by John C. Osborn

Created on: July 10, 2008

The real question here should be who benefits more from the money spent on education, since all benefit somehow.

With that said, even though my words fall on the staff side of this debate, I see college administrators as benefiting more in this game than anyone else involved.

In the California State University system, you have student tuition increasing as administrators get fat pay raises, and as faculty unions fight to keep their salaries aligned with the cost of living. The logic by administrators: higher education is still cheaper here than other states. Makes sense, only tuition increases are being seen all over the country.

In my three years at Humboldt State University, I saw no improvement in the quality of my education as tuition increased. Rather, I watched as school administrators slashed budgets, laid-off teachers and packed more students into classrooms.

Perhaps if I stumbled upon an excellent teacher - you know, one of those "I'm hear to give you kids a good run for your money, to make sure you learn something by the time this class ends," then maybe it was worth the extra hours of work after school and the thousands of dollars of loan money I'll be paying back for a good portion of my "adult" life.

Rarely did that happen, since it seemed that the most of the teachers who cared most were the part-time lecturers who felt the budget cut's ax first. You know who always remained strong after the fallout from the annual budget cut dispersed though - administrators, stronger than ever, usually with more money in their pockets.

This strange phenomena seems to be sweeping across the county, imploring state legislatures to slash the money they give to education. This seemingly never-ending financial crisis forces legislators to decide between funding publicly funded education or pumping more money into correctional facilities.

Woe to the unlucky students not born into a family with enough disposable income to fully fund their college experience. Even a hundred dollar tuition increase a year can break the back of a student funding their educational experience.

What do students get out of it?

We get a piece of paper, a status-elevating symbol that means less and less to employers as four-year degrees open fewer and fewer doors, forcing students to either spend more money on an advanced degree, or be content with a job that barely pays the bills still.

Whose pockets do we the students line twice, through increased tuition and taxes?

College administrators act more and more like chief executive officers of a corporation, scrutinizing every single dollar spent at the institution to find those that don't pay for themselves, as if college were a for-profit venture and not a public service. Money is spent to beautify campuses rather than "smartening" classrooms, to fund marketing wings of the university rather than academic wings and to recruit rather than retain.

So who benefits most from every dollar spent on education?

Certainly not students.

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