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I recently graduated (class of '25), and the thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university.
There's a great student op-ed about _a_ proposed solution (firing the deans): https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...
Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club)
It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very heavy paycuts to remain in academia, but the result of that finger pointing is devaluing education
The right approach - in my eyes - is to share the land Harvard, Stanford, et. al. sit on with 10x the number of students. This simultaneously increases efficiency of the entire P&L while providing a higher quality of education to everyone
As we've seen with the UC system (and the excellence of IITs + Chinese research universities), high density education can be synonymous with top tier research outcomes - Ivory Towers are not needed
Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. If we wanted elite colleges to provide the benefits that they are supposed to; then we would, if anything, want to reduce matriculation.
Stanford,—and I would hazard a guess many other HYPSM schools,—are already minting out too many students; this is especially true when it comes to non-PHD masters degrees, which are essentially an unbecoming cash cow for departments. Actual "quality of education" mostly comes from a low staff/student ratio and direct access of students to elite researchers: this difference in education mostly takes the form of better research labs to work in, with some spillover into office hours; increasing matriculation would only lead to more auditorium-sized classes that are run by lecturers or postdocs—these classes are essentially at the same level as trudging through online material.
Your proposed "solution" would have a Procrustean effect: I can't speak for Chinese or Indian universities, but while schools like UC Berkeley, UT Austin, University of Michigan, et seq... have good reputations, they have a noticeably lower reputation than the ivy leagues and certain private colleges like Stanford, MIT, and Caltech—and a worse reputation for being degree mills.
If you think that Stanford having 180,000 students matriculated will give everyone a quality education, then I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality. The only benefit that would come of it would be popping the degree bubble and prematurely ending the current moribund trajectory that universities are on; where they are already treating degrees as if they were artificial-scarcity NFTs, rather than providing the actual scarcity that is access to,—and direct training from,—high-level researchers.
Stanford has a $40 billion endowment for 8k undergrads. UCLA has a $10 billion endowment for 34k undergrads. Naturally, the class sizes will be much larger. The UC system does not put 100% of students at UC Berkeley and UCLA, they distribute it across several campuses and distance education and maintain a leveling system that helps promising research talent be in the room with experienced researchers
Despite rising costs, a college degree is still a positive lifetime investment for students (not to mention the positive externalities educated populations have on society at large). The bulk of US college students attend colleges who do not have the resources to build high-quality, industry relevant curriculum, train teachers to teach with modern pedagogy, and efficiently manage dorms, student affairs, and other administrative infrastructure
HYPSM choosing to share land, curriculum, expertise, and administrative infrastructure through network'd partnerships would lead to massive economies of scale and a broad reduction of educational costs. Another way to think about this - is one city of 1 million people more efficient to run per capita than 10 cities of 100k people? The answer is a resounding yes due to urban scaling. Colleges are effectively mini-cities
"I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality" -> I founded an in-person college with regional accreditation that had a lot more 1:1 and small group teacher time than HYPSM and an average starting salary on par with CS grads from these schools. Our alumni have gone on to become YC founders and can be found at most top tech companies and startups
It is a choice to value exclusivity for exclusivity's sake (eg. withholding JSTOR data from students of colleges who can't afford those costs). The best institutions (eg. YC, Apple) care a lot more about what you can build than what school you got into at age 17
By econ 2026-02-261:54 The solution is to hoard ideas, organize them, review them and experiment. I for example suspect that giving students more time for everything would improve results. I have nothing to show for this but it would be good science to run the experiment. Unless of course there are better sounding ideas that should be tried first.
"The bulk of US college students attend colleges who do not have the resources to build high-quality, industry relevant curriculum, train teachers to teach with modern pedagogy, and efficiently manage dorms, student affairs, and other administrative infrastructure"
I would like to see a source on this: your claim appears ungrounded when considering American colleges.
It is generally understood in the industry that around half of universities are in significant debt / financial distress (started prior to Covid // the demographic peak // recent DoE cuts). Graduate underemployment is also quite high due to a lack of alignment (or perhaps slow alignment) of degree programs to career outcomes
https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-...
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/aug/jobs-degrees-...
