The claim in the article is unfounded. Prices have increased due to states cutting way back on funding, because of easy of getting loans (just one prong of the problem), need to have a college degree just to get your foot in the door (demand), and mismanagement by school management to build facilities students can't afford.
Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
441–450 of 588 posts
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#442Rising college tuition is clear evidence of runaway fiat currency inflation. As soon as the US severed the peg to gold, prices have done nothing but inflate. I think colleges have figured out people are willing to take on increasing amounts of debt. The cost of loaning / creating money to pay for college is zero, so the tuition price ceiling is effectively infinite.
The inflation is also of course simultaneously blatant in healthcare, many prominent commodities, housing, vehicles, and so on.
We could easily restrain the cost increases - which has far exceeded the rate of fiat destruction - by changing wildly irresponsible Federal loan backing. It wouldn't take much to begin tipping the cost inflation backwards, we could roll it back gently and it'd make a big difference over time versus continuing the upward climb. We could flatten it and let inflation chew it up over time in real terms. We don't have any politicians that are intelligent (wise?) enough or brave enough to do it.
Most politicians are cowards. Good luck finding one willing to step in front of the higher education train (everyone must get a four year degree in their Cracker Jack box). Suddenly all the headlines would be that Joe Politician doesn't want little Johnny to go to college, Joe Politician is depriving our children of access to college, Joe Politician is stealing our children's futures! And so on. The triggered propaganda flood would instantly drown anyone that dared to go near it.
The US only has two primary political types on this topic: those that ignore the problem, not wanting to go near it for the political consequences; or those that are only capable of arguing in favor of a lot more spending as a solution (as though the US can afford that, especially when the problem is that costs are already far out of line with peers around the world).
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of the cost of American college doesn't go towards education but things like sports stadiums and teams, various non-academic events, administrators, various other non-academic staff, uniquely-expensive American legal costs and insurance, on-campus police (a big wtf for Europeans), and then there are also those people who decide which Halloween costumes are appropriate for students, investigate various misconduc…
> Americans expect college campuses to be like resorts You say that but the typical dorm room offers no privacy or air conditioning, and the showers and bathrooms are shared. They're similar in nature to SROs which the US pretty much abolished anywhere else, but way more expensive. And then universities have the audacity to demand that students live in them freshman year, even though living off campus would be cheape…
While I understand that many students in the US are away from home, this degree of coupling between education and housing seems odd to me, an outsider. It adds a lot of requirements that certainly make the operation significantly more expensive. Even in the less luxurious ones.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#444The central claim in TFA is that when the government gives out loans directly, instead of guaranteeing loans made by banks, it's easier for students to get student loans, and therefore college prices go up. a) Zero evidence is provided in TFA that it is in fact easier for students to get loans under the government program. I could make an equally compelling argument and say, when the private sector provides loans gua…
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Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#445Earlier 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…
US is great for Masters levels and above, where there is indeed such a thing as a world-class specialists helping shape the next generation of experts.
If you're thinking about college though, that doesn't churn out experts. The material is well-known, and IMO it's more important to have great teachers available to answer your questions than to have world-class research experts on the brochure. Great teachers are also not everywhere, but they are in far higher abundance than the so-called "top faculty", and maybe good teaching doesn't even correlate very strongly with research brilliance.
Some of the classes in which I learned the most had teachers who were (I now see in retrospect) relatively middling postdoc folks, or long-tenured professors who didn't really have much more research "juice" in them... but they had a well constructed syllabus, were able to cleanly articulate concepts, give examples, give exercises, give encouragement, etc.
I've also taken classes with world-class researchers, and some of them were outstanding, while others had sloppy syllabus prep, didn't adequately coordinate with TA's, gave lectures that weren't engaging as they jumped into long solo calculations at the blackboard that they had trouble making their way out of... In short, they couldn't be bothered.
So I wouldn't generalize from my experience either, but I think that especially for college, teaching quality, and student body quality (peers are an important source of motivation) are more important than world-class research renown.
