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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

#461

Post by bhawks »

Actual data showing that nothing significant happened to the tuition trendline on/around 1993: https://usafacts.org/articles/college-tuition-has-increased-...

Usafacts.org is a trove of data that is useful to have discussion around - op (and folks in this thread ;) ) don't need to rely on their gut feelings.

In addition to 1993 being boring, the majority of expenses are far and away instruction related versus student services (the luxury college memes folks are taking about isn't strictly true).

I think the most interesting point is that over the past 40 years, all types of expenses continue to grow at the same rate. (Inflation adjusted of course) There doesn't seem to be any ceiling in sight or any meaningful changes in what colleges will spend money on. Naturally tuition costs are on similar upward trend to balance this - and folks still somehow find the finances to pay for it.

This doesn't seem sustainable but it also doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. Too many students trying to do 'the right thing' are being sucked into this meat grinder.

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

#462

Post by dragonwriter »

bhawks wrote: post #461

Actual data showing that nothing significant happened to the tuition trendline on/around 1993: https://usafacts.org/articles/college-tuition-has-increased-... Usafacts.org is a trove of data that is useful to have discussion around - op (and folks in this thread ;) ) don't need to rely on their gut feelings. In addition to 1993 being boring, the majority of expenses are far and away instruction related versus student…

> I think the most interesting point is that over the past 40 years, all types of expenses continue to grow at the same rate. (Inflation adjusted of course) There doesn't seem to be any ceiling in sight or any meaningful changes in what colleges will spend money on. Naturally tuition costs are on similar upward trend to balance this - and folks still somehow find the finances to pay for it.

I think you have it backwards: the increasing ability to extract tuition is driving total spending up, because once you have the money, you are going to spend it, not expenses going up an dragging tuition with it.

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

#463

Post by quietbritishjim »

bjt wrote: post #458
jlebar wrote: post #437

The 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…

> the government does not succeed if students are stuck in debt forever. Therefore when government gives the loans, incentives are aligned and lending goes down. That's a double edged sword. Yeah, the government doesn't have the profit motive that predatory lenders do, but they also lack the incentive to say no to students who are borrowing money to study things that won't do much to help them pay it back. Politician…

In a system of loans directly from the government, there is still some mild disincentive against lending to people that won't pay it back, even if it is tempered against some other incentives. What's more, a government body certainly can and surely would limit total loan amounts for affordability reasons.

More to the point, the comparison here is against regular private lenders, but instead against private lenders with government guarantees. Those have no disincentive whatsoever to avoid people who can't pay money back or to limit the loan amount. In fact they have a very strong positive incentive: there's a guaranteed profit on every loan and it's proportional to loan amount. What's more, if you cap the loan amount then the "customer" might use a competitor with a higher cap, so you lose the whole of the loan.

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

#464

Post by kristopolous »

dehrmann wrote: post #456
bonoboTP wrote: post #259

Earlier 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…

> things like sports stadiums and teams I went to a large school in one of the big NCAA athletic conferences. Their stadium cost around $100M in 2020 dollars, and they bring in roughly $100M in revenue from all sports annually . They call football and basketball "revenue sports" because they fund all the others. I'm not sure how much tuition goes to sports, but the big ones are very self-sufficient. That, and they se…

Sure but that's just an adjacent business model with very little relationship to the core mission.

Universities could also say, run gambling halls, nightclubs, or any other business you can think of.

The criticism is they are distracted from their core purpose and mission in society, which certainly isn't to run large entertainment venues.

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

#465

Post by bhawks »

dragonwriter wrote: post #462
bhawks wrote: post #461

Actual data showing that nothing significant happened to the tuition trendline on/around 1993: https://usafacts.org/articles/college-tuition-has-increased-... Usafacts.org is a trove of data that is useful to have discussion around - op (and folks in this thread ;) ) don't need to rely on their gut feelings. In addition to 1993 being boring, the majority of expenses are far and away instruction related versus student…

> I think the most interesting point is that over the past 40 years, all types of expenses continue to grow at the same rate. (Inflation adjusted of course) There doesn't seem to be any ceiling in sight or any meaningful changes in what colleges will spend money on. Naturally tuition costs are on similar upward trend to balance this - and folks still somehow find the finances to pay for it. I think you have it backwa…

How do you demonstrate that one is causing the other?

Based on my baised observation of the local UC system I just don't see the types of personalities working there thinking about how to extract the last dime from students. What I do see though is very lax fiscal discipline and the inability to make even easy cost management choices. In this environment everyone just expects budgets to increase by x% each year. Then each year they realize - omg we have to increase tuition why does this keep happening?

I can not rely prove my idea - can you prove yours?

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

#466

Post by alkonaut »

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…

> what I look for is the strength of the top faculty

I think most people getting doing normal undergraduate program rarely notice where the top factulty is strong and where it isn't. I sure didn't in the first years of an education. Every university has better and worse departments (those with some reputation for its research, and "others"). I have seen nothing that suggests that the undergraduate education given by staff at the less-known departmenmts is worse than the education given at the "good" ones.

Of course, if you want to get a PhD or even take an advanced undergrad or PhD-class in a 4th or 5th year at a university, you'll notice where the skilled academics are. But the vast majority of the education done at an university is in the basic undergraduate classes given to hundreds of students every semester. It's the quality of that I think is most important, and I'm going to argue that it's probably not dependent on the number of Nobel Prize medals in the department.

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

#467

Post by dragonwriter »

jlebar wrote: post #437

The 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…

> c) TFA neglects to mention that you can take out up to $5500-7500 in government loans per year as an undergrad. https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized....

Your own source says $5,500-$12,500, not $5,500-$7,500.

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

#468

Post by [deleted] »

7thaccount wrote: post #312
lordnacho wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with the rankings is how they emphasise research. Why would it matter to an undergraduate how highly decorated his prof is? We used to joke that the more titles a guy had, the worse he was at teaching. I think this is true because the guys with the titles have moved on to managing research and finding funding, rather than having daily tasks to do with the research. I went to a very well known university that…

I went to a public university with a good engineering program. After freshman year I took most of the Edx circuits course from MIT to see what the ivy league education advantage would be. It was pretty much the exact same topics and lectures. I thought the MIT lecturer did a slightly better job and I'm sure all the students were smarter than me, but I feel like I learned the same things for a fraction of the cost.

[deleted]

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

#469

Post by burfog »

Qwertious wrote: post #352
robomartin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a potentially simple way to perhaps shave as much as 25% or more from the cost of STEM degrees in the US: Eliminate all non-STEM coursework from degree requirements. This could easily shave not only tens of thousands of dollars from a STEM degree but it would also cut it down by a year (if not more). I would also vector students who lack the proper foundation in say, language skills or the sciences, to take co…

Talk about removing non-STEM courses from university suggests a disagreement on what university is . IMO if you want to remove non-STEM courses, what you actually want is a trade school. University is all about learning outside of the normal narrow viewpoint, so removing everything outside the narrow viewpoint defeats the point. "But so what", you might say. Well, here's the problem: trade schools already exist, and…

The problem is accreditation and standardization. We know roughly what is in a BS degree for CS or any typical engineering. The baseline is mandated by the accreditor.

We don't value half the gunk that the accreditor demands, but universities like to make students pay for cheap filler gunk, and they get more influence over the accreditor than any normal employer would. It's really a cartel, with universities all colluding to waste about 2% of every student's life. For every 50 students, that's like a murder.

Employers would jump at the chance to hire somebody with a 4-year degree that is like the MS minus the AA. Replace the cheap filler gunk with more-advanced STEM classes.

Sadly that isn't offered, at least not in a widely-recognized way with standardization.

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