State schools, my friends. If you're in-state, you might pay 1/4 or less the costs of a private college.
Why Is College in America So Expensive?
141–150 of 348 posts
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#142Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads, but you'll do it for far cheaper if you attend a public university in your state of residence. If you want to do a postgrad program, don't worry: top tier schools will come sniffing if you're good enough, no matter where you're coming from.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#143I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want! The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.
I live in a small city (~106k people) and the nearest university has quadruple occupancy dorms, with no kitchens, that cost $1200/mo. Apartments in this city are still (barely) under $1000/mo, except the university is in about as remote of a location as you can get in this city. An expensive Sodexo meal plan is required by the school if you live in the dorms.
Oh and in order to avoid competing with the landlords who would rent apartments for cheaper universities started to mandate that freshmen and sophomores must live on campus.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#144I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want! The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.
> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our…
In my view, the government wasn't trying to provide for students by guaranteeing their loans, they were providing for the banks by making those debts unforgivable.
The outcome is the desired one: banks own hundreds of billions of dollars more debt than they used to.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Essentially, the loans act as subsidies for colleges. For the student, it's a different story. And as with medical care, the response to price increases has been to shovel more money. >Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” Let me rephrase - There is no m…
There was before the government got its hands in it. Before guaranteed loans students had to be verified based off their merritt to get a loan. Lenders took a real risk and had incentives in the person being successful so they would have hopes of the loan being paid back. This was near perfect as schools could not not charge more than lenders would risk. Thes solution in this case is to remove the government guarante…
Another solution would be to let students discharge their debit via bankruptcy. Surely you wouldn't want that terrible government distortion to the free market remain in place?
This system is also near perfect as lenders would evaluate their risk and have incentives in the person being successful. This works very well, as we saw from how mortgage lenders and credit rating agencies worked 10 years ago.
>let the free market work.
Education (and healthcare for that matter) are NOT free markets. Free markets don't guarantee every buyer gets matched to a seller, in which case that buyer does without. Which is not acceptable for education or healthcare.
Maybe that's fine in some circles but a modern wealthy superpower should be able to do better than throw some percentage of its own citizens in the trash because they can't afford education.
Also, way back when college was "affordable", states actually funded higher education through taxes.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure you can. Limit the federal education loan guarantee to 15k per year. Presto. Watch education prices drop like a rock, when lenders raise rates to accommodate future earnings potential, instead of counting on federal guarantees.
> Limit the federal education loan guarantee to 15k per year. > Presto. Watch education prices drop like a rock Why would raising the limit have that effect? The limit for federally guaranteed loans (which are also, for nearly a decade, exclusively federal direct loans) is already $57,500 total for undergraduate education, and the maximim per year limit (it is lower for dependent students) is $9,500 for first-year st…
Thanks for the correction. Is there not some kind of government guarantee underlying the massive student loans the press runs stories about? I thought that student debt was in a special class, where it could not be easily discharged (and was backed by government guarantees).
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our society (competition). The USA has 4,000+ colleges, most of which do compete aggressively for students. Huge marketing departments with regional and national reach. Radio ads. Television ads. Print ads. Marketing networks with college counselors. Salespeople who spend many months attending coll…
Competition ALONE is exactly what drives prices down. The endless supply of students with a government guaranteed loan is why they are not going down, why would they? It completely violates the most basic element of our economy. Fully socializing those things is a solution better than what we have now, but that is the point where those things stagnate (US K12) which is why I prefer the free market solution and still…
Can you name a single country that has accessible, inexpensive, high-quality higher education system provided entirely by the private sector?
The view that free markets are some sort of magical panacea for education or especially healthcare strikes me as an extraordinarily anti-empirical -- if admittedly hyper-rationalist -- position.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is interesting to me that the three areas main areas in America that have become exponentially more expensive are healthcare, construction, and education. It's curious that they have the most government control.
Could you explain to me how the government control of those things had lead to price increases? Specifically? I hear this a lot but have never heard an explaination and I am genuinely curious of the reasoning
When you subsidize industries they no longer attempt to contain costs. Unintuitively, instead of getting cheaper they get more expensive. There's an interesting video by Peter Schiff on the subject: https://youtu.be/AIcfMMVcYZg
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The free market does not work in all situations. There's a reason why our healthcare is an absolute disaster compared to any other first world country, why our college is far more expensive, why our drugs cost more etc And it ain't because of cost control. Every time we loosen the reins a bit and let the 'free market' take the wheels, we see things get a lot worse for Americans as a whole. Especially when you have gi…
It is interesting to me that the three areas main areas in America that have become exponentially more expensive are healthcare, construction, and education. It's curious that they have the most government control.
They are also the three things that are socialized to a much higher degree in other developed countries, where they are not becoming exponentially more expensive.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Limit the federal education loan guarantee to 15k per year. > Presto. Watch education prices drop like a rock Why would raising the limit have that effect? The limit for federally guaranteed loans (which are also, for nearly a decade, exclusively federal direct loans) is already $57,500 total for undergraduate education, and the maximim per year limit (it is lower for dependent students) is $9,500 for first-year st…
I'm guessing the poster is actually proposing changes that would allow the portion of student loan debt above 15k per year to be dischargeable in bankruptcy.
More or less. I actually think that the debt above 15k (or whatever) should be shifted back to the school, should the graduate be (provably) unable to pay it back in 10 years. ;)