Ideas for solutions here:
By fc417fc802 2026-02-267:512 reply Can we take a minute to consider that degrees aren't supposed to be aligned to career outcomes to begin with? That's what vocational schools are for. Somehow academia became conflated with both a job training program and an adult daycare service and (at least in the US) the result is a confused, inconsistent, expensive mess whose exact purpose isn't clear.
You want them to go back to being finishing schools for the wealthy, as they were before Hopkins (funnily enough) founded the first institute in the US that would be seen as a form of a modern university today?
For people who aren't financially independent, education is a means to an end. Pretending that's not the case or worse, shouldn't be the case, is absurd to ask of anyone running a school and highly damaging to society in general, and the mix of "vocational training" and "classic academia" provided by most US universities seems to work extremely well.
By fc417fc802 2026-02-2618:241 reply You're putting words in my mouth. I merely pointed out that they have a very confused mission thus I think it is not surprising that there is dysfunction.
We have vocational trade schools. We have professional guild schools (medical, dentistry, etc). At least some subset of students attends school with the intention of becoming professional researchers (ie pursuing a PhD, then a postdoc, then finally general employment).
I think it would be reasonable to expect undergraduate institutions to set unambiguous goals for each program. Students should know what they are signing up for. It would be fine to graduate with a certain amount of time spent explicitly on general education and a certain amount spent explicitly on vocational training with a specific target.
If you claim that education is a means to an end then what of (for example) history majors? I think the bachelors diploma itself is what became a means to an end much to the detriment of "pure" academia. The CS program at my undergrad spent time teaching us how to use version control. That's fantastic for a professional programmer but how does that have anything to do with CS as an academic pursuit? You can literally do much (perhaps all) of actual CS with nothing more than a pen and paper.
> You're putting words in my mouth. I merely pointed out that they have a very confused mission thus I think it is not surprising that there is dysfunction.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't see what other conclusion can be drawn from your statement.
> We have vocational trade schools. We have professional guild schools (medical, dentistry, etc). At least some subset of students attends school with the intention of becoming professional researchers (ie pursuing a PhD, then a postdoc, then finally general employment).
> I think it would be reasonable to expect undergraduate institutions to set unambiguous goals for each program. Students should know what they are signing up for. It would be fine to graduate with a certain amount of time spent explicitly on general education and a certain amount spent explicitly on vocational training with a specific target.
I agree that undergraduate institutions should be required to set unambiguous goals for each program, but what are done with the many, many attendees who have no goals for themselves beyond "go to college and get a job when I'm done"? I think there is value in having these multi-faceted institutions that are a combination of finishing school, classical academic study, and vocational training that can (and do) produce sufficiently educated and mature adults who can independently function in society.
That is the mission of the undergraduate portion of the Arts and Sciences school at basically every college/university. Professional schools have a slightly more specific mission.
> If you claim that education is a means to an end then what of (for example) history majors?
Excellent question, and it's one for the history department to answer. Maybe things stay as they are now and it's a home for the many people who don't have specific career goals while attending college, and that is their goal.
> I think the bachelors diploma itself is what became a means to an end much to the detriment of "pure" academia.
"Pure" academia only exists for those with a patron (which could be themselves), which is non-existent at any meaningful scale.
> The CS program at my undergrad spent time teaching us how to use version control. That's fantastic for a professional programmer but how does that have anything to do with CS as an academic pursuit? You can literally do much (perhaps all) of actual CS with nothing more than a pen and paper.
Good for them, because anyone applying their CS knowledge in any capacity needs to know that.
If you want to go major in purely theoretical CS at a place that offers only courses that are effectively a specialization of a math major, there is value in it but the department offering them has to answer the same questions as the history department.
By fc417fc802 2026-02-2621:581 reply It seems we largely agree. For example I wasn't criticizing the CS program at my undergrad, simply observing the mismatch between the label on the tin and what was actually inside.
Observations of inconsistencies, dysfunctions, and similar are not necessarily calls for any particular course of action.
> I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't see what other conclusion can be drawn from your statement.
I merely observed that many of the issues people point out can be traced back (at least IMO) to having a set of confused and inconsistent goals. I wouldn't expect it to be a particularly controversial observation to anyone who's had significant contact with US academia within the past few decades.
> what are done with the many, many attendees who have no goals for themselves beyond "go to college and get a job when I'm done"?
