General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How Did College Education Become So Ridiculously Expensive? [View all]FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Personal services jobs are those that involve an employee interacting directly with the customer being served. It is very hard to increase productivity in those jobs -- basically you are dividing the employee's compensation by the number of customers served in order to get the cost per customer.
The only way to increase productivity is to either reduce employee compensation or to increase the number of customers per employee.
While auto manufacturers or brewers have managed to increase the number of cars or cans of beer produced per employee, higher education has not.
I'm part way through two MOOCS from MIT and U Washington. They are really quite good. There is hope for increased productivity in higher education.
PS - higher education also has high real estate occupancy costs that they resist doing anything about while they pursue monumental architecture on campus -- even the local CC does this to memorialize various pols.