How about we take a 25% pay cut and agree to teach one more course per semester?

Right, because it's all those professors' salaries that drive up tuition costs. Why, just last year my alma mater built a $6.5 million cyborg that only teaches a 2:2 in European history. He's shinier, with more amenities, and the students' parents love him; but hardly worth the price.

Are you seriously suggesting that we can raise professors salaries and lower tuition at the same time because professor's salaries are totally unrelated to tuition?

I'm seriously suggesting that we can raise professors' salaries and lower tuition at the same time, though I am not suggesting in any way that professors' salaries 'are totally unrelated to tuition.'

As with any kind of budgeting exercise, there are endless ways in which a decrease in one revenue stream can coincide with an increase in one area of expenditure. A university being a thing that has students and professors for the primary purpose of educating students, I'm also suggesting that universities should spend more of the immense amounts of money they already receive on having the best possible educational resources and faculty. And I'm also suggesting that 'educational resources' do not include things like a twenty-treadmill gym in the basement of every residence hall, for example.

And with that I'm suggesting that if universities accepted their primary function as educational institutions and translated this into a mission statement, and then reflected that central function in their budgeting, it would be wholly possible for universities to lower tuition, increase the quality of faculty and educational resources, decrease the carnivalesque accoutrements on which they now spend inflated tuition dollars, and generally do a better job doing their job at lower costs.

And I should add that when I talk about raising professors' salaries, I'm not even necessarily talking about paying the tenured dept. chair more than s/he already makes; I'm talking about paying livable salaries and benefits to *all* hired faculty, rather than skimping on exploitative adjunct labor. I'm talking also about putting faculty in the position to be the best teachers they can be, without having to teach 10 courses a term spread over two nearby universities, or having to scramble for extra income in the event that the budget line that feeds them could be cut *despite a demonstrated need for their labor and their demonstrated competence.*

I am seriously suggesting all of these things, yes.

Professorial pay has little to do with the debt bind with which current and past students have been strangled. One of the main problems is that when we transitioned to the loan based model, there was also a under the table transition away from effective support for non loan aid. Much has been made of the recent increases in Pell grants, but when tuition has increased an average of 6% yearly that increase is making up (in a small way) for ground lost a long, long time ago. Where did that money go?
Into amongst other misplaced places the subsidies paid to lenders, which are simply put massive. And over billings related to that misplaced direction of resources have been repeated and scandalous. All of which are funds which could have gone to direct support for colleges and students. The 9.5 scandal for example, is still ongoing and recently added a additional 23 million over billing via just one company. 23 million is not much when compared to the generational overflow of lenders coffers, but 23 million would have meant Pell grants for about 5,000+ students. But in our current system one CEO's shell game exceeds the needs of 5,000 or more dislocated workers, students, and families.
The other problem is by unpleasant choice academe has had its moral core badly compromised by its association with the debt for education scheme. Higher education is rapidly becoming an economic fools game as 'Business Week' noted-how bad is it when a nee plus ultra establishment journal such as Business Week notes it doesn't work out? And the unethical game continue to ensure that the student signs that promissory note are unabated. For example at the rural school wherein I work, there are posters implying the school and lender are one entity. Unethical conduct of the same type so recently exposed by the NYS AG, but since its outside of that courts venue, and in a rural area, it's the same game in a different field. And students are still being slit through the economic throat as a result.
Finally the debt issue and the complicity some administrations have with lenders will eventually destroy the necessary trust that students must have with their professorial mentors. Many of us have had former students come back, terrified of the economic hole which we unwillingly helped to propagate, and ask what now? And how many have an answer to that quite justified question?

Lets give those professors a raise who demonstrate the capacity to use technology to improve the productivity of teaching. Face to face lecturing is an inefficient dinosaur. Students don't learn well as they scribble notes. Professors should produce DVD's lecture with interactive diagrams and Internet links to knoweledge that will enhance the learning experience. Save face to face for one-on-one student interaction or study groups. Come one guys, there are solutions to easing your work load where everyone comes out happy. Look to MIT for some examples in how new learning methods can increase learning outcomes and improve teaching productivity, i.e. more bang for the buck.

"Lets give those professors a raise who demonstrate the capacity to use technology to improve the productivity of teaching."

Generalist statements about 'technology' as a cure-all miss the mark. What technology should I be using to teach Gulliver's Travels in a 12-student seminar? 'Technology' for a pre-med anaotomy lecture? Good idea. 'Technology' thrust in between professor and students and in between students and other students in a discussion-based course? Not such a good idea.

There is that sizable contingent who learn better via the old school lecture and professor paradigm. And technology may have its place, but certain of these systems are hyped not because of student benefit but because it is profitable for the college or some outside vendor.
For example, once a program becomes reliant on remote, or internet based learning there is that much less need to have subject specialists about the campus. Simply because the curriculums which often are easiest to format to within certain technology support programs, can be bought from the textbook suppliers. At that point what will develop is a homogenized and so some extent mediocre corporate generated curriculum which has more to do with the bottom line than student's minds.

But I should have contextualized the above:

There are indeed lots of ways to go about managing university costs and the rising tuitions that lead students to take on increasing amounts of debt; but the idea that faculty should be the first group put to the screws in various ways for this inflating costs scenario is absurd. And these ways include making demands of faculty like taking a quarter paycut to teach *more*, or demanding more technology in the classroom (it seems, in part, to actually replace living, breathing faculty in the classroom) as though faculty costs are still the major problem with rising tuition. It's just insane to think that with all of the things that universities spend money doing, building, etc., the expendable line item in the budget ought to be the faculty.

Consider the other 'most popular' articles on the sidebar here: the first is about RIT's president earning 1.6 million a year (along with 22 other university presidents who make over 1 million in annual salary); the second is about executives' pay at private institutions.

First we defer these expenses to students through higher tuition; next we cut into the faculty budget. What exactly is a university for without students and faculty?

Two things: who benefits from turning students into long-time members of a debtor society? Second, what effect does the prospect of such debt have on one's attitude toward education and/or the "career" one chooses?

And a third thing: when did the extent of such debt become more prevalent and why? Could it be that the public funding for higher education continues to shrink because education is no longer seen as a public good, but as a private investment -- a commodity like eany other to be paid for by those who either already have the dough, or are willing, to the pleasure of lenders, to join the debtor society.