They probably don't belong there. Most of them only attend because you need a diploma to land a job. Not because the education is particularly useful to the job, but rather because of what diplomas historically signaled about a candidate before everyone had them. Now it seems to just be a holdover (ie we require them because we've always required them and at this point everyone worthwhile has one). At least that's my (admittedly quite cynical) view.
I'm all for a more educated populace but if that's what we want then we should directly implement that.
I notice that you didn't address my remark about "adult daycare service". The presence of directionless "students" attending only to tick a box has serious negative impacts on the rest of the system. Add in student loans that can't be discharged and you've created an absolutely bizarre and (IMO counterproductive) set of economic incentives.
It does seem like we agree for the most part.
> I notice that you didn't address my remark about "adult daycare service". The presence of directionless "students" attending only to tick a box has serious negative impacts on the rest of the system. Add in student loans that can't be discharged and you've created an absolutely bizarre and (IMO counterproductive) set of economic incentives.
I didn't, because it seemed like a cheap insult. I don't know that directionless students have serious negative impacts on the rest of the system. They can have serious negative impacts on themselves due to student loan debt and a lack of a financially viable skillset when they stop attending college (with a degree or not).
What do you propose people who are 18 - 22 or so do to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives? And I'm not defending the status quo, which certainly can be improved.
By fc417fc802 2026-02-2718:321 reply Classes and more importantly practices get watered down to accommodate them. The situation gradually looks less like university of the 1950s and more like highschool.
Loans that can't be discharged removes lender hesitancy thus removes some degree of downward price pressure from the market. Institutions then have an incentive to capture this money due to the sheer quantity of it - ie not to let marginal students wash out. Hence the changes.
They even start attempting to attract based on amenities rather than prices. I won't belabor the subject. Others have written about it in incredible detail over the past several decades.
> What do you propose people who are 18 - 22 or so do to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives?
I don't know but bending what were once rigorous academic programs to accommodate them seems like the wrong answer to me. Do these people see any real benefit from taking on debt rather than working for that period? It seems to me the "benefit" is the diploma and that the requirement of a diploma to apply for a job is most often an arbitrary one these days.
As a thought experiment. Is there any particular reason an AA wouldn't have sufficed for the jobs that don't require specialized knowledge?
By bpt3 2026-02-2722:14 > Classes and more importantly practices get watered down to accommodate them. The situation gradually looks less like university of the 1950s and more like highschool.
Fair, though the solution there is to just flunk them out.
> I don't know but bending what were once rigorous academic programs to accommodate them seems like the wrong answer to me. Do these people see any real benefit from taking on debt rather than working for that period? It seems to me the "benefit" is the diploma and that the requirement of a diploma to apply for a job is most often an arbitrary one these days.
I'm not convinced this is happening at the scale you think it is, but higher education is an arms race to some extent and you'd need to get all parties to agree to de-escalate, but only for the ones who don't get much value out of the experience (a group that is somewhat hard to identify a priori).
> As a thought experiment. Is there any particular reason an AA wouldn't have sufficed for the jobs that don't require specialized knowledge?
For the jobs, probably not. I still think a portion of the "college experience" is just maturing, which I agree could be done while working in theory but there is some personal opportunity cost there.
It's not an easy problem or one that can be solved individually IMO. Something like mandatory public service could be an answer, but I don't have high hopes of that being enacted.
By PearlRiver 2026-02-2718:48 Actually not true the first universities were supposed to produce clergy for the church.
As I understood the grandparent post, the idea is that a highest-level university should 10× its student throughput, and 9 other, lower-level universities would be made redundant by that.
This would make sense if all what an elite university did were providing elite-level education. Of course exclusive schools provide other benefits, often more valuable for the target audience than the education proper: a highly filtered student body, networking and bonding with the right, upwardly mobile people (either mega-talented, or just smart kids of rich and influential parents), a luxury-grade diploma that few can afford. Maybe you could theoretically 10× Stanford or MIT, but likely not Yale.
I see the value of the students, it just seems like an odd thing for a government to subsidize via NIH/NSF funding. We don’t really have anything analogous to that in Canada and it just seems awfully weird that it exists in the US without the “it’s older than the country” excuse that Oxford/Cambridge have.
