521–530 of 588 posts
I look to the UK as an example. The government only guarantees $10,000 in student loans so most programs coincidentally cost less than $10,000. Are there exceptions? Yes, but for the most part this holds true.
Not a complete solution but does significantly help to address the blank check issue.
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.
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…
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…
> the price has gone up because students are responsible for more of the cost. That is not how prices work, the prices can't go up if the only buyers have no money. The price went up because they got access to credit. To government mandated credit.
College graduate parents are going to try very hard to send their kids to college, and today, the vast majority of students at 4 year colleges come from families with college graduate parents. When tuitions were low, this did not require much sacrifice for those parents. When prices went up, those parents continued to send their kids to college, making greater sacrifices, but often without taking out a loan (at least for public universities). Today, 42% of undergraduates at public universities have no debt.[0]
No doubt loans also had an effect -- among other things, they made it easier for state politicians to reduce support for public universities. But since 40% of students at public universities have no debt, and costs increased more than 5 fold, it is hard to argue that loans were the major factor driving up the cost. To support the loan driving argument, it would be useful to see relationship between the fraction of students with loans and college costs. Simply saying that costs went up when loans became more available ignores many other changes in education finance.
[0] https://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/college-costs-...
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> Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China, Having a homogeneous, single-language, single market of 350 million, and 1.4 billion people, respectively, is an enormous competitive advantage that Europe cannot replicate, without doing away with sovereignty and brainwashing ~80% of its population. And despite all that, the quality of life of the average European is pr…
Counterpoint - Israel. Tiny country, unique language, way more success in tech and VC per capita than Europe.
I don't think I have a single thing in my home made by an Israeli brand (And I don't use Waze, and either way, it's Google's now). I have quite a few European-branded items, though.
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> If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents? The uni I worked for eventually rolled out that policy after the initial "all freshmen live in dorms now" backlash, but it's a tiny fraction of the student population whose parents live in town. State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers, for obscure reasons involving a mistrust of European politics.
> State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers Probably because its cheaper to buy lot of land away from population centers.
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...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?
> If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents? The uni I worked for eventually rolled out that policy after the initial "all freshmen live in dorms now" backlash, but it's a tiny fraction of the student population whose parents live in town. State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers, for obscure reasons involving a mistrust of European politics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some state university systems the inflation-adjusted total funding has actually decreased. For example, the University of California system was budgeted about $2.1 billion in state money in 1990, which is $4.3 billion in 2020 dollars. At the time, there were 9 campuses, serving 125,000 undergraduates, in a state with population 30 million. Fast-forward to 2020, and the system is budgeted $3.9 billion in state fund…
You're cherrypicking by focusing on UC in isolation. Higher education funding in California has gone up from ~5.5 billion to ~16 billion nominal from 1990 to now. Overall funding has gone up - it was just focused on community colleges at the expense of UC, as it should be to avoid exacerbating economic inequality.
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Sure. But what I'm wondering is what subsidies you're referring to. Are you talking about grants and loans that students get, or maybe federal grant money for research?
These organizations literally directly receive money from the government. Students grants are a factor too, but they are owned and financed in large part by the State. That's called a subsidy. They are losing money, that the taxpayer shoulders.
Tuition and fees -> $1.8 bb
Government appropriations (it looks like this is what you're referring to as direct subsidies?) -> $ 470 mm
Grants and contracts -> $862 mm
Sales & Services University -> $543 mm
Sales & Services Health System -> $3.3 bb
Sales & Services OSU Physicians -> $480 mm
Gifts and Endowment -> $380 mm
Negligible other items -> $100 mm or something.
So what subsidies are you referring to? Happy to look at a different university if you want to provide an example.
[1]https://busfin.osu.edu/sites/default/files/12_a_fy21_budget_...
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Unfortunately I can't reply, but I'm not sure why you're only considering government appropriations with respect to tuition instead of the entire budget. Seems a bit selective to me.