91–100 of 149 posts
Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly $26,100 in 2015 dollars.
" 'families will still allocate about the same percentage of income in real dollars' because college charges have only paralleled the inflation in the nation's disposable personal income"
This article hints at schools inability to justify their ever increasing prices. Why is tuition continuing to rise so much faster than inflation? Is this simple supply and demand? Government backed loans create infinite supply to anyone who wants them? How can not for profit schools justify gauging their students?
This article hints at schools inability to justify their ever increasing prices. Why is tuition continuing to rise so much faster than inflation? Is this simple supply and demand? Government backed loans create infinite supply to anyone who wants them? How can not for profit schools justify gauging their students?
1. Infinite supply of loans. Dept of Ed isn't even allowed to deny a loan to a person. 2. Culture since the Clinton era of "everyone should go to college". Massive cultural stigma for those who don't. 3. Colleges continue to justify costs based on lifetime earnings delta of people with degrees. Sadly, this data is backwards-looking and not indicative of what today's students should expect. The most heinous thing thou…
In short the loan system is transferring the benefits of the education away from the students and allowing the institutions to take it for themselves instead.
The question I have: What is the actual cost of having a student at a university in the US per year?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-s...
This article hints at schools inability to justify their ever increasing prices. Why is tuition continuing to rise so much faster than inflation? Is this simple supply and demand? Government backed loans create infinite supply to anyone who wants them? How can not for profit schools justify gauging their students?
> Why is tuition continuing to rise so much faster than inflation? Is this simple supply and demand? Government backed loans create infinite supply to anyone who wants them? I'm not convinced government backed loans have much to do with it. Here's a table comparing Stanford tuition growth to inflation over periods of 10 years. Each row represents the 10 years ending in the year given in the first column. Second colum…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Infinite supply of loans. Dept of Ed isn't even allowed to deny a loan to a person. 2. Culture since the Clinton era of "everyone should go to college". Massive cultural stigma for those who don't. 3. Colleges continue to justify costs based on lifetime earnings delta of people with degrees. Sadly, this data is backwards-looking and not indicative of what today's students should expect. The most heinous thing thou…
The loans are the key to the whole mess. So long as the loan is guaranteed to all and non-dischargeable through bankruptcy, the cost will tend to rise to match the total expected lifetime earnings the education enables. In short the loan system is transferring the benefits of the education away from the students and allowing the institutions to take it for themselves instead.
Personally, I think we've already passed that point. Would love to see some more research here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Infinite supply of loans. Dept of Ed isn't even allowed to deny a loan to a person. 2. Culture since the Clinton era of "everyone should go to college". Massive cultural stigma for those who don't. 3. Colleges continue to justify costs based on lifetime earnings delta of people with degrees. Sadly, this data is backwards-looking and not indicative of what today's students should expect. The most heinous thing thou…
Spot on. There's also been an increasing competitive push between universities to deliver "country club-esque" experiences to students, which further drives up cost. (Separately, let's not forget about the chaos of the educational publishing industry and the insane price points they command for modestly updated editions each year.) But I think items 1 and 2 above -- and a lack of education about what loans are and th…
I had a friend of mine who I knew when I was working at Thomson Reuters back when they still had their educational publishing wing of the company. He was in sales and said educational publishing is one of the biggest rackets nobody has heard of.
He said he would do his due diligence and meet with professors and educators regularly during the year and let them know what the publishers were doing, but in the end, he said it was always a 50/50 roll of the dice if a professor or school bought the books he had been pitching them since they got the last version of the textbooks they ordered.
He said it mainly came down to name recognition, and Thomson had that - but he also said it was similar to how agents woe professional athletes. Lots of perks, free dinners and baseball tickets to the professors making the decisions. He said as a sales person, they had a "client account" card where they could wine and dine clients and had a monthly stipend between 5K-10K specifically for this purpose.
He said you'd be surprised how greedy these professors get once they know they can influence what books are going to be purchased for the following year and from what company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One argument I've encountered that holds water, at least with regards to being unable to discharge student debt: you can't repossess someone's mind. (Technically you can, but that'd be a messy affair.)
That's a terrible argument that I've never heard an actual policy-maker or politician make. Besides, unsecured debts are all around us, credit cards being the most common.
I play devil's advocate with a Cuban friend sometimes: an expensive education is better than a free one because it shows that our culture highly values knowledge, at least in terms of money. When education is free or cheap, it is devalued, at least in terms of money. It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek argument but I think that it's good that people highly value education and it would be even better if the tuition increa…
Is this because the British or German society values education less? No, it's because Europeans pay more taxes on average, and their governments use this to subsidize the sticker price of tuition in tandem with funding and guaranteeing student loans. In the US, tax money is only used to guarantee student loans, while private universities are left to their own devices when it comes to pricing tuition.
Price is not always a good proxy for value. You need to look at who is paying for it, and when.