By bpt3 2026-02-2616:21 How is any of this subsidized by NIH/NSF funding? Those grants are only spent on the cost of research, either direct or indirect.
Also, a number of the schools we're discussing are older than the US itself; Harvard predates it by almost 150 years.
>Actual "quality of education" mostly comes from a low staff/student ratio and direct access of students to elite researchers: this difference in education mostly takes the form of better research labs to work in, with some spillover into office hours
I don't agree with this at all. Quality of education imho comes from being surrounded by fellow elite students so that the pace of the syllabi can remain high.
lower tier universities have excellent faculty, they are selected from applicants from the elite universities as well as excellent students from lower tier universities who have floated to the top. Their problem is, as the elite-ness of the students goes down, the pace needs to drop.
Not trying to be a jerk, but we see the same thing in athletics, elite athletes are significantly above the next tier, and so on. the worst professional team can beat the best college team, because the worst professional team is still made up of the cream of the college teams, with experience (i.e. more education) added on.
at a lower tier university, a dedicated student can still work in labs if they want, but as you move down the tiers you simply get fewer autistics and more partiers. University of Michigan is an excellent univeristy, but do you think the students are studying on weekends, like they do at MIT? no, they're not.
By stackghost 2026-02-263:41 >Their problem is, as the elite-ness of the students goes down, the pace needs to drop.
Only if the school mandates a quota of passing grades. Not sure about HYPSM but anecdotally at my (Canadian) alma mater no such quota existed: the pass rate for 3rd year fluid dynamics was in the 40% ballpark, for example.
By questionableans 2026-02-264:46 I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but neither do you. Students at universities ranked similarly to Michigan absolutely do spend a significant amount of time studying on the weekends, especially if they’re not business majors. And MIT has parties and pranks, too.
By gsf_emergency_6 2026-02-263:45 [dead]
I mean, is the goal of an elite college to educate? Or is the benefit to sift through the population and pluck out its masters?
I don't really care that UC has a lower "reputation" than Harvard or Stanford. The fact is, the UC system has produced more fundamental research and more actual value for the population and the world at large than Harvard or Stanford. Even if a UC degree is not quite the "golden ticket" that an Stanford degree is.
Concentrating individuals into a smaller and smaller elite benefits them and only them. The U.S. has done this with capital allocation in its economy and it has and will continue to be a century long arc bending toward utter disaster.
What do we actually care about here? Education?
By raddan 2026-02-264:13 I totally agree. Folks here seem to be under some misapprehension that elite = better education. Based on my experience earning my PhD at a public R1 and then working as faculty at a selective private institution, this is not the case. For starters, just consider the incentives for grade inflation at a private vs a public institution. Harvard has famously out of control grade inflation.
My public alma mater was a tremendous force multiplier for upward mobility. Many of my peers were first generation college students. They’re now scientists, doctors, and engineers. Few of them will become famous—they mostly just make the world tick.
My current private institution concentrates already wealthy people. These folks mostly go out and become consultants. They’re consumed with the idea of becoming “thought leaders.”
Which one really provides more value? I have strong opinions.
By nablaxcroissant 2026-02-2521:421 reply Pretty much agree but may I also add that Santa Clara County would probably not allow Stanford to increase its student body by any real sizeable amount due to restrictions in traffic, building, parking, etc, etc.
By DesaiAshu 2026-02-2523:05 It would require building public transit and higher density residential housing over the next two boom/bust cycles
By kcexn 2026-02-2522:49 I don't think they're suggesting we reduce the amount of faculty. They're suggesting that you ask all the faculty to share less space, increasing the efficiency of the real estate holdings. Also by reducing the number of schools, you reduce the amount of expensive ancillaries.
I got curious, and looked up the Harvard Polo Club. Apparently it naturally faded away as polo declined in popularity, but then was revived in 2006.
I understand that, if you have a current and active polo club running, then you either have to keep it going or run the risk of pissing people off.
But, if I can ask you to speculate, why might Harvard have revived its club in 2006?
Probably they got a donation.
I used to have a view of a baseball field out my office window until they rolled up the astroturf to start construction of the new computing and information science building.
