. He or she has fundamentally misunderstood the goal of DOGE and Trump. It’s not to help the middle class voter.

You’re missing the point. Obviously the writer doesn’t like Trump or his tactics. But she/he is saying there’s too much blout in colleges right now which should be obvious to all of us.

Yes. But the Trump solution is not at all tailored to address that problem. And it’s really weird for the federal government to be involved in minimizing bloat at a private entity. Private industry has a million boondoggles, but the federal government doesn’t cut contracts because corporate CEOs are overpaid and go to conferences in Hawaii.

Again you’re missing the point. Clearly trumps approach isn’t great but maybe some of these overstuffed universities fleecing students and parents should have woken up and corrected awhile ago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The colleges, especially high level schools are so top heavy with fluff and administrators.

They could make cuts without impacting students or instructions.

Agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our brightest will flee abroad. Plain and simple.

You mean the progressives encouraging their students to treat Jews like piñatas might move to Portugal? Good riddance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our brightest will flee abroad. Plain and simple.

You mean the progressives encouraging their students to treat Jews like piñatas might move to Portugal? Good riddance.

People won’t flee

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What you don’t get is that this will just kill off most schools.

It won't kill off most schools, but it will force them to cut the flab and make choices on how to spend limited money. It will kill some schools, that is a much needed Darwinian fitness test.

They are cutting research, not “flab”.

MAGAs are dumb AF.

Look beneath the surface & see what this “research” is focused on, moron.

You are so wrong. It’s everything not the social science research you are so afraid of. My kid does research in an area the President regularly talks about as important and their grants are on hold. This is in an administration priority area. Scientific research has been destroyed by this administration. It makes no sense at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All Americans - liberal, conservative, and apolitical - should be very concerned about the future of college given how Trump & Vance are attacking it. It is arson with no architecture. They don't have a vision for fixing it, they just want it to die.

I am paying careful attention and am very happy with the changes. These are much needed.

The people who are unhappy are those who are content to receive funds without needing to demonstrate any results.

Now the fun part - the supposed liberals who are "open" to new ideas and alternative viewpoints, think none of the above is an "acceptable" viewpoint. Because the above must have been written by a MAGA advocate and therefore not a valid view.

-A moderate democrat who voted for Kamala

I'm a research administrator at a university- what results are you expecting and what is your timeline?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/paul-weiss-columbia-dei.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c&pvid=2B8B82FC-13A6-4415-9C13-ACED357EEEE3

NY Times today. And no, I don’t have a gift link

and this very insightful comment made by a reader who is a professor —

‘I am a university professor, I voted Harris, and I wish Trump would order my place to lower tuition across the board 25% or lose access to the federal loan system. The response would be to cut services, jobs, offices, etc that had nothing to do with research or student success/learning - in other words, precisely what my institution needs to do to survive. Such an order is unimaginable under a Democrat President. I am quite familiar with Columbia: cutting tuition 25% could be done immediately, and easily, and the entire issue goes away. Public opinion is against Columbia not because it peddles pro-Hamas nonsense, it’s because it became the symbol of popular, wide spread disdain for universities that harvest the wealth of families who committed the grave sin of raising children smart enough to go to college. Universities have lost their way, completely bloated with non-essential jobs that boost tuition. Both the Right and Left are aware of it, but no one does anything about it. No sector needs a “DOGE solution” more than higher education.’

This I agree with.

So you think the government should be able dictate the cost of tuition?

Repeat after me: price. controls. don't. work.

The solution is probably more along the lines of the European commenter upthread. Stop rewarding schools for spending money on fancy facilities and bureaucracy. Start rewarding schools that keep costs low. You want Ivy but with less cost? Apparently you pick Columbia.

Um, well, one way to stop rewarding schools that spend money on nonsense is to cut their funding and impose price controls.

[Anonymous]

In my opinion, unless Universities undertake a major course correction and become viewpoint neutral, hire many more conservative leaning faculty and shutter some of these crazy left leaning departments, they are not worth saving. It's better to see these Ellie universities fold.