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High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

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Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#221

Post by SoftTalker »

mfer wrote: post #190
etempleton wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article mentioned schools are no longer competing on price, but they are competing on features / services / amenities. It seems intuitive to cut those to reduce costs, but the market doesn’t want that even if people say that is what they want that is not how they vote with their dollar. The biggest declines in enrollments are at community colleges and state schools. Also counter intuitively when a college lowe…

Some of this situation is bad advice up front. I know numerous people who were guided by guidance counselors, schools, and loan folks to think that taking a large student debt would be just fine. Only to later have issues with it. Schools and loan folks have skin in the game so I can understand why they are pushing for more high priced loans. Why aren't school guidance counselors and school programs better preparing…

High schools in general do an extremely poor job at teaching financial literacy. The only education I had on the cost of debt and the time value of money were incidental story problems in math classes. The strangely named "home economics" classes were all about cooking and nutrition and sewing, not about buying vs. renting a house or buying a new vs. used car vs. leasing, or saving for retirement or emergencies.

It's no wonder many young people have no idea what a burden debt can be.

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#222

Post by Barracoon »

the_only_law wrote: post #116
pyrophane wrote: post #61

The academic industrial complex has since moved on to focusing on wealthy international students, a group that is even less cost sensitive than an American student with a blank check.

I really noticed this when reading the page for a grad school at a nearby university, maybe one of the students on any of the research teams in the department were American.

Were they not American or did they not have traditionally white Anglo-Saxon names?

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#223

Post by veilrap »

Agamus wrote: post #183
zoolily wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College costs have increased due to decreased state funding and increased regulation (both legal and from accreditors), which requires more administrative staff. Ironically, decreased state funding leads to an increase of administrative staff too, as universities invest in grant offices, development offices, and outreach departments in an attempt to find more funds.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is at least partially wrong. Are you only speaking of public universities? I worked at an expensive, private, liberal arts, non-profit college, where I witnessed revolting inefficiency. Do such schools receive _significant_ state funding? Any? One example of the waste I witnessed: at the end of the financial year, the student services departments where I worked would blow wha…

The spending all the money you have so that you don't lose it is a problem actually created by anti-corruption bureaucracy, and is very common in government funded areas.

The problem is that in an effort to avoid being wasteful, the bureaucracy aggressively tracks money spent, and forces a return of unused funds. This in turn disincentivizes saving because there is literally no benefit to spending efficiently or saving money for rough times, because those short term savings are immediately vacuumed back up by the higher level bureacracy.

Blaming student services departments for overspending is missing the root of the problem. I've seen the exact same issues in STEM research institutions.

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#224

Post by TimPC »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #157
TimPC wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work though because even the attractive degrees can declare bankruptcy based on having greater liabilities than assets immediately after finishing their degree. Allowing students to default on student loan debt without requiring a minimum time period to do so basically means no one can safely provide loans for any degrees regardless of income potential.

Sure - if you want to exchange your ability to get any financing for 7 years for ~$100k. Additionally, IIUC, you can't just declare bankruptcy because you feel like it. But maybe my understanding is incorrect.

Some people have far more than $100k in debt, so the tradeoff might be far more attractive.

If you're finishing undergrad at 22, your bankruptcy won't harm you for buying a house at 29-30 which is kind of when you want to buy a house anyways since saving up 25% takes a good amount of time. It seems like a very worthwhile trade to declare bankruptcy.

As for being allowed to declare, the time to do it is before you have a job. At this point you have debt higher than assets and no income so the case for bankruptcy is extremely clear.

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#225

Post by willcipriano »

lovich wrote: post #215
willcipriano wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem. I have no formal education and I pay the same rate of tax as a degree holder. Even under this system, I am subsidizing someone who has had considerably more privilege than myself.

Subsidizing others in a society is kind of a feature and not a bug

Subsidizing the poor, sure. Subsidizing the upper middle class? Not so much.

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#226

Post by at-fates-hands »

scottcodie wrote: post #184

I often think about the role of universities in the education process. It seems that universities are just profit maximizing entities. They don't care about student's education unless it impacts their reputation or ability to make more money. They give the bare minimum support to teachers to teach as well as bare minimum investment in processes like admissions. Seems like universities are doing exactly what you'd exp…

I have a degree in cultural anthropology and graduated in the mid-aughts. I remember several conversations about working at a university with my advisor. He basically told me not to, or do so very sparingly in order to have some income when you run into lean times with your research money.

Said he tries to keep people from getting pulled into the academia meat grinder. The politics, the intense competition for research grants, constantly fighting for tenure, the lack of support in their research - he didn't see it as a worthwhile pursuit compared to going after outside, private research money or working instead in the corporate world.

I could tell he was pretty jaded, but out of the five professors in the department, only one encouraged me to stay at the university and pursue a career in academia. Considering where academia has gone since then, I'm pretty happy I took their advice.

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#227

Post by dragonwriter »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #219

Wait, the claim doesn't match the little data presented and the primary claim is not examined or supported. 1) The Omnibus bill passed in 1993, but from the graph tuition was already increasing at 200% greater than inflation, and appears to have started in the mid 1980's; and 2) Why would the fact that the loans are now from the government mean that universities no longer had to compete on costs? The bill ultimately…

> The Omnibus bill passed in 1993, but from the graph tuition was already increasing at 200% greater than inflation,

What, you don't like pre hoc ergo propter hoc argument?

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#228

Post by vlovich123 »

This analysis seems flawed. Not only does it start outpacing inflation in 1980 as someone else noted, it fails to explain the tuition explosion that Canada has faced over a similar timespan.

It wouldn't surprise me if it was something more subtle, like globalisation and massive Chinese and Indian populations seeking tuition from abroad. On the other hand, that seems like a bad explanation since typically these students are gouged even worse than domestic students (at least they are in Canada).

Re: High tuition costs mostly stem from the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993

#229

Post by colpabar »

veilrap wrote: post #217
devwastaken wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a well known public uni. We can get state and federal funding for anything that aligns with democrat political talking points. We cannot get funding for basic tech and projects. We have a program where students design and build actual tech related directly to their degree and future employment, and we have to beg people to fund us. The school nor grants will find us in any way yet we are entirely bound to a…

My experience in higher ed is exactly the opposite. Funding is quite easy to get for STEM research projects through grants and other research programs. Projects that just "align with political talking points" tend to be much more challenging to fund because there's significantly less money available in those domains. Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense…

> Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense for the government to fund and subsidize it to some extent because it produces a good ROI for both the society and the individuals.

Sure, but we tried that, and tuitions are sky high and everyone is in tons of debt, right? Cutting all public funding may be extreme, but something obviously needs to change.

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