They got some money to build a really nice fan-friendly facility off-campus. Still the thing about baseball is that the season is early in the year and starts before the weather is comfortable for home games so they spend the first half of the season going to away games down south, far enough away that they're probably buying airline tickets instead of riding the bus the way that Ivy League (or ECAC) teams usually ride the bus to go to other Ivy League (or ECAC) schools.
If it wasn't for Lacrosse we wouldn't have anybody using our football stadium in the spring and hey, Lacrosse is both a men's and women's sport. (At Cornell we're lucky enough to have two football teams to keep it busy in the Fall)
Critics would say that Lacrosse is a boon to rich students since poor students don't go to high schools that have Lacrosse and it largely escapes the notice of the marginalization-industrial complex because those folks are aware that there is an industry in SAT test prep and not so aware that there is Lacrosse.
By gsf_emergency_6 2026-02-261:38 [dead]
By raddan 2026-02-264:17 It’s an open secret that “expensive ancillaries” like polo, crew, equestrian teams, etc, are a sneaky way to have supposedly blind admissions while making sure that the incoming class still contains just the right number of students who can pay full tuition. Smart people are not all that rare.
By nickwrb 2026-02-265:35 I can’t comment on the Chinese research universities you mention, but the comparison with IITs is bizarre. They are notoriously extremely selective, and all set in lush, spacious, grounds. I don’t think they back up your point at at all.
How old is typical university land, compared to the average age of land in the same city?
By georgeecollins 2026-02-2518:51 I know you are making a joke, but for people who may not understand: The point is that well regarded Universities in the USA are generally old relative to other institutions in the USA. So Stanford has a pretty campus on land that was purchased when hardly anyone lived in Palo Alto. Now that land is absurdly valuable.
As in the article, it changes how you might use the land. A grove is a beautiful place to go and read or relax. But if you could replace that grove with a structure worth of hundreds of millions of dollars it changes things.
By bandrami 2026-02-264:02 It's the deed that's old; in the case of Columbia it's that it holds the northern half of the Anglican church's glebe[1] in Manhattan (Columbia is the largest private real estate owner in NYC), which is not only held tax-free but generates significant money for the University.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe (for Northern Virginia residents who have always wondered)
By bonsai_spool 2026-02-2518:041 reply > The thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university.
I feel a better question is what entities that are in continuous operation since the 1630s do not resemble a real estate holding company? If you analyze only the extremes of any distribution you'll find weirdness.
This is true! I hadn't thought about it like this to be totally honest. It's hard to point fingers at old institutions, especially given they're mostly located in prime real estate locations across the country (Cambridge, Palo Alto, etc.), and it's not really their fault that they need land to operate.
By tempacct2cmmnt 2026-02-261:191 reply Many of them are prime real estate locations in large part -because- the old institutions are there.
By raddan 2026-02-264:21 Yeah, this is a silly argument. Go walk around the neighborhoods near MIT and you’ll see company after company that intentionally positioned themselves in proximity to the campus. Many of those companies are also MIT spinoffs.
By neutronicus 2026-02-2517:37 That's a common sentiment among non-Hopkins Baltimoreans.
It's a small city, so a lot of people have experiences with real estate held by Hopkins.
> He remembers when that building came up, back in 2001, replacing a grove of elm, beech, and oak trees on campus. The old arts center hadn’t been cheap: $17 million was real money at the turn of the millennium.
They tore down a building less than twenty five years old to build a fancier one with fewer actual teaching spaces. There are many "temporary" Quonset huts around here twice that age. This institution is the top recipient of federal research funding. Their fiduciary responsibility with our tax dollars appears to be in name only.
As the article states, the funds came from an external donor.
It's not how I would choose to use $250M+ of my money, but it appears to have nothing at all to do with federal funding (nor would it even if the building was financed by the school, but especially not in this case).
By momoschili 2026-02-2521:521 reply The federal funds pay for it through the indirect costs funding its maintenance most likely... I suspect that represents a significant portion of the total cost of the building.
Universities are only allowed to include indirect expenses that are related to the research in question, not all expenses incurred by the university (such as a student center, dorm, stadium, etc.).
By momoschili 2026-02-2618:531 reply Well many buildings that are donated have research conducted within them. Not always a lot, but a large building is going to have plenty of uses. Eg stadiums often have medical research that is being conducted within them.
