ReimTime said:
That and, to copy myself from a post above, how Administrators and other higher ups - when making budget cuts - seem to turn their attention to cutting school funding or nickeling and diming through parking passes etc instead of taking a cut to their own salary. At least that is the way it seems to me. Continually they'll chip a way at funding and let students foot the bill, because they know we don't have much of a choice if we want a post-secondary education. Textbooks, parking passes, student association fees etc etc. In German public schools students (including foreign) pay ~$200 a semester as a total all-encompassing fee and have a city-wide bus pass thrown in. So ridiculous |
There are always some caveats to this. Looking up rates that are charged, they seem pretty similar to what you'd see at universities in the US.
The biggest issue in making international comparisons is that education is largely legislated at state level, not national level. For instance, my state university has free tuitiion for all students who live in that state (through the TOPS program) who keep up certain GPA requirements (that are fairly easy). So, it's not like everyone in the US is completely screwed when it comes to school. There are so many scholarships, grants, and programs available to students, that many can get college for free. My wife was paid money by the state and federal government to go to school. :-/
For the rest of the post, I agree that administrators see themselves as sacred cows. No one wants to cut their own salary. Spreading out cost through hidden fees is pretty terrible, but that's how things are in most industries dependant on recurring customers (I think about rent tenants, airline customers, etc).
