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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

#141

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #127
Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other. You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across…

I think the US collages you say are stronger than European ones just boils down to money.

It's amazing how having more money just buys you more and better facilities and teaching talent, not to mention the US Gov. investing far more into STEM R&D (for defense) than Europe plus all that sweet private R&D money from all the fortune 500 companies.

It all ads up in the end.

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

#142

Post by skissane »

ericmay wrote: post #110
silvestrov wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the cost to tax payers in Europe is less than what people in USA have to pay the college. This is because my University (in Europe) had no sport facilities whatsoever , not even a soccer field. It also had no dormitories, canteens, no fancy library, sport teams etc. It did teaching + research, and nothing else.

Idk. People say this but are sports the real cost driver here? Many sports programs in the US pay for themselves and more or might be close to break even. We also have Title IX (1) which in some cases will lead to increased costs. Not to mention we have, you guessed it, a Title IX coordinator at every university that has to comply with Title IX who probably makes $50,000 - $100,000. If you think about other programs…

> We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though

Universities in Australia generally have sports clubs where students play sport at an amateur/non-professional level. And that can even involve a representative team that plays the sport with students from other universities, even a handful of sports scholarships for promising athletes. That doesn’t cost the university that much at all, because unlike many American universities they are not trying to field a professional level team, just provide students with a recreational break from their studies, some exercise and socialising

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

#143

Post by nitwit005 »

I'm puzzled by the basic premise here. Having a bank as an intermediary or not doesn't seem relevant to the incentives. It was still the student picking which university they wanted to attend.

The reason for eliminating the banks as middle men was just to save money. They weren't taking on any of the risk, or doing anything particularly useful for the government.

I'd agree with the more general premise that easily obtainable loans should push prices upward.

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

#144

Post by golemiprague »

Hokusai wrote: post #111
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. Not US high but still, it's not free, there's lots of bloat in the system that thrives on volume of students not on quality so they try to push forward legislation and programs to increase the number of students, especially from abroad and build more faculties/universities with more…

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that. Also, I would like to notice, that for E…

It may be a good investment for the people who actually studying a profession, people who will utilise the knowledge to create new business and jobs or are there to advance the academic knowledge.

But many are just doing it for the "certificate" of finishing some academic studies in order to get a secretarial job in a corporate or governmental body which they could have done with a one month internship. This is not fair for the tax payers which actually finance a very expensive and long selection scheme for useless HR departments. Armies which usually recruit directly from high school are classifying employees much more efficiently and quickly and teach them the job much faster.

So without getting into the argument of what is best, private based or government based education, this type of problem exists now in most countries but nobody wants to talk about it because it is marked as sexist since it affects mainly women who seems to mostly occupy those type of studies and jobs.

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

#145

Post by ju-st »

georgeecollins wrote: post #127
Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other. You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across…

At least in Germany research is often done by e.g. Max Planck or Fraunhofer Society. These are public research organizations which are practically part of the universities but their research output is not counted in rankings.

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

#146

Post by darth_avocado »

choward wrote: post #121
darth_avocado wrote: post #119

Why not move from a pre-paid to a post-paid system? The government stops writing blank cheques. The students enroll for free, signing a 30-year mortgage like contract, that would say pledge 1% of your post tax earnings to the school/university you went to. Universities will then have incentives to remove the programs that don't have as much of a use in the modern day and age, and add the ones that are needed. The gov…

Wouldn't all colleges just become trade schools at that point?

And what's wrong with that? I mean what values do colleges bring?

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

#147

Post by Spooky23 »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #91

It is difficult to overstate how mistaken this article is. College has mostly gotten more expensive because state support for public universities has dramatically decreased, from over 80% in the 1970's to less than 20% now. Since the taxpayer no longer pays for public higher education, the student does. The logic of this made some sense at the time; very high tuition subsidies were a gift to the upper middle and uppe…

College became a political whipping boy in the 80s when the student loan rules changed.

My dad went to City College in NYC in the late 60s/early 70s for $0. Like most of his fellow students, he was a 1st generation child of immigrants, and that enabled him to pursue a world unknown to the family. His dad was a proprietor of a bar; his uncle an able seaman on a tugboat, and other uncles NYC Firemen and Sanitation workers respectively.

Today in the name of equality we have resorts. Students get "deals" from colleges, etc, but those deals have strings and often push out students. I graduated from a SUNY college in 1999; every single one of my friends who went to private schools like Clarkson, RPI, Carnegie Mellon, etc ended up with $80-100k in crushing debt. I owed less than $10k.

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

#148

Post by nradov »

citilife wrote: post #29
jefftk wrote: post #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 de…

Any time you provide increased funding to a customer, the price of the goods will go up. This is the same reason raising the minimum wage would likely increase prices of other goods. An easy-ish solution to this is: 1. Breaking up unions/lobbies - AMA for reference is the limiting factor in the number of doctors. They limit the number of medical students intentionally, inflating doctors wages (and university costs).…

False. The AMA doesn't limit the number of doctors. The actual limit is the number of residency slots at teaching hospitals, most of which are funded by the federal government. Every year there are students who graduate from medical school with an MD but are unable to practice because they can't get matched to a residency program. The AMA actively supports increasing residency funding.

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

#149

Post by JumpCrisscross »

georgeecollins wrote: post #127
Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other. You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across…

> Are Universities in Europe really that high quality?

Anecdote from a friend studying biochemistry in Milan, but mind-blowing. Apparently, he was the only one in his graduate class to know how to use a pipette and other basic lab equipment. Until that point, their training had been purely theoretical.

There are a lot of other problems in a similar vein. But the quality of American high-access, high-quality higher education from a practical perspective is a solid counterpoint to the European model of high-access, low-cost.

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

#150

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #76
_red wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analysis is right, but there is another pernicious issue. We now inhabit a world where no one is encouraged or even expected to do a trade (well except for the modern slave caste: illegals). The result is lots of HS grads who should be getting an Electricians degree instead trying to do a 4 year program. The result not only inflates tuition cost, but also leads to 'degree inflation', that is everyone now…

Electricians/plumbers/HVAC/carpenters usually all have problems with mobility by the time they hit 50s, and they work in terrible environments and have to drive all day. How much is one’s health and ability to move around in older age worth? How much is it worth to not have to drive around all day and come home on a regular schedule?

"Go to a trade!" is the new advice people like to spout out to others but will never do themselves.
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