Then that portion of that building could be counted towards indirect costs for that research, and the university is better off than if they had paid for the building as well as paying for the upkeep and those cost savings can be passed along to taxpayers.
Your imagined scenario doesn't apply to this very real example in the article in question though.
By momoschili 2026-02-2622:041 reply More often than not, the building is unnecessary. I'm sure the University s fine having a fancy new building, especially if the upkeep is offset by the American taxpayer.
By bpt3 2026-02-2712:03 Good lord, most of you are really, really committed to this narrative. Have fun looking for excuses to be mad.
Johns Hopkins University is not a university. Many other "Universities" are not universities either.
"Johns Hopkins Labs" would be a more accurate name as less than 10% of revenue is tuition related.
I'm not sure why folks including professors continue to view these places as primarily about teaching students or academics. These $100-$250 million building projects are pretty inconsequential when research grants and contracts bring in more than $4.5 billion per year.
The "deal" often being made with academia is "we'll give you a place to do research, and even fund your research, but you have to teach the next generation." This isn't a bad deal, and is the reason many scientists give up MUCH larger paychecks that they'd get from the private sector to be a professor. These people would rather do research than have a more directed engineering (or engineering research) role that the private sector would give them.
But that deal has also shifted. Duties have changed and often many of the academics do not get to do much research, instead being managers of grad students who do the research. Being a professor is a lot of work and it is a lot of bureaucratic work.
I'm not sure why you're complaining about researchers. Think about the system for a second. We've trained people for years to be researchers and then... make them managers. Imagine teaching people to program, then once you've decided they're fully trained and good programmers we say "you're free to do all the programming you want! But you have to also teach more programmers, grade their work, create their assignments and tests, mentor the advanced programmers, help them write papers, help them navigate the university system, write grants to ensure you have money for those advanced programmers, help manage your department's organization, and much more." This is even more true for early career academics who don't have tenure[0]. For the majority of professors the time they have to continue doing research (the thing which they elected to train to do! That they spent years honing! That they paid and/or gave up lots of money for!) is nights and weekends. And that's a maybe since the above tasks usually don't fit in a 40hr work week. My manager at a big tech company gets more time to do real programming work than my advisor did during my PhD.
I'd also mention that research has a lot of monetary value. I'm not sure why this is even questioned by some people. Research lays the foundation for all the rest. Sure, a lot of it fails, but is that surprising when you're trying to push the bounds of human knowledge? Yet it is far worth it because there are singular discoveries/inventions that create more economic value than decades worth of the current global economy. It's not hard to recognize that since basically the entire economy is standing on that foundation...
[0] Just because you have tenure doesn't mean you don't have a lab full of graduate students who need to graduate.
>>> The "deal" often being made with academia is "we'll give you a place to do research, and even fund your research, but you have to teach the next generation." This isn't a bad deal, and is the reason many scientists give up MUCH larger paychecks that they'd get from the private sector to be a professor. These people would rather do research than have a more directed engineering (or engineering research) role that the private sector would give them.
Teaching graduate students. Most undergraduate teaching is done by "adjuncts" who do not do research.
Salaries are a mixed bag. Scientists who want to continue doing research in the private sector also give up much larger paychecks. Many work in facilities that are barely nicer than sweatshops.
Disclosure: Adjunct for one semester, 30 years ago.
By gorgonical 2026-02-2612:251 reply Regarding the teaching workload: This is not generalizable; during my undergraduate studies a significant fraction (maybe the majority? too long ago to be sure) of my classes were taught by graduate students, especially the math and computer science classes. At the graduate level, your statement was true for me at my second university. In fact, I'm not sure if a graduate student would be allowed even to teach a graduate-level class, considering their credentials.
My experience around universities (as an academic) is that, generally, the number of adjuncts scales linearly with overall funding/skill at grantsmanship in the department. That is, the smaller universities I know saddled professors and their graduate students with substantially more non-research work, including teaching and administration.
By godelski 2026-02-2619:38 At both the universities I went to most classes were taught by the professors. I say most because when I was the TA for my advisor (during my PhD) I taught his class. That said, the students were happier when he didn't show up to class and it was only me.
It definitely depends on the size of the university and the size of classes. As I was graduating a few grad students started becoming the official instructor. These were only the lower level courses though (freshman and sophomore). My partner's department had grad students teaching some classes for longer and they had a similar pattern.
