College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

Do we want to filter who goes to a top-tier university by those who are able to spend money there or by how well they perform? Doesn't society benefit the most if we are able to send the highest performers to the best universities without unrelated financial criteria knocking them out? And before someone points out financial aid - many potential people may self-disqualify before even getting to the point of applying.

Even if people can afford it, charging that $100k takes away capital that a bright recent graduate might have been able acces to bootstrap a startup. I think across multiple facets, there are a large economic costs we pay by charging high tuitions to students.

GMU is R1.

R1 unis compensate faculty unusually well compared to other institutions, regardless of other social prestige indicators. R1-level compensation is not typical of US universities, period.

> The average salary for a full professor in the U.S. is $135,000

You've grossly mis-interpreted this data.

Notice that the data breaks down salaries by the type of institution (phd-granding, masters-granding, bachelor-only) .

The average for a full professor is far closer to $91,935 because the vast majority of faculty/instructors in the US work at non-Ph.D. granting institutions.

Many professors never become full professors or become full professors very late in their career (55+).

According to your data, the average for an Associate Professor is $70,334 - 88,306, which is a better comparison because most professors are not full professors for most of their career (especially at non-R1 schools, where budgets often trump professional competence considerations in terms of full professorship appointments).

Also, many full-time instructional staff aren't professors. Instructors make average or below-average salaries (your data says $45-$57 average).

> Median personal income in that age bracket is about $40-50k

Unless we adjust for the fact that all professors have bachelors degrees, then we add 10-20k depending on your data source.

So typical professors 10-20k above average and typical instructors make maybe a few k extra or below average.

Oh, and note that this is all the upper tier of the tertiary education system. Instructors at community colleges are often doing so as a second job or scraping by on less than their students make in their first positions -- far more akin to high school teachers in terms of social status and earning power than anything else. Damn leeches...

Upper middle class indeed... eye roll

> a few people getting rich isn't as big of a concern as tens of thousands of moderately expensive people on payroll.

It is a bigger concern because it's needless waste.

We could slash instructors/professor's wages if we want to re-create our shitty secondary education system at the college level. But other than that, professors/instructors are the singular necessary input for providing higher education. Loan servicing is not necessary for providing education.

> The average for a full professor is far closer to $91,935 because the vast majority of faculty/instructors in the US work at non-Ph.D. granting institutions.

Okay, fair point. But schools that don't grant a doctoral degree are also the cheapest institutions (elite liberal arts colleges aside)--the ones where students aren't taking out huge student loan debt to attend. So those aren't really the target of my ire.

> It is a bigger concern because it's needless waste.

You're fixated on some people getting rich when the real problem is that we spend $500 billion a year on giving kids higher education that very few of them actually need. That's the big waste.

If we cut our higher-education spending by 1/3, we could cut a $10,000 check each year to every single kid in poverty. If we cut it by 2/3, we could additionally pay for health insurance for every uninsured American.

We're forgoing game changing improvements in quality of life so that a bunch of 18-22 year olds can waste time learning things they'll forget the minute they graduate.

> We could slash instructors/professor's wages if we want to re-create our shitty secondary education system at the college level. But other than that, professors/instructors are the singular necessary input for providing higher education. Loan servicing is not necessary for providing education.

My argument isn't that "professors are paid too much." It's that we have too much higher education. Higher education is intrinsically expensive: as you say, professors are necessary input, they get paid above average wages, and we're not automating them away anytime soon. Consequently, we shouldn't encourage millions of kids each year to take on huge amounts of debt to get an education that's worthless.

Whatever I lost by not being a candidate to work at Google, etc I gained in flexibility. I was able to buy a home at 23, wasn't burdened by loan payments and have done pretty well.

My cousins went to Ivy League schools and did the medicine and investment banking route. They did everything "right", but are buried in debt and sound pretty miserable. To each his own.