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Why Is College in America So Expensive?

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Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#301

Post by iei02ndjd »

frebord wrote: post #91
Domenic_S wrote: post #3

I 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…

You got that right. Look at all these corps taking advantage of government socialism.

Why do we need institutional competition over facts of STEM?

Universities have become corporate job training centers, not places of higher learning.

They teach what industry seeks, and thus industry is subsidized through government expenditure and private debt.

This forum is remarkably ignorant of practical reality. Instead leaning into what are at this point banal and debunked myths

Anyone wants a shot at an economically comfortable life it comes with serious strings. And no guarantee the education or 401k will be worth squat in a decade

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#302

Post by madmulita »

etiennemarcel wrote: post #296
closeparen wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating a service and providing it at public expense are completely separate concepts. Europeans do not have cheap healthcare as a result of price controls on private medical practices (regulation), but as a result of redistribution and subsidy (spending).

At least in France, it's both. The cost for the patient is usually low thanks to the health insurance, but also because of price control. A GP visit is 25 euros by law, covered from 70 to 100% depending on your insurance. Doctors can choose to charge more but then patients need better private insurances to be reimbursed. You can find the price lists here: * https://www.ameli.fr/paris/medecin/exercice-liberal/facturat…

How many visits does it take to get a simple prescription?

We have something similar, I've been appointed consultations only to be asked how I felt.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#303

Post by daleco »

madmulita wrote: post #302
etiennemarcel wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in France, it's both. The cost for the patient is usually low thanks to the health insurance, but also because of price control. A GP visit is 25 euros by law, covered from 70 to 100% depending on your insurance. Doctors can choose to charge more but then patients need better private insurances to be reimbursed. You can find the price lists here: * https://www.ameli.fr/paris/medecin/exercice-liberal/facturat…

How many visits does it take to get a simple prescription? We have something similar, I've been appointed consultations only to be asked how I felt.

You can get a simple prescription at the first consultation. For what I remember 10yrs ago, to see a specialist, you need to go to you general practitioner first. Then he will decide if you need a referral.

Edit: you can go directly to a specialist or not follow the « health path », you will just get less reimbursed. Some specialist can be seen without referral (gyn, psy...)

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#304

Post by mmirate »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #300
mmirate wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring that your average first-grade teacher is an employee of the State rather than of any kind of private entity ... ... it's a question of ephemeral facts. In a given area, companies who employ software developers, able to retain personnel who perform to those companies' subjective satisfaction, by paying them $X; and analogously for private schools in the same area it is $Y for first-grade teachers. How does $X…

You can't brush away the misvaluation of teachers by blaming the state. Education is a public good. It's something with huge social value, but that value isn't and can't be captured by the educator. That's inherent in the activity. Capitalism only values something insofar as it can be directly exploited for personal profit.

> that value isn't and can't be captured by the educator.

Oh, but it is. Quality of education is clearly valued by parents. And depending on which school-district you live in, your property tax rate varies, and the quality of the local public schools correlates rather strongly.

While I don't have personal experience with this situation ... I can easily imagine that a good private school's elevator pitch would be something to the effect of "you and we are both located in $D1, which has cheap property taxes and questionable public schools; by living here you will pay less property tax over your adult life than you would by living in $D2; however, not only can our school make your kids smarter than $D2's acclaimed public-schools can, but we can do that without costing you more tuition than that lifetime-difference in property taxes."

> Capitalism only values something insofar as it can be directly exploited for personal profit.

Personal profit is precisely the best way to motivate humans to do anything that is valuable to society.

If someone is doing something of value without profiting personally, the next question about that activity is "what info am I missing about how they profit?".

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#305

Post by roenxi »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #299
roenxi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Economy" is a (surprisingly effective!) system for allocating resources. It short-circuits a human instinct that social status and fairness should be the guide, and replaces that with "a persons economic contribution" instead. Now, it turns out that the difference in productivity between people is so great (think the old 10x-100x programmer) that allocating resources according to contribution creates so much sur…

"Everybody wins". This is a sadistic logic. People dying because they can't afford healthcare. "Everybody wins". Living precariously from wageslip to wageslip. "Everybody wins". Internalising the toxic logic that one's worth is directly proportional to one's market value. "Everybody wins". Etcetera. Several things: 1. If this were so it's strange how so many widely different forms of economic organisation, across the…

> This is a sadistic logic. People dying because they can't afford healthcare.