My undergrad was at a small university with essentially no grad students. As far as coursework, I'm confident I got a better education than my peers that went to top schools like Stanford and Berkeley (I did physics). But they got more internships, connection to labs, and connection to research projects. YMMV
By gsf_emergency_6 2026-02-2611:34 [dead]
By statskier 2026-02-2518:30 I think that's the whole point. Many university's very nature has shifted significantly and lots of people don't like it and lament the change.
By vonneumannstan 2026-02-2518:38 This is probably true since at least WW2 but isn't the central idea that Professors closest to cutting edge research can do the most interesting teaching?
If you want the best teachers you can always go to Liberal Arts Colleges where this isn't really an issue.
Professors at schools like this do not view these places as about teaching students. Academics, to include performing research in their field and publishing the results, yes, and the students get in the way of that.
By Windchaser 2026-02-2521:171 reply Yes. If you want a really high quality education, you don't go to a big research school. You go to a small school, like a liberal arts school, where the teachers are both highly trained and really passionate about teaching.
I went to a small liberal arts school for an undergrad degree in STEM, and to a R1 research university for graduate work.
The absolute best classes at the big-name research university were about as good as the average class at my small undergrad. The classes at the small school were of distinctly better quality: more engaged teachers, more engaging work, and simply higher quality teaching.
Did you go to an elite (or close to it) liberal arts school? I have gone to only R1 schools myself, but my exposure to liberal arts schools would indicate they are a mixed bag, especially in the sciences (not disagreeing with you or saying that R1 schools aren't also a mixed bag in some/many senses).
Most undergraduates don't realize it, but the purpose of going to an R1 is access to an alumni network and (for the small percentage that are interested) access to people performing cutting edge research in a discipline and their physical resources.
I suspect that honesty in their marketing materials would not increase applications though.
By eszed 2026-02-262:48 Not the poster you asked, but I think their point stands for (at least many) non-elite liberal arts schools. (Heck, I think it stands for some community colleges, too.) Teachers at those institutions have often attended elite programs, and in any case have self-selected into (primarily) teaching roles, and you'll get a lot of their individual attention, which you wouldn't at a big school.
(For the benefit of students reading this: go to office hours, especially early in the term, even if it's just to shoot the breeze. If you don't, you're cheating yourself out of the main advantage of that institutional model.)
Where your take is correct, and even demands greater emphasis, is the value of the alumni network, and the "name recognition" of a degree from somewhere people, well, recognize. As someone who deeply believes in the value of education for its own sake it pains me to be this cynical, but those are the only things that matter in the world at large.
That's the honest take, which, indeed, no one in higher education will ever put so baldly.
Disclosure: graduated from, and also spent five years teaching at a (very) non-elite liberal arts college. The education was good - even great, in some programs / by some professors - but the professional advantages absolutely nil. I will council my own son not to attend a similar school (should any of them even survive by the time he gets there - they're by and large on life-support right now); even tuition-free it wouldn't be (economically) worth it, and at the actual price it's the worst life decision many of those students will ever make.
By parpfish 2026-02-261:57 i think the only people that realize this are people that are actively doing research in academia. not even the undergrads at the school realize that teaching undergrads is at best a side-hustle for the institution.
i've seen so many "our tuition pays your salary so you you need to XXX" type rants I've seen from disgruntled students/parents over the years and i've always bit my tongue when it comes to setting the record straight.
R1 Research University.
Teaching mostly by TA, not Faculty.
Not a "college".
Are you a professor at a R1 school? All the faculty I know at R1s (see CMU, MIT, etc) are doing quite a lot of teaching in addition to their research.
By hibikir 2026-02-260:00 I think he is mostly explaining the experience of many a student, which finds themselves, especially in the first few years, with very large class sizes and minimal interactions with professors. It's not that the professors don't do any teaching, but that your first two years probably feel like a scam, especially if there are many general requirements not tied to your major.
By warkdarrior 2026-02-2518:46 TAs soon to be replaced by AI.
Johns Hopkins gets a lot of money from vested interests to push whatever suits them.
By cucumber3732842 2026-02-2518:44 Exactly.
