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Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

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Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#11

Post by bsilvereagle »

wcummings wrote: post #8
withdavidli wrote: post #4

I'm very opinionated about colleges / tuition. Many people find value in it, or they justify it somehow like they couldn't get the education / experience some other, more affordable, way. My thoughts on the solution is the same for housing increases. Get rid of the government loans. In this situation also make student loans able to discharge by bankruptcy, that way banks will think twice about it as well. The easier…

What positions require "BA in any field"?

Last I heard, in some cities you had to have a BA to be a barista.

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#12

Post by carsongross »

aliston wrote: post #9
carsongross wrote: post #3

When it ends it be non-linear: the debt system that we've built our economy and currency on is going to eventually throw up all over itself as we reach Keynes' "long run" and, at that point, experience consumers simply won't have the choice to screw themselves with unproductive debt. EDIT: And, of course, the elephant in the room is the fascist government/corporate cooperation on student debt, which is now larger and…

I'm not sure what you mean by "throw up" but my prediction is that a large portion of these education loans will end up being forgiven. It's housing bubble 2.0 and there's just no other way around it -- millennials leveraged up after being told for years that college was the path to prosperity and simply haven't seen the prosperity. The default rate on student loans is way up because, by and large, we're not making a…

It's easy to say that "they will be forgiven" but that's a huge evaporation of debt in the system: these are assets being marked at par in pension funds, etc.

Students are poor and don't vote. That's why it will be different this time.

EDIT: (I really should take more time in my replies) Also, let me say that I am in 100% agreement with you about the morality of the situation and how GenY (and GenX) were sold a bill of goods on the debt issue. But I think we are at the end of the line (in the next decade or so) and now it's a matter of who takes the most pain. I wouldn't bet on that being the banks, insurers or pension funds, and evidence so far confirms my non-bet.

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#14

Post by parennoob »

"Administrators...blamed students, who were supposedly demanding all manner of luxuries and would not be denied. “Students today want carpeting, they want furniture, they want voice mail,” an administrator at a Nevada university told USA Today for a 1997 story about the tuition spiral. "

I believe this is one of the biggest generally unaddressed aspects of this problems. The large public university near me has near-luxury dorms, a bunch of massive flat screen TVs in libraries and the student centers (which don't serve much of a purpose apart from broadcasting random news or campus stuff -- a couple devices would suffice) and keeps on revamping equipment / OSes in the general access computer labs (despite the fact that most students have their own laptops, and use the computer center ones for relatively mundane tasks like quickly checking facebook or typing out a Word document). The official reason given for this is, "Well, we won't be able to attract the best students if we don't offer them the best amenities."; and from all accounts, it works -- student enrollment, specially the wealthy ones, keeps going up.

As long as parents keep rewarding these lavish universities by saying, "Wow! Look how great that is. If Bobby hangs out in an expensive looking place, maybe he'll get a high-paying job by some sort of osmosis! Let's totally send him to the University of Money-Down-the-Flatscreen-Hole." instead of taking a hard-nosed look at the return on investment they are getting, this vicious cycle is going to continue.

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#15

Post by forrestthewoods »

thetruthishard wrote: post #10

It's a free market -- tuition keeps going up because you, your neighbors, and every other American, is willing to pay for it. Prices will keep going up until people are so strained that they're not willing or able to pay anymore.

But it's not a free market. It's a market artificially inflated by the government via Federal loans, guaranteed pay back to the banks, and debt that's non-dismissable via bankruptcy. Those may or may not better than the alternative, but they sure as hell mean it's not a free market.

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#16

Post by bsilvereagle »

parennoob wrote: post #14

"Administrators...blamed students, who were supposedly demanding all manner of luxuries and would not be denied. “Students today want carpeting, they want furniture, they want voice mail,” an administrator at a Nevada university told USA Today for a 1997 story about the tuition spiral. " I believe this is one of the biggest generally unaddressed aspects of this problems. The large public university near me has near-l…

I don't know if it's parents so much as entitled students. You may enjoy some of the discussion here: http://www.reddit.com/27h7pl/

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#17

Post by michaelochurch »

Democrats today worship education, while Republicans today worship the market, neither of which faith has brought us close to a solution.

Extreme leftists cheerlead higher education under the belief that if you give the proles a leadership education, they'll eventually revolt and overthrow the capitalists. After all, the undergraduate experience was designed for aristocrats, and if people go from young aristocrat to prole in one post-graduate summer, they might be pissed off enough to take up arms and overthrow governments, like what almost happened in the 1960s student riots. It doesn't happen that way, however, so they (the extreme leftists) don't get what they want.

Lazy centrists and liberals push for widespread higher education because they believe education to be a magical fairy dust that can be sprinkled on inequality to make it go away. (In fact, tuition and credentialism and admissions-- nonacademic admissions elements being the worst offenders-- do the opposite.) They don't get what they want.

Right-wing, religious nutcases throw their weight behind religious education because they think it will help them in their losing cultural war against modernity. They don't get what they want.

The center-right, increasingly fascist, corporate elite cheerleads widespread education because it gives HR departments a sorting mechanism where the people being sorted do all the work, and pay exorbitant prices for the "privilege" of taking part in the indignity. As for this set of people (center-right), they are the ones who do get what they want.

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#18

Post by carsongross »

thetruthishard wrote: post #10

It's a free market -- tuition keeps going up because you, your neighbors, and every other American, is willing to pay for it. Prices will keep going up until people are so strained that they're not willing or able to pay anymore.

Free market indeed:

http://www.finaid.org/questions/bankruptcyexception.phtml

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#19

Post by adminprof »

I'm a professor at an ivy league university who has gotten some insight into the budgets. There's a few things that are often not reported in the media:

1) The tuition sticker price is going up, but the actual price paid remains about the same due to increasing financial aid given to students.

2) The largest cost driven in the past decade is partially due to a successful increase in recruiting+admitting underrepresented minorities and low-income students. Because of a program called "need blind" among many universities, students are admitted regardless of ability to pay. So when more of these students come, not only are they unable to pay tuition, but the university pays them a stipend which results in a double financial cost.

3) There are administrative programs that cost money and are not flat screen TVs and new buildings, and actually benefit students at the same time! This includes funding for student organizations, undergraduate research or teaching assistantship programs, writing centers and tutors, etc.

Re: Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition

#20

Post by Roboprog »

withdavidli wrote: post #4

I'm very opinionated about colleges / tuition. Many people find value in it, or they justify it somehow like they couldn't get the education / experience some other, more affordable, way. My thoughts on the solution is the same for housing increases. Get rid of the government loans. In this situation also make student loans able to discharge by bankruptcy, that way banks will think twice about it as well. The easier…

Absolutely! Let's get rid of the loans (like the ones I had to take to finish school in the late 80s), and go back to modest grants (like the ones I received in the early 80s) to pay for school.

Having been in college in the mid 80s, I got to watch first hand the defunding of higher education by Reaganism. Granted, "prop 13" in California started defunding schools 2 years earlier. I wonder if all of the boomers and WWIIers realized what they were getting back in 1980.

Of course, it was only in the 90s that I (personally, at least) could look back on the 80s and realize what a disaster Reaganism was visiting upon the US.

* unions busted * regressive income tax structure (i.e. - FICA/Medicaid rates greatly increased, counterbalancing "normal" income tax with high bottom end rate) * increase in immigration * increase in "free" trade * defunding of education and other public infrastructure

None of these were good for rank and file workers. As a result, the choice in the 21st century is pretty much "college", or "prison", due to the ability to find a job at all, or likely not. So, yeah, colleges (the leadership parasites in charge) are grabbing all they can, because that is the culture now.

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