The Education Grift

 People are complaining about grade inflation again. They simply don't understand how education works.

You have to understand that education actually has nothing to do with education.

McDonald's LOOKS like a fast-food franchise, but it's actually a real-estate company that also sells fast food:

Former McDonald’s CFO, Harry J. Sonneborn, is even quoted as saying, “we are not technically in the food business. We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell fifteen-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue, from which our tenants can pay us our rent.”

Rental car companies arbitrage the difference between buying new cars in bulk, then reselling each car individually. Rental fees are just gravy collected between the purchase and the resale.

Education works the same way. Educational institutions exist to suck in state and federal funding. The students are just there to plump up the funding levels. In lower education, it's about butts in seats, in higher ed, it's about warm bodies signing for loans. In both cases, the state and federal money goes into the admin and faculty pockets - that's the point.

That's why there are more administrators than teachers. The administrators who grease the paperwork, the admins are the REAL money-makers. The teachers are just the grift to get people in the front door. 

In higher ed, the students sign for the loans, the college admins/faculty get the cash, then the students are on the hook to pay the loans back. It's the perfect grift. To keep the marks from finding out they've been grifted, you have to pass as many as you can, make sure they get their graduation ceremonies and framed pieces of paper. I've worked middle school, high school, college - it's all the same. You are REQUIRED to pass a certain percentage of each class, or your life is made into hell or you are fired. So, yes, of course, grade inflation. 

That's why most institutions of higher education have mostly adjunct faculty. There is no such thing as adjunct administrators, just adjunct faculty. The faculty aren't important, they can be part-timers, and in most institutions, more than 70% of classes are taught by part-time faculty. But all the admins are full-time, because the administrators who maintain conformance for government loan and grant guidelines are the ones actually bring in money. The classroom costs money, the admin suite brings in money. The classroom is a loss-leader for the back-end administrative profit center. 

Once you understand the economics, it all makes perfect sense. The system is designed to produce the results you see. If you thought it was supposed to do something else, well, then the system works.