Supply and demand is making education unaffordable. The government subsidizes student loans which increases demand of course, but they subsidize at such an irrational rate it also gives colleges a blank check to charge whatever they want.
Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
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Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#62Given that this is quillette one would think they would be hesitant to question the wise and steady hand of the free market. Surely the rationally-acting rational actors at all of these institutions are acting rationally in accordance with rationality? After all, we live in a time when any "entrepreneur" can affix his name to a suburban sprawl wasteland strip mall storefront, open a University, and get accredited by…
I didn't realize that guaranteed loans and government subsidies are part of the free market.
If every player gets them, they could be.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet education costs were exponentially lower until about 1-2 decades ago where they exploded. Despite demand being ridiculously high even in the past.
Reduced state funding is a significant component of rapidly rising higher ed costs in the US. https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...
The article cites a $6.6 billion reduction in state funding. There are 14 million students in US public universities. So this accounts for less than $500 per student. Not a significant factor to price increases.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then why is this only mainly a US problem?
Student loans are easily secured and, relative to the size of the loans, cheap money.
This is the reason - because we are lending to anyone and everyone. It’s similar to subprime - no need to prove ability to pay the loan back. Only you can’t discharge student loans with bankruptcy so it’s almost worse in the long run. It’s predatory lending by another name.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#65I think the article misses the root cause here. Drastically increased availability of loan-based financial aid means far more more money in the system, which means the prices go up. The article nails the cause of more administrators--the schools have more money to spend and need to spend it--but completely misses the reason schools are able to charge so much more these days.
More money in the system doesn’t generally drive prices up in other areas due to supply and demand. Instead you get very expensive options for people with more money and cheap options for the cost cautious.
Collage is largely an exception to that as elite schools don’t charge 100+x the average the way say watches, clothing, etc do, and most people aren’t going with the low cost options.
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#66Given that this is quillette one would think they would be hesitant to question the wise and steady hand of the free market. Surely the rationally-acting rational actors at all of these institutions are acting rationally in accordance with rationality? After all, we live in a time when any "entrepreneur" can affix his name to a suburban sprawl wasteland strip mall storefront, open a University, and get accredited by…
University education in the US is very far from a free market. They’re kinda the worst of both worlds: massively subsidized by the state and federal governments, with very little government oversight.
What man or law or king can stop me from opening a university and getting it accredited?
None.
Several open every year. All you need is the capital and that’s what we’re all about, baby!
And then you can get the same subsidies and low levels of oversight as the big boys!
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#67Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t want to go there! The buildings aren’t as nice, the dorms are cramped and drab, there aren’t as many resources, the food sucks, the Wi-Fi is spotty, heck even the website sucks. Why is this? Because they don’t have the human or financial resources to do so. You g…
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…
>Colleges with quality gain prestige
How do you define quality in this sense?
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#68Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t want to go there! The buildings aren’t as nice, the dorms are cramped and drab, there aren’t as many resources, the food sucks, the Wi-Fi is spotty, heck even the website sucks. Why is this? Because they don’t have the human or financial resources to do so. You g…
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…
Yes.
The other side to the problem that most commenters here are missing is something that is much easier to see if you are employed by the school (as I used to be). There are dozens of layers of bloat and positions that exist only to make Doing Stuff (for values of Stuff that include both Research and Teaching) as slow as possible. Even getting a door fixed -- to stop the door stuck open alarm going off -- took multiple days and multiple people, and not because we had trouble getting a hold of someone. I got decent at navigating this stuff and acquired a reputation as a fixer, which I was all too pleased to move on from, but I sure did become aware of all the people I had to keep happy. There were a lot of them.
I firmly believe that at least half of those staff positions (not people, but positions) could have been eliminated with nothing of value lost. It was kind of ridiculous, and it's one of the reasons I don't work for a tier 1 research university anymore.
(These jobs also tend to be excellent sinecures and attract the difficult sort of person, often by virtue of who your coworkers are going to be, but that's another story.)
Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#69Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t want to go there! The buildings aren’t as nice, the dorms are cramped and drab, there aren’t as many resources, the food sucks, the Wi-Fi is spotty, heck even the website sucks. Why is this? Because they don’t have the human or financial resources to do so. You g…
> You get what you pay for. Yes - loudly signalling that the parents can blow $100K/year on an exclusive country club-cum-college for their kids, and never miss it. Treatment #1 - Immediately start treating the $$$$$$-no-object "colleges" as for-profit luxury resort corporations. Donations NOT deductible, fully subject to property taxes, zero state/federal money for anything, rights to have their own police forces ya…
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Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
#70Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t want to go there! The buildings aren’t as nice, the dorms are cramped and drab, there aren’t as many resources, the food sucks, the Wi-Fi is spotty, heck even the website sucks. Why is this? Because they don’t have the human or financial resources to do so. You g…
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…
I respectfully disagree.
It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way.
No, prestige is based on awareness and reputation. That can be gained a lot of ways. Recently a lot of schools have gained reputation through athletics. If you are good at one thing people think you are good at everything and so that reputation becomes overall reputation.
Three repeatable anecdotes regarding college enrollments:
1. When a college builds a new fancy building they see an enrollment spike. Almost every time. Especially if it is student quality of life focused.
2. Colleges that have lowered tuition to increase price transparency have consistently seen enrollment drops.
3. When a college or University makes it to March Madness they see an enrollment bump.
Reputation is tied to many things. Academic quality is hard to quantify or measure and so any reputation based on academics is apocryphal and based in word of mouth.