Cost of uni education

[febel]

YD broke up from uni yesterday. Mind you she is only in 3 half days or so a week (I know some degrees where the teaching hours are even less, some more)
She has told me she finishes her teaching hours in April. So it works out we are paying about £50 an hour to the university for her to be taught. MD is a primary school teacher, challenging classes, full time and doesn't get paid anything like that much. Seems a very uneven ball park to me...particularly as to my mind school teachers have it far harder as the behaviour issues are more challenging, let alone trying to get a basic education into the kids, teaching them to read, write, spell and basic maths...which to my mind is more important than a uni degree?! .

Pretty sure her tutors don't get paid anything like that either. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Don't forget lecturers get paid not just for the hours they lecture but also to do research, prepare the course, & do marking. Then there's the university buildings, library etc. I don't know what course she's doing but Art courses are generally less good value than engineering ones as they cost far more than the course fees because of high contact times, lab equipment etc.

Oh I know...I was just a little shocked by the lack of teaching hours she has....other two were both in pretty much full time. She's doing an education type degree. (though not B Ed)

Pay divide is never equal...football players vs nurses/firemen?!

I work in a uni...hour based contract, no sick pay etc etc. But it costs

Ridiculously high tuition fees aside, contact-hours does not equate to good teaching. In some disciplines you need high contact time (like sciences) but in others (like education) you don't - in those disciplines it's less about lecturers passing on knowledge and skills to students and more about students being supported to become independent learners though finding their own sources of information, evaluating the quality of them, forming a judgement and then writing that up (or presenting it in some other way). The best way to learn that is to do it yourself, not be told how to do it by lecturers.

And students pay 50-60 per hour...and our top manager gets 250k per year!

Would you expect to walk into H & M and pay £2 for a jumper on the basis that the shop assistant only gets £6.50 an hour? Or do you recognise that the store has to charge more than cost price in order to pay staff, insurance, rent, tax costs?

Of course you do. But somehow you think universities don't have those unseen costs??

Academics are not schoolteachers. I'm not sure what else there is to say.

There are always people at the top of the tree creaming off the profit.

That's capitalism for you.

Universities aren't allowed to make profits....

I don't really understand this post. Surely you don't actually think the tuition costs all go to the lecturer and there is no cost associated with running and administering a university? 🙄