Let’s say technology enabled you to cut your production costs. What would you do?
For higher education, the answer to that positive dilemma has been to increase non-faculty staff and to increase non-teaching activities for faculty. In other words, we’ve been more productive so let’s be less productive? That’s fine if you’re a for-profit firm and you are satisfied with hiring non-essential employees and giving other employees additional perks instead of increasing profits—it’s your bottom line.
But if you’re a public university system, the savings from tech advances should be passed on to students and taxpayers, either in tuition or tax savings or quality increases. Over the decades, the opposite has happened.
Jenna Robinson asks “Where Do All the Savings Go” as she explores the failure of higher education to turn efficiency gains into tuition decreases.