Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

shrewdcuriosity.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 326 posts

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

#271

Post by dragonwriter »

memish wrote: post #65
hackererror404 wrote: post #28

Might be an unpopular opinion... but this is exactly why we shouldn't do student loan debt forgiveness. The root core of the issue wouldn't at all be addressed and it would actually be a signal to universities and students alike, that Universities can charge more, and students can continue to take out larger loans because... they might be forgiven at some future point in time.

Student debt is mostly held by the richer half of the US population. Serious question: would it do more good if instead of giving money to people with student debt, you gave money to people without it? The first test of a potential policy is whether it's better than doing exactly the opposite. If you can't even prove that, it's probably not a good policy. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1521112550770946048

> Student debt is mostly held by the richer half of the US population

It's mostly held by the federal government.

It's mostly owed by the richer half, but that's misleading when it comes to impact.

Sure, households in the bottom half of the top quintile have twice the average student loan debt of those in the bottom quintile, they also have more than 10 times the income. The average student debt in the bottom quintile ($25,030) is about the upper income limit ($27Kish as of 2020) of the bottom quintile, while the average in the bottom half of the top quintile (80-89th percentile, $51,380) is a little.more than 1/3 the lower limit ($143K in 2020) of the top quintile. (And the upper half of the top income quintile actually has a lower average student debt that the bottom half, or the whole of the next highest income quintile, not just a lower average student debt to income ratio.)

The share of households with any student debt and the average household student debt-to-income ratio decreases consistently with household income.

See, https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-stu... and https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-...

EDIT:

To directly answer your question:

> Serious question: would it do more good if instead of giving money to people with student debt, you gave money to people without it?

Would it do more good to relieve 75% of bottom-income-quintile households (student debt relief) or 25% (anti student debt relief)? Clearly the former.

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

#272

Post by bumby »

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…

>Why would the fact that the loans are now from the government mean that universities no longer had to compete on costs?

I think an economist would say that the loans increase the number of "customers" who could now afford to go to college. Accordingly, when the demand increases faster than the supply, an economist would say increases prices are the result. There's an old op-ed by former Education Secretary William Bennett that gave rise to the "Bennett Hypothesis", where he said,

"If anything, increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increase … Federal student aid policies do not cause college price inflation, but there is little doubt that they help make it possible."

However, I've casually seen a bit of research that refutes this claim and instead states the primary driver of tuition increases is reduced public funding.

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

#273

Post by ChainOfFools »

jedberg wrote: post #261
the_only_law wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I must be misinterpreting, because I’m he way I read this now, you can’t get into the school system without having gone to HS in California?

The UC system accepts out of state admits but they have always paid full tuition. In state residents get a discount (which used to be 100%). But they also guarantee that they will admit 9% of state grads.

The 9% merit bar is increasingly being circumvented by students electing to take one or two semesters of community college and take advantage of the 30% transfer rate into the UC system enjoyed by full-time students of those schools.

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

#274

Post by [deleted] »

Mc91 wrote: post #12

Western Europeans seem to have figured out how to get a good, affordable college education without this sort of thing. Some Europeans I talked to said the government even gives them a per diem for spending money or what have you while they go to college. They don't seem to have onerous debt. Just like high medical costs, or school shootings (nineteen children were just killed by a gunman at a school in the US, for th…

[deleted]

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

#275

Post by the_only_law »

Xeronate wrote: post #239
the_only_law wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is more likely caused by grad school being a poor investment for the average American but a great investment for a foreign student looking to get a job in America.

Yeah this was my initial thought as well. In fairness, the program was also somewhat niche.

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

#276

Post by bumby »

devwastaken wrote: post #192
Agamus wrote: post #24

"The solution is and always has been to cut the fluff from the academies. For context, go add up the salaries the 'student services' area of the expensive school of your choice. Having worked for one such office for ~15 years, the most appalling part was that they are largely antagonistic toward the faculty and mission of the schools. The waste is dizzying." I made the above comment on another thread with a similar t…

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…

>Across the board no more public funding, if it's worthwhile then private industry will fund it like they do for any other trade.

If you think university is solely vocational training, then this makes sense. However, that leaves a lot, including fundamental research unfunded. Research seems to suggest that reductions in public funding is the single most important variable in increases in tuition. I'd be worried that your proposal either exacerbates the problem or creates a whole new set of problems.

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

#277

Post by schlauerfox »

devwastaken wrote: post #192
Agamus wrote: post #24

"The solution is and always has been to cut the fluff from the academies. For context, go add up the salaries the 'student services' area of the expensive school of your choice. Having worked for one such office for ~15 years, the most appalling part was that they are largely antagonistic toward the faculty and mission of the schools. The waste is dizzying." I made the above comment on another thread with a similar t…

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…

So Democrats fund institutions and Republicans want them to go away entirely, is what I'm reading from this.