Working in tech in the US, I see enough high-performing European and Asian immigrants that I think it could be good for an American kids today to consider getting a degree from a school abroad for a fraction of what it would've cost them in the US.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on the last point?
US states generally have not placed their capitals in their population centers. I'm told some of it is a fear of big city corruption might have on democracy (not without reason, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine#In_the_Unite... ). The logic seemed to play out in land grant unis as well, but looking at some history articles about my alma mater, it seems more complicated than "big city bad" -- the big…
I made the mistake of commuting from home my first year in university (UW, i graduated high school in the area), it is really not that great to “commute” and pure commuter schools (where most students commute to from home) offer a different experience from other universities.
One point of university is to make it on your own. If your daddy is rich, this is in the dorms, if not, you rent a basement room nearby and bike in.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Americans expect college campuses to be like resorts You say that but the typical dorm room offers no privacy or air conditioning, and the showers and bathrooms are shared. They're similar in nature to SROs which the US pretty much abolished anywhere else, but way more expensive. And then universities have the audacity to demand that students live in them freshman year, even though living off campus would be cheape…
...demand that students live in them freshman year What? I've been watching movies and series made in USA for decades and didn't know that. I assumed that students living there was a way to save money or the parents wanted it. I had no idea it was required. If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents?
A prestigious residential university is the student's whole life. Leaving its boundaries is a special event. You eat, sleep, study, exercise, work, etc. with your classmates around the clock. Like a monastery. Administrators are not just engineering the content of lecture. They are engineering the group of classmates in the library at 12:45am puzzling out together what the lecture meant. Students who only show up on campus for scheduled classes throw a wrench in those plans. Hence the mandate to live on campus.
This has always been the image of college in the United States. The alleged change is that conditions are getting less monastic.
This mandate can relax after freshmen year because at that point you've integrated. You'll take an apartment with some friends in the neighborhood, but you won't really be leaving. The university may no longer be your landlord and your grocer, but your landlord and your grocer will be doing 99% of their business with university-affiliated customers. The neighborhood is still campus, de facto if not de jure. You're still immersed. Technically some students may use this freedom to move across town or back in with their parents, but the mandatory year on campus has brought this risk acceptably low.
When it works, it works well. I have memories from late nights in the library and from Saturday evenings in the theater control booth that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. But many schools in their search for prestige are trying to force this on kids who don't want it, and on top of that are failing to deliver.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#448Earlier 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…
Speaking as a dual US/Italian citizen there are some things I would add to your picture (which surprised me when I first learned them). I should also add, my picture is a bit dated since I last looked at this in the early 2000's but a lot of this is still true: US vs Italian "high school" - Finishing Italian secondary education is most equivalent to US high school + at least the first year of most US universities - I…
US high school education is not uniform throughout the country.
Are you going by some states' requirements here or are you assuming some amount of AP credits?
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#449Earlier 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…
US is great for Masters levels and above, where there is indeed such a thing as a world-class specialists helping shape the next generation of experts. If you're thinking about college though, that doesn't churn out experts. The material is well-known, and IMO it's more important to have great teachers available to answer your questions than to have world-class research experts on the brochure. Great teachers are als…
The best math professor I had was atrocious at teaching. If not down right abusive.
Taught me how to ask the right questions. How to capture requirements and learn on my own.
Top Universities aren’t their to teach. They are their to empower you to teach yourself and explore deep in areas. While also learning the fundamentals that are necessary for this enablement.
That is drastically different than the average ranked schools.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
Equal funding, yes, but not necessarily to the same sports. They're allowed to take into account interest and participation. Otherwise, wouldn't we see million-dollar coaches for women's college football teams too? (I actually don't know of any women's college football teams, for that matter)
I never said equal sports; but pretty much any women's sport doesn't draw in enough ticket sales to justify its existence based on profits alone.
Almost no college sports, men's or women's, are profitable. I don't understand what you're trying to say.