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Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

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Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#81

Post by SQueeeeeL »

jimhefferon wrote: post #70
noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

> Colleges are now awash in money It is not possible for me to overstate how very much this is not true at the college where I work, and at all colleges with which I have a personal connection.

Most departments don't see it, but you also need to compare colleges to colleges of the 1900s, where most professors made VERY small salaries and campuses were spartan at best. Funds have increased tremendously

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#82

Post by smileysteve »

vondur wrote: post #39
noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

Too many people are enrolling in College, and this is a problem. The end result in many cases has been lower the standards to get students to graduate. More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. The Covid Pandemic has shown us what happens when you put all your manufacturing in one country.

> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs.

To this, and as we're on hacker news; and bootcamps are proving it for web developers; a bachelor's degree often doesn't prepare students for jobs (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well)

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#83

Post by kube-system »

monadic2 wrote: post #68

I'm hard-pressed to see why you would attend a private college these days without ambitions of entering politics or some other power-hungry career.

The sticker prices might be high, but there also a lot of scholarship and grant money out there for those who can get it.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#84

Post by etempleton »

rtkwe wrote: post #77
jimhefferon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges are now awash in money It is not possible for me to overstate how very much this is not true at the college where I work, and at all colleges with which I have a personal connection.

It depends a lot on who you know and what department you're in. In 40 of 50 states the highest paid public employee is a sports coach... https://fanbuzz.com/national/highest-paid-state-employees/

At many universities athletics is a major revenue driver. There is a very real financial incentive to have high performing athletic programs.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#85

Post by afiori »

Justsignedup wrote: post #50
sokoloff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the choice of "High Quality, Low Cost" look like in practice? (Because I'm not seeing how to make that happen, other than "burying the actually high cost someplace where it's spread out and hard to see, so it looks like low cost".)

Low cost, available to everyone: the quality goes down as they need more capacity for less pay. High Quality, Available to everyone: Will cost a lot because we'd need a lot of high quality teachers, and attracting them will be expensive. Low Cost, High Quality: Only the best will get accepted, and the colleges will make their money in other ways using the work the students provide (like how medical school research de…

> Low cost, available to everyone: the quality goes down as they need more capacity for less pay.

A partial solution to this is to simply shrink the spread of services the college/university offers. eg they could simply offer education and training.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#86

Post by brazzy »

etempleton wrote: post #84
rtkwe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a lot on who you know and what department you're in. In 40 of 50 states the highest paid public employee is a sports coach... https://fanbuzz.com/national/highest-paid-state-employees/

At many universities athletics is a major revenue driver. There is a very real financial incentive to have high performing athletic programs.

Is this revenue driven by athletics separate from tuition fees? Because if it isn't, that only confirms the hypothesis.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#87

Post by tptacek »

noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

I don't understand why there isn't simply the option of making a lot more colleges. "High Quality, Low Cost, Pick 2" isn't how most markets work.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#88

Post by philwelch »

jimhefferon wrote: post #70
noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

> Colleges are now awash in money It is not possible for me to overstate how very much this is not true at the college where I work, and at all colleges with which I have a personal connection.

It’s probably similar to health care in that the amount of money entering the system may be increasing, but the growing costs of bureaucracy are consuming all of it and more.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#89

Post by bawana »

jimhefferon wrote: post #70
noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

> Colleges are now awash in money It is not possible for me to overstate how very much this is not true at the college where I work, and at all colleges with which I have a personal connection.

Of course not. They ARE AWASH in income. They just figure out how to spend it fast. Fancy buildings, fancy retirement plans, outrageous administrative salaries.... For example the Chairman of UMASS Medical Center makes 2.3 million. The CEO of Harvard makes 9.25 million. How are these jobs an order of magnitude harder than the governor of Massachusetts. (salary 150K) Or harder than the US President (salary 400K). I cannot help but laugh when someone says that 'captains of industry take huge risks and therefore deserve handsome reimbursement". How is it risky when all you have to do is decide how much to raise tuition? Riskier than our soldiers who face AK47 rounds in the sandbox? (What does a marine make, again?) How can we afford to pay our teachers so little? People who literally hold the future of America in their hands?

And now with distance learning, tuitions have not decreased by an order of magnitude though the overhead should have.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#90

Post by non-entity »

noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

> Or how about breaking the degree monopoly with something like equivalent certification programs and let private companies fill the gap. Similar to what Google is doing with its certificate program they are rolling out.

This stuff has existed for years and there are probably thousands of "certification programs". Most of the time, they're deemed worthless.

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