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

#278

Post by hnburnsy »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #127
dap wrote: post #53

There’s no data in this article. In his recent book, Ron Lieber argues that the actual price paid hasn’t gone up nearly so much as the sticker price because of the increasing ubiquity of merit aid (which is terribly named). How does that factor in? He also points out that people’s expectations about what colleges provide have gone up. People expect small class sizes, mental health services, etc. If you argue colleges…

Agreed. The closest thing this post has to data is the chart of increasing tuition, and despite the claims of 1993 being an inflection point, the graph doesn't actually demonstrate that. If anything, there's a sudden increase in the rate of growth in the 2000s that would be interesting to understand, but since the article likely started with the conclusion and worked backwards, it's no surprise that's not explored.

> I want to know where you think it’s going and why you think that

My daughter had four simultaneous academic advisors (general, college, and two honors) during her undergrad, so I think it's going to pay too many administrators for duplicate services or services way beyond the mission of education. Why do I think this, because of this and other duplication\excesses we saw.

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

#279

Post by lapcat »

willcipriano wrote: post #247
lovich wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is college solely the domain of the upper middle class? Additionally we subsidize people of all wealth classes for things which have a social good that most people don’t seem to have a problem with. For example subsidies for solar panels mostly go to the wealthy+upper middle class, but it still benefits everyone.

> Is college solely the domain of the upper middle class? Pretty much. At least the sort of degrees that leave you 100k+ in debt with no way to repay it. Poor kids don't have the luxury of making mistakes like that. > for example subsidies for solar panels mostly go to the wealthy+upper middle class, but it still benefits everyone. Only if you ignore opportunity costs. Those same dollars could've resolved food insecu…

> Pretty much. At least the sort of degrees that leave you 100k+ in debt with no way to repay it. Poor kids don't have the luxury of making mistakes like that.

How do you figure? Poor kids qualify for federally subsidized student loans.

I suspect the whole debate is a bit skewed because it tends to ignore admissions. You can't go to an expensive college if you can't get admitted to an expensive college. Your family background and wealth tends to be a big factor in whether kids can get admitted to college, for many reasons.

It seems to be assumed that poor kids are just more "prudent" and other kids are recklessly throwing money away. More likely is just that poor kids get admitted to more expensive schools at a lower rate. The whole point of student loans is that they're taken by people who can't afford to pay for college upfront.

If poor kids are passing up the opportunity to go to great schools for purely financial reasons, why would we even celebrate that, instead of mourning their lost opportunities? I suspect the reality, however, is that poor kids aren't getting well prepped for college admissions, for well-known social reasons. That's not fair either, but I think it's cynical to try to play poor people and middle class people against each other just because middle class kids understandably want upward mobility — which poor kids want too, but simply have less access to such opportunities.

It's always weird when people mention the average lifetime earnings of college graduates, because you have to ask yourself why the so-called "prudent" poor kids who don't go to college are passing that up. It just feels to me like people want to shut down all upward mobility, and punish the ambitious middle class kids for even trying. What's the alternative to taking on big student loan debt, besides "staying in your place" and letting rich kids who can pay for expensive things upfront have all the best opportunities?

The other thing is that ambitious middle class parents and teachers are pushing their kids to go to college, indeed the best college possible, even if the kids aren't really ready for it or know what they want to do with their life yet. Everyone is telling the kids they have to go to college, that they can't get a job without a degree, etc. The pressure on kids from adults is massive. It's practically propaganda or brainwashing. There's nothing these adults love more than to brag about their kids, who end up as pawns in the social one-upmanship game of the adults.

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

#280

Post by taurath »

dap wrote: post #158
taurath wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this in some ways just growing up and directly having experience with the intricacies of a big system? All those new things sound like considerations that were there before, yes even in the vaunted 90s to me. Maybe the average role of parent has changed - I sorta remember college being perceived culturally as roughly a time to go be an adult, make your own choices haven taken a rough idea of the path, and get o…

> Isn’t this in some ways just growing up and directly having experience with the intricacies of a big system? From what I've read, I don't think so. The underlying considerations may not have changed. But societal awareness of various problems has increased, causing both parents and students to ask things like "how many mental health counselors do you have for your student body?" or "what's the waiting time for an a…

That example sounds to me a lot like a university taking on things they shouldn’t need to do, but have to because there’s nothing else to take them on.

I wonder how many counselors they have and how short wait times for appointments are in European countries where higher education costs either nothing or a small amount compared to median incomes

Post reply on HN