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

The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#101

Post by xorcist »

rayiner wrote: post #83
xorcist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is a country with the population of New York, but have one (sometimes two) universitites in a global top ten ranking of their respective subjects. So if you must compare to something US, do it with a large city.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki... . Sweden has two universities in the top ~100. Boston has three. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh have two, mostly in the top 50.

That's because your source is coarse grained. Look at a list of specific subjects, in my example medicine (and an old list of maritime biology institutions, hence "sometimes"), and you'll find the counter examples.

But hey, I'm cherrypicking data here, so it's not relevant to anything else than as a counter data point to a very broad and wrong statement.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#102

Post by xorcist »

federico3 wrote: post #54
xorcist wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to put numbers in perspective. Every US citizen spends $98k over their expected lifetime on the military, for example. An average Swedish citizen spends $46k on state funded university and higher education over their expected lifetime (which is only slightly higher). That said, it should be obvious that the Sweden model doesn't suit conditions in the US (one is a small country in Northern Europe, one i…

Great datapoint! Source?

I took the military speding figures from worldbank.org, and higher education spending from the Swedish national budget for 2015. Population and life expectancy figures from Wikipedia.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#103

Post by yodsanklai »

nickysielicki wrote: post #99
yodsanklai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's take my compilers class as an example. I go to a 75 minute lecture 2 times a week and I do about 4 hours of homework a week. I do this over 18 weeks. That's only roughly 120 hours of study over the course of a semester. That's only as many hours as most full time employees work every 3 weeks! The comparison doesn't seem fair. First, I suppose you have others classes at the same time. And if you don't, you're…

> Are you sure that you'd be able to do that? supervised education helps you to pace yourself, focus on what is important and to keep motivated over the long run. The actual content is maybe the least important. I'm 100% sure. The motivation is all there. Why would I be in this class if I had to be coaxed into learning about it? I think I can learn more in one long sitting than piecing away at any given topic. That's…

Maybe that's the best lesson college is teaching you. In your professional life, you'll have to deal with a lot of frustration working with other people in a way that you haven't chosen!! you have to make the best out of it.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#105

Post by jedrek »

DougWebb wrote: post #98
jkestner wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the year-off strategy is a good one. Too many people go back to grad school almost just for a re-do. 18 is too young to pick a career - I switched majors twice in the first two years. I want to formulate a better set of options and incentives for my kids. To start, I could chip in for some tuition if they take a year off, or just minimally support them for that year as long as they leave home. The pull of pee…

18 is too young to pick a career Pretty much everyone throughout human history, outside of recent Western history, would probably disagree with that. By 18 you were expected to be a self-supporting adult. I think 18 is too young to pick a career only if you wait until you're 18 to start thinking about it. If you're encouraged and allowed to explore your interests earlier, you should have a pretty good idea of what yo…

I think people have a completely idealized idea of the past. Yes, by 18 you had a career: you were a farmer or you'd been an apprentice for some time. Your formal education had probably been over for quite a few years. That was 100 years ago, 60 years you would've gone to a trade school.

Youd also probably be living with your parents until you got a job, often longer, depending on how well off you were.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#106

Post by panzagl »

DougWebb wrote: post #98
jkestner wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the year-off strategy is a good one. Too many people go back to grad school almost just for a re-do. 18 is too young to pick a career - I switched majors twice in the first two years. I want to formulate a better set of options and incentives for my kids. To start, I could chip in for some tuition if they take a year off, or just minimally support them for that year as long as they leave home. The pull of pee…

18 is too young to pick a career Pretty much everyone throughout human history, outside of recent Western history, would probably disagree with that. By 18 you were expected to be a self-supporting adult. I think 18 is too young to pick a career only if you wait until you're 18 to start thinking about it. If you're encouraged and allowed to explore your interests earlier, you should have a pretty good idea of what yo…

Sure, if your career is subsistence farmer.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#107

Post by muzz »

graycat wrote: post #23

The OP keeps talking about the tuition increases . But as far as I could tell, the OP was considering only, call it, tuition list prices . But, with scholarships, various forms of financial aid , etc., maybe often the list price is not the actual price , that is, what the school actually receives from the student (and their family). So, the OP didn't explain how much the actual price has changed over the decades. E.g…

Yes this article, and many others, employ the "sticker price fallacy" to advance their claims.

As David Leonhardt put it, tuition is like sticker prices at Joseph A. Bank "If you take Joseph A. Bank’s sticker prices literally, you don’t understand its business."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/upshot/how-the-government-...

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#108

Post by xorcist »

benihana wrote: post #70
xorcist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is a country with the population of New York, but have one (sometimes two) universitites in a global top ten ranking of their respective subjects. So if you must compare to something US, do it with a large city.

How about don't compare a European nation to a large city, do it to the US equivalent: A state.

No, you shouldn't. European nation states bear little resemblance to federal states, neither historically, culturally or economically.

The point was not that comparisons between states and cities are somehow more valid, but to illustrate that the differences in higher education are most likely due to the vast population difference.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#109

Post by muzz »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #15
pdkl95 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article seems to have gone out of its way to list a lot of aggregate numbers that increased while comparing it to per-student tuition. Also, there could be more factors than just the increased percentage of people who go to college. The tuition increase could also include increased administrative costs or spending on extracurricular activities such sports. I know that when I was attending UC Davis, we saw an inc…

The article mentioned the large increase in administrators.

Yes this amorphous group of "administrators". Wonder why no article ever mentions the actual job titles/functions of these administrators? I suspect they are largely athletics-related, and by not providing details the authors can rely on readers to assume that these "administrators" are instead useless bureaucrats.
Post reply on HN