Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
1–10 of 588 posts
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#2Is this surprising to anyone? Colleges battle each other to provide amenities, loans are easy to come by, and the colleges have nothing to lose when the students default.
I remember my first day of college (in 1993!) and remember part of registering was signing all of these forms where my options were a) take out loans and go to school or b) don't take out loans and don't go to school. I had no idea what it meant to carry debt. As it turns out, I was fortunate to only have $30k of debt and interest rates that eventually went down to 2%. Between then and now, the "all-in" cost of attending my college has increased 200%.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#3Is this surprising to anyone? Colleges battle each other to provide amenities, loans are easy to come by, and the colleges have nothing to lose when the students default. I remember my first day of college (in 1993!) and remember part of registering was signing all of these forms where my options were a) take out loans and go to school or b) don't take out loans and don't go to school. I had no idea what it meant to…
Yeah, 50k of debt here, still paying it but it's doable on a programmer salary. Don't know what kids these days will do.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#4Is this surprising to anyone? Colleges battle each other to provide amenities, loans are easy to come by, and the colleges have nothing to lose when the students default. I remember my first day of college (in 1993!) and remember part of registering was signing all of these forms where my options were a) take out loans and go to school or b) don't take out loans and don't go to school. I had no idea what it meant to…
> Is this surprising to anyone?
Yes. Most people here who actually post in US college cost discussions seem to think the federal government is still only in the business of guaranteeing loans. As this article indicates, when the federal government is making these loans and owning them from start to finish it changes the dynamics considerably.
> I remember my first day of college (in 1993!) ... I was fortunate to only have $30k of debt
Where did you go? The on-campus sticker price on my state universities (Florida International and Florida Atlantic) was only about $35k (all-in) for the period of 1998-2002 (I didn't have to pay any of it).
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#5Is this surprising to anyone? Colleges battle each other to provide amenities, loans are easy to come by, and the colleges have nothing to lose when the students default. I remember my first day of college (in 1993!) and remember part of registering was signing all of these forms where my options were a) take out loans and go to school or b) don't take out loans and don't go to school. I had no idea what it meant to…
An article doesn't have to be "surprising" to be with writing, or reading. It even says "unsurprisingly" right in it.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#6Isn’t there some self-incentive for the federal government to increase loan sizes as well? I forget what it was but remember seeing some flowchart about it.
I’d say we let the private market handle school loans. Certainly wouldn’t be a perfect system in regards to access, but I feel it’d be better than current state because there’d be somebody involved deciding if a college loan is worthwhile.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#7No, the real reason was that country wasn't producing enough jobs for the expanding labor force so we artificially created a new requirement to keep young people out of the job market for an additional 4+ years. Credentialism is a tool governments/businesses use keep control of the labor situation.
The college tuition fiasco is a private/public creation. Now who wears the pants in the private/public relationship, that's up to you to decide. Did businesses decide to require college degrees for entry level positions and the government react to that? Or did the government decide to get people into colleges and the businesses react to that?
If businesses stop requiring college degrees, then college enrollment will drop significantly. If government stops guaranteeing student loans, college enrollment will drop significantly.
Who truly runs this country?
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#8No, the real reason was that country wasn't producing enough jobs for the expanding labor force so we artificially created a new requirement to keep young people out of the job market for an additional 4+ years. Credentialism is a tool governments/businesses use keep control of the labor situation. The college tuition fiasco is a private/public creation. Now who wears the pants in the private/public relationship, tha…
I don’t know that there’s any groups deciding on something but rather individuals acting in their best interest, getting a degree, that ruins it for everybody else. An arms race among individuals.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#9For undergrad I used Army money and was poor enough for Pell grants after that ran out. I got out with $12K in loans.
Much later in law school I was shocked how my first financial aid award letter (I can't remember if it was for one semester or one year) offered $80,000 in loans even though I had an $18000 tuition grant/waiver.
I met younger students who had close to $200,000 debt before starting law school. It is too easy to take the loans, it is no wonder that so many kids or their families get buried in debt.
I got out of LS with $27K or so in debt from interest deferred federal loans that charged around 2% interest.
Now, 14 years later, that same Tier 2/3 school charges more than double what I paid. I would not have gone at that price.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#10> the feds should handle student loans the same way they handle medicaid/medicare reimbursement.
I'm not sure how anyone looks at our health care reimbursement system and the decides that's the approach to apply to fix anything else?
Personally, I'd like to see:
* Employers are allowed to test students to see what they can do, but not evaluate them based on whether they went to school or where.
* Make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. Lenders will be much less willing to pay high tuitions in cases where students are unlikely to be able to pay it back, and if the lender guesses wrong and it does come to bankruptcy then the student is no longer encumbered.
(I wrote more along these lines: https://www.jefftk.com/p/fixing-student-loans)