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

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem that simple, given he won a primary in which all of the other candidates promised more money than he did.

I still have no idea how he actually managed to win the primary. None of the Democrats or Progressives I know in real life or online actually liked him. He was doing terribly and then all of the sudden he cinched the nomination in the span of two weeks. I sense there was a lot of back room power-broker deals going on and that was the real reason why so many of his competitors dropped out when they still had a good ch…

The Democratic party seems to be a lot more competent, and try a lot harder, when they are combating progressives, as opposed to when they are combating the other party.

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

#122

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.

With free universities, they wouldn't have to charge students anything.

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

#123
post #84

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.

If we were dealing with the victims of a school shooting, first we'd make sure none of them were going to bleed out. Then they'd be prioritized for dealing with their root cause injuries. We can apply similar tactics to these school financial injuries. We don't need to choose one or the other. And the core problem with people taking on debt to pay for college in the US is individual people having to pay for college,…

> If we were dealing with the victims of a school shooting, first we'd make sure none of them were going to bleed out.

Well... no. Obviously stopping the shooter is the top priority.

Beyond that, it depends on how many people are there to solve the problem and how many victims there are. Everything beyond whats required to stop the shooter would attend to the wounded.

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but we can decide by administrative fiat that Harvard can’t charge more than the community college does, and must transition its business model to be similar to that of the community college.

I thought most people who get into Ivy’s end up paying surprisingly lower, even compared to a state school. The problem is you probably won’t ever get in.

The problem is also the "most". It's dependant on discretionary grants.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, usually they don't offer anything more than an associate's degree. Can't remember the last time I saw anything less than "bachelor's degree or equivalent experience" on a job listing.

One strategy is to go to community college for your gen ed requirements, transfer those credits to a more prestigious university, then finish your degree there. The piece of paper will have the university's name on it, but you will have saved money in the process. You have to do some due diligence to figure out what credits you can transfer. You don't want to waste your time and money on a class that doesn't count. B…

This is my current plan. Look to see if your state has any programs that guarantee entry. If I pick the right CC, I’m guaranteed admission (though not guaranteed any major) at the primary school I’m eyeing.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem that simple, given he won a primary in which all of the other candidates promised more money than he did.

I still have no idea how he actually managed to win the primary. None of the Democrats or Progressives I know in real life or online actually liked him. He was doing terribly and then all of the sudden he cinched the nomination in the span of two weeks. I sense there was a lot of back room power-broker deals going on and that was the real reason why so many of his competitors dropped out when they still had a good ch…

He won the nomination because people thought he could beat Trump. This turned out to be correct. Not many dems loved him (see poor rally attendance), but nobody really hated him either and so they went with the least-worst option (where the worst option is Trump winning again).

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

#127
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.

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about in exchange we cap their rate of pay so that society as a whole can benefit from their affordable services?

And if you do that you won't have enough doctors. Many countries suffer shortage of doctors. If you want to do that, why don't you start by capping pay of CEOs, there seems to be no country on earth with shortage of CEOs

Pay is not what is capping the number of doctors in this country. Only 41% of med school applicants are accepted. The bottleneck is the number of residencies. The government could fix this by increasing the stipend residencies receive, but I'm afraid they've been captured by the AMA.

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

#129

I think the cultural stance in the U.S. that to progress in life/elevate oneself/stigma against forgoing college is also a large part of it. I personally think that one policy that could have an outsized effect in solving this problem is establishing a max percentage of income that student loan repayment can be required to be for a maximum number of years (I'm pulling these numbers out of nowhere but just as an examp…

We already have what you describe, it's called Income Driven Repayment. Your monthly payment is set to a certain percentage of your income, and after 20-25 years, any remaining balance is forgiven. The only difference being that forgiveness is paid for by the government, not the school.

The program is frankly a mess, with a ton of byzantine rules around eligibility and how the monthly payment is calculated. I work for a company that deals with this and have partial ownership of the code that has to implement these rules, and it's frankly a nightmare.

Furthermore I have serious doubts about the value of the program. It's really only good as a stop-gap measure to avoid defaulting on your loans in the immediate future. Going for the 20-year forgiveness seems unwise to me, since you are experiencing negative amortization for that time and your loan balance will be increasing. So most of the amount forgiven will be accrued interest, which will then be taxed. In most situations it would probably be better to focus on increasing your income and just paying the loans off.

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

#130
post #16

I mean, yeah. But also, the expectations placed on colleges have grown exponentially. Retention staff, student life staff, counseling staff, new innovative (read: Expensive) programs, the 'experience'. These all cost money. My experience of expectations of college in the 90's - can I drink? Do the faculty let me miss if I need to? My experience of expectations of college now - is my child safe? Can s/he access approp…

> But also, the expectations placed on colleges have grown exponentially. Retention staff, student life staff, counseling staff, new innovative (read: Expensive) programs

Have they? Or are these just new things the college has come up with to sell?

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