The author's electricity bill went up and his cat got stolen in part because his colleagues working under the university incentive systems (i.e. don't publish stuff that pisses off the interests that fund your lab) created work that legitimized those policy decisions so that those decisions could be made and the funding interests, whatever they may be, could benefit from them.
One wonders if there are similar incentives in the university ranking, administration and consulting that legitimize the university's otherwise questionable decision to engage in these seemingly irresponsible ventures.
By CaptWillard 2026-02-2519:211 reply The early nod to Agora Institute mission of “building stronger global democracy” Followed by bemoaning USAID cuts makes me wonder if the author is deliberately missing one of the most glaring examples of this.
By nephihaha 2026-02-269:57 How can we have a "stronger global democracy" if we don't currently have "global democracy" to begin with? Democracy suggests it is worldwide, whereas we know a number of countries out there are not democratic, or are barely democratic (due to corruption, war and other issues.)
By irishcoffee 2026-02-2519:352 reply s/gets/accepts
Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?
By nephihaha 2026-02-264:00 "Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?"
Leaving aside that metaphor, the obvious answer is that they either like or need it. Most likely the former, because many of these well known universities are swimming in money already.
Why would they not accept money to do something they are interested in doing?
What is the downside to the school of a nicer student union or a public policy/international relations campus in the nation's capital?
By hunterpayne 2026-02-2522:321 reply Because that's not what the GP was talking about. For example, say there is some controversial economic policy passed by one of the parties. Then a researcher goes out to research if the policy is working or not. But when they do the research, they find out that the policy doesn't work and has bad side effects too. However, the majority of the university votes and supports the party that passed the policy.
So the researcher intentionally changes some of the ways the data is collected and poof, it looks like the policy works. Extra funding comes your way but now you have committed academic fraud. Not that anything will happen to you for this, but still, you know you did it. That's what the GP is talking about and it happens quite a bit in the humanities and economics. Its why private economists and public economists almost seem like different species.
The GP invented some sort of conspiracy theory that doesn't really seem like it's worth discussing, whether it happens a lot or not in reality.
Whether you believe what he said or not, my questions remain.
By irishcoffee 2026-02-2617:491 reply I stated facts, I invented nothing. I was asking a question that apparently rubbed you the wrong way, which is great! Makes you think!
I (and I believe the person I responded to) were talking about the comment above yours, which was a statement that Hopkins basically sells control of its research outcomes to donors.
Your question didn't bother me in the least, but I don't see why people are so surprised that a school or any other organization would accept millions and millions of cash to upgrade their surroundings.
By irishcoffee 2026-02-2619:111 reply That's fair. I'm not surprised per se, I think the point is about the strings attached to accepting that money. At least that's how I've been reading this thread.
By bpt3 2026-02-2619:53 That is their point, and mine is that it's baseless speculation that is almost certainly inaccurate, probably originating from a similarly uninformed and angry internal source to the one that produced the article in question.
I'm not saying it can't happen, or even that it's never happened, but I see no evidence from personal experience or news in academia that would indicate it's anything other than extraordinarily rare at most, and it certainly shouldn't be assumed to be the case for all donations unless proven otherwise.
By hunterpayne 2026-02-2618:071 reply The thing I described happened about 6 months ago.
By bpt3 2026-02-2619:48 Can you provide a link, rather than extremely vague accusations?
They are interested in doing some of these things precisely because they are being paid to.
They're interested in a new student union because they're being paid to? What does that mean?
They get the money for facilities etc off someone, and then do their bidding.
People, including university administrators, are generally interested in upgrading their surroundings whether or not they have the means to do so.
When the means are dropped in their lap, people act on those interests.
Yeah, a shiny object gets dangled in front of them. The Drew Pavlou case in Australia is very telling. The University of Queensland was pretty much in the pocket of the CCP, including having the local consul on its board. When Pavlou protested on Chinese human rights issues, he ended up suspended for two years. The UoQ obviously relishes Chinese students and investment, but wouldn't allow criticism of the regime.
By bpt3 2026-02-2616:13 I am all for criticizing the Chinese government, but that is not a remotely accurate description of what happened with Pavlou, nor particularly relevant to this article unless you have substantiated claims of that type of behavior at Hopkins (or even elsewhere in the US).
