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It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

randalolson.com

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Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#121

Post by glesica »

RyanZAG wrote: post #91
glesica wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- increasingly top-heavy administration (hey, let's add another $300K Assistant Deputy VP of Student Diversity, etc) providing a path for faculty to 'advance' in their careers I'd like to point out that much of the administrative bloat has occurred because of new (bipartisan) laws forcing colleges to provide more services. There are services for veterans, services for the disabled, services for victims of crimes, ove…

" When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. "

I don't know that it has anything to do with voting since, as I pointed out, the bloat-causing rules come from both parties.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#122

Post by nitrogen »

ruswick wrote: post #105
jdreaver wrote: post #17

We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. When some people read articles like this, they call for more government aid to students. "We need to help young, hard working students from unprivileged backgrounds to pay for college!" Their hearts are certainly in the right place, and it isn't an unreasonable idea at first glance. However, could this idea be part of the problem? Maybe giving people free money fo…

Although heavy subsidization is a major enabler of the problem, it is not the only factor. Affordable education is out there. The problem is that people have been conditioned to believe that cheap education is bad education. The problem is the students have been fed the lie that more "prestigious" schools yield better outcomes. Although this might be true in an extreme minority of situations (investment banking is on…

The problem is the students have been fed the lie that more "prestigious" schools yield better outcomes. Although this might be true in an extreme minority of situations (investment banking is one example where prestige matters), for the most part, the ranking and cost of the college don't matter at all.

When I was in high school deciding which colleges I might want to attend, the guidance counselors spent great effort emphasizing that median salaries from all schools n (where n >> 1) years after graduation tended toward the same value, even if graduates from prestigious schools had better salaries at n=1 or n=2.

What I want to know is how the top quartile, top decile, etc. compare, especially for fields in which there are large companies paying high salaries, but primarily to graduates from prestigious schools.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#124

Post by nitrogen »

coryrc wrote: post #107
superuser2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>increased student expectations of 'fun', leading to new facilities (dorms, student centers, etc), as colleges compete with each other for students This gets cited a lot, and sometimes people actually go to the trouble of citing the cost of a new facility at $x million. Is there evidence that these facilities actually raise the cost substantially per student per year? Often when I hear people getting offended about,…

Every building has a large, recurring maintenance and services cost.

If a new building replaces an old building, those costs should be the same as or lower than the older building, per square foot. If the new building does not replace an older building, it should allow the college to enroll more students or provide other services that bring in more revenue to pay for those ongoing costs.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#125

Post by nitrogen »

gambiting wrote: post #114
jdreaver wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Most of those loans, however, are sponsored by the government and can't be defaulted on. No normal lender would give an 18 year old $50,000 to get a degree in anthropology, because they are unlikely to get it back. When the student is legally obligated to pay it back, then there is much little risk to the lender. If defaulting on student loans were possible, then the cost of college would decrease.

But this is exactly how UK student loans work - you only pay them off if you make more than X amount of money per year(and then the amount of money you pay off is proportional to how much you make), and if you never make that much money, then you never pay it off and after 40 years the loan is forfeit.

That principle also applies in the US to some extent.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#126

Post by truelove »

Pay your way through college? Of course you can. You just have be able to to think outside the box.

And if Belle Knox can do it, you can do it:

- http://www.sbindependent.org/belle-knoxs-lust-education/

- http://www.the360experiment.com/2014/03/entertainment/colleg...

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#127

Post by davidf18 »

In years past, states contributed a much larger proportion of public school budgets than they do today. Much of that money now goes towards Medicaid. Much of that Medicaid money does not go towards the poor but rather middle class who go to nursing homes. They spend down their assets and transfer them to their children.

Hence, at least partially because of the middle class not buying nursing home insurance, the public universities are being deprived of their funding.

Nowadays, City University of New York tuition reportedly is $3000 per semester. At least in some fields (eg Engineering) you can get a very good education there I am told.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#128

Post by jdreaver »

jbooth wrote: post #104
jdreaver wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My whole original post is an attempt to refute what you just said. Without grants, there wouldn't be a gap. College would cost less. Also, society "demanding" people to go to college is part of the problem.

Gonna jump in here -- what makes you so sure it's grants rather than the way college loans work? I haven't done the numbers but I suspect there's like 10x as much tuition coming from loans as there is from grants -- wouldn't that make grants a tiny portion of the problem?

In my original post, I talk about more than grants. The person to whom I'm replying just said grants, so I'm just being direct.

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#129

Post by Falling3 »

maxvu wrote: post #92
superuser2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>increased student expectations of 'fun', leading to new facilities (dorms, student centers, etc), as colleges compete with each other for students This gets cited a lot, and sometimes people actually go to the trouble of citing the cost of a new facility at $x million. Is there evidence that these facilities actually raise the cost substantially per student per year? Often when I hear people getting offended about,…

It's a commonly-expressed complaint at my private, engineering-focused school that, of all the egregious capital investment is in things that have high donor selling potential but little use to the student body: a beautiful new athletic facility (we're D1 in only one sport) and a "performing arts center" where artists are subsidized residency and no student programs (not even through our tiny arts department) are acc…

Hmm... that sounds exactly like my alma mater... Any chance this is upstate NY as well?

Re: It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays

#130

Post by tzs »

jdreaver wrote: post #17

We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive. When some people read articles like this, they call for more government aid to students. "We need to help young, hard working students from unprivileged backgrounds to pay for college!" Their hearts are certainly in the right place, and it isn't an unreasonable idea at first glance. However, could this idea be part of the problem? Maybe giving people free money fo…

What do you mean by "equilibrium price"? I usually hear that term when people are talking about the price that equalizes supply and demand, but many of the most expensive colleges are priced well below the supply/demand equalization point, so I assume you are referring to some other equilibrium.
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