Is not graduation time a bit late to inform students: “There is more to university than money”?

Sir, Nancy Rothwell, the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, writes: “Each year I tell graduating students that if they leave university with only a degree and greater “earning power”, I consider we have failed them. A university experience should be about so much more than this.” “There is more to university than money” April 16.

Absolutely! But is not graduating time a bit late to disclose that? How much debt would students dare to take on in order to pay the tuition fees, if the request of admission papers contained a: “Warning, universities are more than about making money”.

By the way, has there recently been some academic research on the evolution of the remuneration of professors? These Piketty days, it would be interesting to see how that has evolved.

In 2007 I argued that higher education should be more of a joint venture between professors and students. Of course I did not mean all the professors’ salaries were to be based on the earning powers of students. As I said, I fully agree that universities are much more than that, but, some better alignment of incentives, seems to be much called for.

It would seem that just like easy house financing translates into higher house prices, easier education financing just translates into higher tuition fees. But, I may be wrong, so as I said research is needed… any papers coming up on this?

PS. Someone commented. "There must be a little sadism involved here, since graduation time is precisely when students most begin to think of money."

@PerKurowski ©

But the misalignments turned monstrously large only because they were financed.

Sir, Martin Wolf in “thinking through the unthinkable” November 9, quotes Thomas Mayer of Deutsche Bank saying “below the surface of the euro area´s public debt and banking crisis lies a balance of payments crisis caused by a misalignment of internal real exchange rates”.

Yes, the misalignment of the real exchange rates within the eurozone were always in the cards, but the main reason for why they could grow so out of proportion was the fact that it could be financed… and the foremost cause of that were the truly stupid regulations which allowed the banks to finance European sovereigns against little or no capital at all.

I would presume Martin Wolf has many friends among regulators, while I have none, but nonetheless he should have used his column long ago to ask… is it rational to allow banks to finance for instance Italy and Greece, or any sovereign, against basically no capital at all? Had he and his colleagues done that, then perhaps Europe would have had a better chance to nip the current crisis in the bud.

Do we really know how currencies behave when nude?

Sir, the concerted and concerned called for “We must act when currencies become misaligned” July 6, by four US senators, seems timely and reasonable even though it is hard to detect much real urgency as the unemployment levels in the US are low. In the dark ages, less than forty years ago, these currency imbalances would take care of themselves once the gold had moved over from the strong currency country to the weaker vault, and which made a reshuffle of the exchange rates required in order for the game to go on. Not any longer, now the currencies have no specific backing, they are all naked, which makes the issue much more confusing.

One of the attractions of asking someone else to revalue their currency is that somehow, because of some magic that would make the Hogwarts curricula proud, you seem to avoid having to communicate that you are devaluing yours, or that in essence you are declaring a big domestic salary decrease when measured in international purchase power terms.

The senators rightly say that there is no one single answer to America’s international economic and of course they are right, even though I fail to fully understand how “responsible healthcare” is an instrument of this particular toolbox. Sir, the world has never really been in this territory of major currency misalignments while in a nudist camp, so let us pray that everyone tinkers very carefully with them, while we learn, and at least while it all seems to be working not too bad.