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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

#41

Post by ebiester »

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"?

In many cases, HR.

However, it is often a soft requirement. When comparing two resumes for an entry level position, the college graduate gets the benefit of the doubt. Four years as an assistant manager at Burger King, Subway, and a call center is seen as less valuable than a BA in lit.

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

#42

Post by Mikeb85 »

evan_ wrote: post #33
wcummings wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What positions require "BA in any field"?

I've heard this about substitute teaching.

Well it should be a requirement.

Where I live (Alberta, Canada) a 4 year degree is a bare minimum requirement to teach, most have an education degree which, in many Universities, requires a BA before you can get into the education faculty...

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

#43

Post by DanielBMarkham »

This is terrible.

You can't argue that universities charge more because they are able to, which is common sense, and also argue that we tried the free market (whatever that means) and it was part of the problem. E-gads, what a mess.

People today have roughly the same amount of money as they did 30 years ago. The cost of college education in terms of the amount of money people directly and immediately pay has not changed. It's not like we all became millionaires. What's happened is that we switched from grants to loans, which was supposed to allocate more risk on the student and banks, then we made sure that anybody that wanted a loan could get one, so there was no immediate penalty for making a bad choice.

We took a trade with tremendous uncertain future returns -- which degree I should get -- made sure everybody could get whatever they wanted, then pushed any pain far out into the future. Then we piled on by making the entire scheme immune from bankruptcy, taking out any risk that creditors might face! It's like we just kept the grants, but forced the student to pay for his own grant in terms of future debt. It's a incredibly terrible job of policy, no doubt, but the free market has nothing to do with it. If anything, it's a nice little experiment on how screwed up you can make a market before some kind of feedback mechanism kicks in. We took the purchaser out of the mix, then we took the lenders out. The only thing left is the political system, which seems wedded to the policies that led us here in the first place. Continuing down this road of idiocy, next up we should try to take the political system itself out of the mix. Perhaps we could have a constitutional "right" to an university education?

I will agree with the author that colleges charge more simply because they can. That's the way selling stuff works. You charge more until you start selling less. I will also agree that reporters (and some essayists) have great difficulty actually looking at the problem honestly.

This is the tragedy of our times, this indentured servitude we are placing on the next generation. Somebody is going to have to be a grown-up here and tell people what they don't want to hear: it is not in society's interests to guarantee the funding of little Junior's degree in underwater basket weaving. I don't see that person or party on the horizon, but here's hoping they show up soon.

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

#45

Post by tehwebguy »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #32
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…

> Get rid of the government loans. I'm going to make an argument I imagine many here will disagree with: perhaps the solution to the cost problem is to have publicly financed post-secondary education? Imagine this: the US government tells colleges it will pay $N per semester on behalf of any student who meets certain qualifications to attend that college. Colleges would be free to refuse to accept this, but with the…

Only if that $N cap must cover a minimum of near 100% of the salary could that even have an impact, IMO.

Without minimum coverage it's just a subsidy that will drive the cost of college up even more since every student would be able to afford a minimum of $N. It's virtually identical to the current loan landscape.

Example (broad strokes):

  Student Grant / yr     Minimum Coverage
              $5,000                 100%
             $10,000                  98%
                 ...
             $50,000                  90%
Couple this with removing government backed student loans for undergraduate altogether and now you've got a reasonable out-of-pocket maximum spend per student per year. In this table it would be $5k for a $50k school - if the school wants any gov help they have to manage their own tuition costs.

Obviously this would be sort of a disaster at first and these numbers are probably silly, I have no clue what the process of coming up with these numbers and adjusting them (somewhat less than 1200% over 30 years) would even look like.

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

#46

Post by jcalvinowens »

tehwebguy wrote: post #45
jcalvinowens wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get rid of the government loans. I'm going to make an argument I imagine many here will disagree with: perhaps the solution to the cost problem is to have publicly financed post-secondary education? Imagine this: the US government tells colleges it will pay $N per semester on behalf of any student who meets certain qualifications to attend that college. Colleges would be free to refuse to accept this, but with the…

Only if that $N cap must cover a minimum of near 100% of the salary could that even have an impact, IMO. Without minimum coverage it's just a subsidy that will drive the cost of college up even more since every student would be able to afford a minimum of $N. It's virtually identical to the current loan landscape. Example (broad strokes): Student Grant / yr Minimum Coverage $5,000 100% $10,000 98% ... $50,000 90% Cou…

> Without minimum coverage it's just a subsidy

Sorry, I was unclear: the idea would be that a college that accepts the $N tuition would be prohibited from charging the students attending any additional tuition.

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

#47

Post by tehwebguy »

tehwebguy wrote: post #45
jcalvinowens wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get rid of the government loans. I'm going to make an argument I imagine many here will disagree with: perhaps the solution to the cost problem is to have publicly financed post-secondary education? Imagine this: the US government tells colleges it will pay $N per semester on behalf of any student who meets certain qualifications to attend that college. Colleges would be free to refuse to accept this, but with the…

Only if that $N cap must cover a minimum of near 100% of the salary could that even have an impact, IMO. Without minimum coverage it's just a subsidy that will drive the cost of college up even more since every student would be able to afford a minimum of $N. It's virtually identical to the current loan landscape. Example (broad strokes): Student Grant / yr Minimum Coverage $5,000 100% $10,000 98% ... $50,000 90% Cou…

jcalvinowens: That makes way more sense (sorry, can't reply)

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

#48

Post by DanBC »

tehwebguy wrote: post #47
tehwebguy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if that $N cap must cover a minimum of near 100% of the salary could that even have an impact, IMO. Without minimum coverage it's just a subsidy that will drive the cost of college up even more since every student would be able to afford a minimum of $N. It's virtually identical to the current loan landscape. Example (broad strokes): Student Grant / yr Minimum Coverage $5,000 100% $10,000 98% ... $50,000 90% Cou…

jcalvinowens: That makes way more sense (sorry, can't reply)

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

#49

Post by michaelochurch »

pekk wrote: post #30
michaelochurch wrote: post #17

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…

What do Democrats have to do with "extreme leftists"? There is no remotely viable Communist party in the US, not even a Socialist party. Extreme leftists do not have any power in the US. People who don't want to go to college have always had the option of not going. The difficulty is when people want to go but it is not feasible for financial reasons. Some people think it is nice to help others do whatever it is they…

Read the whole post. I'm not just trashing the left or "Democrats". I'm critical of all political factions on this issue and point out that the most evil faction (the corporatists) is the only one that got what it wanted.

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

#50

Post by brazzy »

bullfight wrote: post #31

This has very little to do with some conspiracy between bankers and universities to indebt students and raise massive capital by massively expanding the university far beyond it's means. Deep into this article the author hits on what is really at the core of steep tuition inclines. A rapidly reducing share of university funding coming from state governments turning once public institutions into defacto privatized uni…

> In this chart [2] UWashington lays out in 2013 dollars that total tuition per student has been around 17,000 for 25 years

If true, that would make UWashington a shining beacon of frugality and equality (or a really low-end university). That tuition has been massively outpacing inflation is something I have heard from too many different sources to dobut, so the question is: Is UWashington lying in that paper, or is exploding tuition something that affects only a small number of universities (and thus students), and in the latter case why don't students switch to cheaper universities?

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