At some point everyone dies, and we know somewhere we run up against physical limits of what we can achieve. You'll need o be more specific about what your issue is here.

> Living precariously from wageslip to wageslip.

I've met people on $150,000 who manage to live paycheck to paycheck because they spend all their money in one go. You are probably referring to a real problem, but again maybe be more specific about what the actual problem is.

> Internalising the toxic logic that one's worth is directly proportional to one's market value.

It is impossible for everyone to simultaneously be 10x more productive than average, so I would _strongly_ advise anyone who thinks like this to pick a more achievable standard for measuring their self worth. But the choice of economic system does not determine anyone's mindset.

Several things 1)

Seems reasonable.

Several things 2)

> A system in which the majority of people hate their job, have no bargaining power, have no say in their workplace, and are told by society that they aren't worth anything

I mean realistically this is a value judgment so there is nothing to disagree on, but there are a lot of aspects here that are very negative. Clearly these workers are worth something, being humans, and nobody is seriously going to tell them otherwise. A lot of people are happy in their job, and realistically what is the actual problem with modern jobs? That workers have to turn up on time? That they have to be nice to people even if they don't feel like it? There are some horror stories that come out of retail, but they are caused by bad behavior of customers, not by the economic system.

I've seen a lot of people with lousy jobs who really struggle through life, but often the actual problem is something that is strictly in their personal life. I'm not sympathetic to the idea that somehow because workers don't understand the importance of what they do that they are therefore wasting time.

Several things 3)

> It's proven that above £28,000, increased income has no effect on quality of life

I'm not really familiar with the income and expense situation in the UK so I'll not try to talk about it. I would suggest that once you get beyond lifestyle expenses there are a lot of things that the wealthy do with their money that have nothing to do with their short term quality of life (like investment, or supporting family members or close friends).

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#306

Post by alan-crowe »

rayiner wrote: post #54

> 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.” That assertion makes no sense. In a market economy, almost all prices are unregulated. Yet the prices of TVs, hamburgers,…

But there is a centralised mechanism to keep MRIs expensive: certificate of need laws.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17629526/m...

It used to be a Federal Law. That got repealed, but certificate of need laws live on in several states. Still, state wide counts as a central mechanism if you live in that state. Since I'm not American, I don't know how the scam works in other states.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#307

Post by solidsnack9000 »

kingaillas wrote: post #145
mbrumlow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Another solution would be to let students discharge their debit via bankruptcy.

That would be removing the government guarantee -- and letting 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.

Or vice versa. Sometimes there are leftover bread rolls at the end of the day -- the seller produced a surplus. Sometimes there's empty seats in a class room. Doesn't sound so bad, that way.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#308

Post by solidsnack9000 »

dboreham wrote: post #73
rayiner wrote: post #54

> 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.” That assertion makes no sense. In a market economy, almost all prices are unregulated. Yet the prices of TVs, hamburgers,…

Well : >no central mechanism to control price increases Which would be "competition" or "regulation", right? It seems to me that the underlying problem is a principal-agent one (same as in healthcare): my son may want to go to Harvard or Princeton, but I get to foot the bill. If I point out that in-state public university would be much cheaper and nearly as good an education at undergrad level, I get to become Least…

There is also the issue, that college serves substantially a professional networking function when you get into the more expensive schools. This is quite apart from the quality of education but it can have a real impact on one's career outcomes.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#309

Post by ionised »

kansface wrote: post #179
fzeroracer wrote: post #102

Earlier 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…

> The free market does not work in all situations. Sure, but you did not enumerate a single free market. I'd wager the US healthcare industry is far and away the most regulated market in the entire world. We know that regulation protects the big players at the expense of their would be competition and drives up profits. Colleges are hardly any better, and ISPs are nearly all monopolies granted by municipalities in ex…

> We know that regulation protects the big players at the expense of their would be competition and drives up profits.

You're describing poorly thought out or outright captured regulation.

Regulation is not defacto bad. There are plenty of regulations from the last 100 years all over the world that are demonstrably positive.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#310

Post by solidsnack9000 »

rayiner wrote: post #54

> 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.” That assertion makes no sense. In a market economy, almost all prices are unregulated. Yet the prices of TVs, hamburgers,…

I came here to post exactly this.

The author should not simply state as an assumption that centralized price controls will fix the issue. There needs to be some kind of support offered. Generally, price controls aren't needed to control prices.

If they were -- and if that approach actually worked in general -- then it is unlikely that we would have seen Perestroika, or the horn of plenty that is the modern market economy.

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