Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 588 posts

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

#291

Post by darkerside »

elil17 wrote: post #286

Not to be another commenter claiming to know the real reason college costs so much but... The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. See: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/disruptiveinnovationinhigher... Archibald an…

A very specific type of labor costs, what I would call "non-essential services". These are the types of jobs where, now that we've grown the economic pie such that everyone can get what they need, increasing resources are devoted to "fairly allocating" those resources, via politics and legal actions, with the rest spent on objects of status.

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

#292

Post by hpkuarg »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #257
BurningFrog wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one This is part of the problem. Stop demanding a formal degree for jobs, allow anyone who can do the job to do it, and much/some of these problems will go away.

The majority of people don't go to expensive private college for the degree , as that is available cheaper elsewhere. They go for the feeling of elitism. Some of the worst money wasting colleges are the scam trade schools like University of "Phoenix".

University of Phoenix was founded and is based in Phoenix, Arizona, so if you want to put scare quotes on a part of it, maybe "University" of Phoenix is the better way. ;-)

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

#293

Post by xupybd »

elil17 wrote: post #286

Not to be another commenter claiming to know the real reason college costs so much but... The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. See: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/disruptiveinnovationinhigher... Archibald an…

One other factor is the cost of educating the work force has increased. This might not be due to an increase in the education requirements of the job market. If degrees are common place they get used as a proxy metric for who is capable and who is not (while this is often not the case).

This means it's hard to measure the effectiveness of the current student load system. Is the investment increasing productivity? Or just creating another hurdle for people to jump over to get a good job?

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

#295

Post by SilasX »

tptacek wrote: post #265
SilasX wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, because what colleges are selling is effectively a positional good[1], one valued specifically for how it ranks against other similar goods. They're selling the certification that "this person is in the n% percentile of employability". And you generally can't just make more of a positional good. That's like, "why can't Louis Vuitton ramp up production so that everyone can have a LV handbag?" [1] https://en.wiki…

People say that, but it's not really true. Tuitions are lower-tier schools are also extremely high; the tuition break doesn't happen until you get out of accredited 4-year universities and into community colleges.

Could you clarify what that's responding to? I don't see the connection to my point.

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

#296

Post by mulcahey »

elil17 wrote: post #286

Not to be another commenter claiming to know the real reason college costs so much but... The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. See: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/disruptiveinnovationinhigher... Archibald an…

Perhaps part of the reason those professionals are more expensive is that their degree programs saddle them with debt!

It’d be somewhat of a feedback loop

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

#297

Post by renewiltord »

sokoloff wrote: post #42
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…

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".)

Stop guaranteeing student loans, permit universities to take a percentage of student filed tax for lifetime of student. Perfectly aligns interests of student and university: creates annual recurring revenue from all students, if student pays tax to IRS portion goes to university. Since US taxes world income, this ensures university is reimbursed.

University will stop offering low quality degrees that do not offer utility and focus on current needs of economy.

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

#298

Post by ericmay »

watwut wrote: post #115
ericmay wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Afaik, only few super winning sports programs are earning. The rest of them costs money.

Probably 20-30 I’d say safely make money. For the others, it depends on how much it costs. Like if they are in the whole $100,000/year they could instead fire an administrator, or ask alumni for donations.

I have to think most universities aren’t losing too much money or they’d cancel the sport already, but I think with COVID-19 this is going to happen across sports in college anyway,

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

#299

Post by dragonwriter »

elil17 wrote: post #286

Not to be another commenter claiming to know the real reason college costs so much but... The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. See: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/disruptiveinnovationinhigher... Archibald an…

> The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen.

No, it's not.

> The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services.

Most doctorates are not like those cherry-picked professional degrees and have not seen this inflation.

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

#300

Post by rlanday »

dragonwriter wrote: post #246
sushid wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CAs tax rate when you factor in federal tax is comparable to the EU and we get none of the benefits.

> CAs tax rate when you factor in federal tax is comparable to the EU Nominal rates might be, but tax burden is not. California tax burden is well under 15% GDP, and federal collections in the state are a tiny bit higher than state tax revenues, together still under 30% tax burden. EU overall tax burden is over 40% of GDP.

30% federal plus 15% state is also higher than 40%, isn‘t it?
Post reply on HN