Why Is College in America So Expensive? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#311

Post by fallingfrog » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

mmirate wrote: post #304

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

>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?".

That is a sociopathic statement that ignores all of human morality, denies any human feeling of empathy or acts of kindness, and pretends culture does not exist. It is certainly the logic of modern capitalism though.

If you saw a child about to fall into a well, and nobody else was around, would you help her? Of course you would. When you are eating thanksgiving with your family, does the strongest member of the family steal the turkey and then charge everyone for pieces of it? What you are saying is patently ridiculous.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#312

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #311

mmirate wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 some…

>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?". That is a sociopathic statement that ignores all of human morality, denies any human feeling of empathy or acts of kindness, and pretends culture does not exist. It is certainly the logic of modern capitalism though. If you saw a child about to fall into a wel…

I read it more softly than that. Of course we get 'paid back' for making the Thanksgiving turkey - by goodwill. I'm paid for moral acts by a reinforced self-image and satisfaction. There are lots of forms of payment.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#313

Post by fallingfrog » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #312

fallingfrog wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?". That is a sociopathic statement that ignores all of human morality, denies any human feeling of empathy or acts of kindness, and pretends culture does not exist. It is certainly the logic of modern capitalism though. If you saw a child about to fall into a wel…

I read it more softly than that. Of course we get 'paid back' for making the Thanksgiving turkey - by goodwill. I'm paid for moral acts by a reinforced self-image and satisfaction. There are lots of forms of payment.

Right, but those feelings are the result of the culture you were raised in and the normal feelings of compassion you have as a member of a highly social species of animal. The whole reason society works at all is because I teach my kids to share, and not to hurt each other. If everyone starts believing that they should only do things out of pure self interest, then I'd say you're looking at a society that's about to degenerate into warfare, slavery, and violence.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#314

Post by Emma_Goldman » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

mmirate wrote: post #304

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

The point is that a sufficiently large part of the value of education is a non-excludable public good - i.e. it has huge collective benefits for society as a whole - that if you privatised the education system it would be extremely injurious to everyone. Of course, education also gives people, if you want to use that language, a certain amount of 'human capital' which tends towards a higher earning potential. But it is because so much of the value of education is a public good that it's misvalued, and necessarily so under capitalism.

Also: "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?".

As someone else mentioned, this is frighteningly sociopathic. But it's also ideologically blinkered. It's an elementary fact of anthropology that human societies for most of history have lived on a communal basis without property. People act from personal profit because of the structure and cultural sediment of capitalism, not because humans are inherently selfish.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#315

Post by throwawayjava » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

mr_tristan wrote: post #263

throwawayjava wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF these numbers can be... messy. For example, at least one statistic is based on earnings 5 years out of school. 5 years out of school I was making less than 30k as a research assistant. A few months later I was making easily 100k+ more than most senior SDEs, and doing exactly what I would be doing if I had a trust fund to pay the bills. Many of my classmates who became doctors were in similar situations -- working…

But... I can't help but wonder about how many of the graduates from the 75% of schools that take most of their applicants just end up doing something that basically required none of the education they acquired. I'd bet it's far more common then the scenarios you present. https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college-majors/ I'm not sure the 600,000 humanities degrees lead to that kind of hockey puck style caree…

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities-Grads...

But again, the problem is that it takes until mid-career to really assess lifetime earning potential, and that's an extremely late indicator. If the winds change, we have to wait 10 years to find out.

We need a more fine-grained model of how those high earnings are happening and a way of tracking progress/bottlenecks along those tracks. E.g., I suspect the law job/salary crunch should be far more worrying than near-term earning potential of humanities majors.

It's also worth pointing out that salary isn't everything and our society would be utterly screwed if everyone optimized for lifetime earnings. Fortunately, plenty of people are optimizing a multi-objective function that includes QoL and job satisfaction; see e.g. teaching in particular. I'd have a hard time telling a teacher that they made a bad career choice by not going into tech or becoming a plumber, and I'd have an equally hard time arguing that teachers shouldn't be college educated.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#316

Post by marknutter » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #311

mmirate wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 some…

>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?". That is a sociopathic statement that ignores all of human morality, denies any human feeling of empathy or acts of kindness, and pretends culture does not exist. It is certainly the logic of modern capitalism though. If you saw a child about to fall into a wel…

> If you saw a child about to fall into a well, and nobody else was around, would you help her?

Are you comparing poor adults to children about to fall into a well?

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#317

Post by blairbeckwith » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

diogenescynic wrote: post #237

blairbeckwith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who doesn't think this is that bad? Living on campus is a privilege, not a right. Students probably can live off-campus for less, but paying $1800/month (guessing that "a year" is ~8 months) for accommodation + food... Really doesn't seem that bad. It's certainly a premium, but it's an entirely optional one and doesn't seem like an extreme one. Add on administration overhead for dorms, etc. Proximit…

You must live in a bubble. $15k in living expenses is a lot of money for even middle class families—$15k is like $25k pre-tax and that’s more than about 40% of Americans even make in a year... Living expenses like dorms/meals are also why so many kids end up taking out student loans and have so much debt. How is that productive for society? It seems like Americans have a very weird attitude towards certain fundamenta…

This is where living at home becomes an option.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#318

Post by yawboakye » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #298

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).

No, the per capita cost of healthcare in the US is astronomically greater than Western European countries, including both private and public spend. In the UK the NHS is a socialised service that is free at the point of use. If that's not 'regulation' then I don't know what is.

It's not a regulation of a private industry. It's a law on the people to pay for public health. If we still want to call it a regulation then it's a regulation on individuals instead of the health business.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#319

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

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…

Home loan guarantees had nothing to do with the financial crisis. The loans that failed were overwhelmingly issued by private institutions backed by capital from private institutions, and carried no government guarantees at all.

Drug costs also have little to with government subsidies since they are set by negotiation between private drug companies and private insurers. Medicare and Medicaid must pay those (privately set) prices.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#320

Post by overeater » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:16 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #109

fzeroracer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're talking to someone that went through it all the same. Just because it's worked out for you doesn't make your experience the norm for all students. If you're expecting all students to spend 15+ years working just to get through their degree then I would argue that system is just as fucked up as the one we currently have. The solution is to make college free for students and wipe away student loan debt. You'…

Why do we need a solution "right now"? Why can't we take the time to get it right - instead of applying just another band-aid that will need further fixing a few years down the road. Enough band-aids... Not everyone needs to attend University and get a shiny degree - we need to stop that narrative while we're at it. There's plenty of trades that pay well and are in high demand. There's nothing wrong with being a blue…

It sounds like your two options are that people should 1) do trades: some unpleasant, strenuous work in physically dangerous conditions, for about 10 years hustling day and night before your body gives out for $50K/year? 2) have the government pay for degrees that some committee deems valuable?

That seems completely wrong to me. And this is based on the implicit assumption that prospective students don't know how to use the internet, make informed decisions, get advice from parents or other grown ups. It sounds like you're saying that college students are completely gullible and are getting degrees for bad reasons and you know better than them, for their own future. And that immigrant parents who encourage their kids to go to college are also uninformed. Come on.