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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

#341

Post by Dannymetconan »

BurningFrog wrote: post #237
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

> 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.

I think it is more of a problem of inflation.

If you get 50 application is easy just to automatically remove the X that don't have a college degree.

Similarly to the way you might have a GPA cut off of some amount but they don't actually care what your degree was in.

In Ireland there are a lot of people who go on to do a Masters because when a large number of people have degrees it makes you more competitive. Anecdotal most my friends will tell you they use neither their undergrad nor masters in work life

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

#342

Post by chii »

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".

> They go for the feeling of elitism

it's not a feeling - it's real. Connections with other highly connected (and rich) people will give you more opportunities that merit alone won't give you.

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

#343

Post by tootahe45 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #38
apsec112 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuts in state funding don't explain the rapid tuition increases at private universities.

I know first-hand that this is not how pricing decisions work at regional private colleges/universities. The process regional private colleges go through is as follows: 1. List a set of "peer institutions", usually with the primary input coming from admissions. Here, "peer" means "competes for the same set of students we're after". Almost always the region's public colleges and universities will be on this list. 2. S…

You ignore the fact that prices can't increase if students can't pay. Of course students can pay due to indiscriminate access to credit.

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

#344

Post by Master_Odin »

throwawaygh wrote: post #331
secabeen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is a great summary, and exactly what is going on. Interestingly, it hasn't seemed to have much change on the spending side. Colleges are charging more to the median student, but are using a lot of it to subsidize less well-off students. It's not showing up in huge increases in faculty salaries, or administrative costs.

> It's not showing up in huge increases in faculty salaries, or administrative costs. Not in faculty salaries, but often in faculty headcount. Lots of colleges and universities have added a lot of faculty while keeping student headcount constant. Mostly because they can't fire their tenured humanities faculty but need to hire people who can prepare students for something other than the Barista life. IMO: tenure shoul…

Except it's not that the colleges are using this money to truly hire the amount of faculty they need for ballooning class sizes, rather just hire more administrators, some easily pulling down 250k+. Watching my school downsize during COVID of "non-essential" staff while the president took a very nominal cut of their 5mil compensation package is insulting.

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

#345

Post by throwaway0a5e »

hinkley wrote: post #27
fatnoah wrote: post #2

Is 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…

Also students are not yet used to thinking about debt, or how things are paid for really, which means that the whole practice is predatory. Those perks are paid for from imaginary money as far as they're concerned. I know some trade schools have attempted instead to do a risk sharing model where they are entitled to some fraction of your income for n years after graduation, but I don't think people are comfortable wi…

>Also students are not yet used to thinking about debt, or how things are paid for really

And why politicians want to see them in the voting booths so badly.

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

#346

Post by throwawaygh »

tootahe45 wrote: post #343
throwawaygh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know first-hand that this is not how pricing decisions work at regional private colleges/universities. The process regional private colleges go through is as follows: 1. List a set of "peer institutions", usually with the primary input coming from admissions. Here, "peer" means "competes for the same set of students we're after". Almost always the region's public colleges and universities will be on this list. 2. S…

You ignore the fact that prices can't increase if students can't pay. Of course students can pay due to indiscriminate access to credit.

I'm not ignoring this at all. I'm merely explaining the mechanism by which public university pricing effects private university pricing. Of course access to credit increases the ceiling! But also, when public universities receive less funding, private universities increase their prices. These two facts are not mutually exclusive.

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

#347

Post by pyuser583 »

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…

Spain and Italy have a reputation for crappy universities. Italy especially.

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

#348

Post by jefftk »

Aperocky wrote: post #337
jefftk wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does happen some, but it would be much harder for large companies to have an off-the-books policy of requiring a college degree if they couldn't talk about it with each other or put anything in writing for fear it would come out in a suit.

A large company would simply have a policy to not even interview, resumes can be discarded for 'lack of qualification' or any other reason. You can't sue a company for discarding applications.

The company would have some sort of training on how to review resumes. Do you think they would have a secret policy of "you must have a college degree" and tell every new HR hire never to discuss it in a discoverable medium?

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

#349

Post by pyuser583 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #141
georgeecollins wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also admissions criteria. Italian colleges are known for having little control over who they admit (and graduate).

Almost all students attend a local university, often without leaving the house. The universities are essentially required to admit (and graduate) large numbers of locals.

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

#350

Post by apta »

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…

The real solution is to ban lending with interest. We have known that usurious lending is a parasitic practice for thousands of years, how did we not learn?
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