Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993 • Hacker News Board

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#191

Post by Ericson2314 » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #106

tptacek wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why there isn't simply the option of making a lot more colleges. "High Quality, Low Cost, Pick 2" isn't how most markets work.

IMHO, because what colleges are selling is effectively a positional good[1], one valued specifically for how it ranks against other similar goods. They're selling the certification that "this person is in the n% percentile of employability". And you generally can't just make more of a positional good. That's like, "why can't Louis Vuitton ramp up production so that everyone can have a LV handbag?" [1] https://en.wiki…

The answer is we have UBI, and embrace the positional value going to 0. Just about everyone is already overqualified for the jobs that they do. It's a bullshit job economy.

Let's drive up the cost of labor, educate for non-job-related reasons, and see if the the two paths meet again in some vastly different economy.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#192

Post by rbarnes01 » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #38

apsec112 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuts in state funding don't explain the rapid tuition increases at private universities.

I know first-hand that this is not how pricing decisions work at regional private colleges/universities. The process regional private colleges go through is as follows: 1. List a set of "peer institutions", usually with the primary input coming from admissions. Here, "peer" means "competes for the same set of students we're after". Almost always the region's public colleges and universities will be on this list. 2. S…

Exactly. Why leave money on the table?

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#193

Post by JamesBarney » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #128

Hokusai wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that. Also, I would like to notice, that for E…

Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.

Americans are over 300 million people, and like Europe we are not homogenous.

And many Americans believe European healthcare, education, and infrastructure are far superior to the U.S.

The problem is that despite Europe being far more efficient at health, education, and infrastructure spending it also has a wide range of policies. So it's difficult to determine which policies are driving the increase in efficiency and which aren't.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#194

Post by rbarnes01 » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

jweir wrote: post #109

Look at Perdue University - no change in tuition in 9 years. What are they doing right? https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2020/Q1/purdue-anno...

You'll enjoy this https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/mitch-d...

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#195

Post by pa7x1 » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #127

Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other. You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across…

Top European universities provide pretty good education pre-PhD level, in many cases the first 3-5 years in European schools is superior and more focused than the equivalent US curriculum. The first 1 or 2 years in US universities seem spent filling the gaps left by a mediocre High School education.

US universities are then miles ahead of most European schools in their PhD programs bare a few exceptions (Oxford, Cambridge, ETH...).

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#196

Post by seibelj » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

michaelchisari wrote: post #161

fastaguy88 wrote: post #91

It is difficult to overstate how mistaken this article is. College has mostly gotten more expensive because state support for public universities has dramatically decreased, from over 80% in the 1970's to less than 20% now. Since the taxpayer no longer pays for public higher education, the student does. The logic of this made some sense at the time; very high tuition subsidies were a gift to the upper middle and uppe…

What also works against the idea of subsidies being the culprit is that it's not just universities that have seen this cost inflation. The community college in the town I grew up in was $17 a credit hour in 1997. Adjusted for inflation, that's $26.17 a credit hour. A 4 credit hour class would cost $104.68. That's something many working people could cover to take a class here and there to further themselves or their j…

I don’t understand your logic. People take out loans all the time to get community college degrees. Those loans are federally backed. So the increase in credit would indeed inflate community college costs.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#197

Post by CincinnatiMan » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #15

CincinnatiMan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that there’s any groups deciding on something but rather individuals acting in their best interest, getting a degree, that ruins it for everybody else. An arms race among individuals.

Kind of like what's been happening with housing in the places with jobs. It's too bad there isn't some sort of system where we could all have a voice to regulate these sort of things. Kind of like the US had before the Managementism replaced Capitalism and Corprotocrocy replaced deomocracy.

What sort of regulation would you propose to handle credential inflation?

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#198

Post by jsemrau » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #196

michaelchisari wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What also works against the idea of subsidies being the culprit is that it's not just universities that have seen this cost inflation. The community college in the town I grew up in was $17 a credit hour in 1997. Adjusted for inflation, that's $26.17 a credit hour. A 4 credit hour class would cost $104.68. That's something many working people could cover to take a class here and there to further themselves or their j…

I don’t understand your logic. People take out loans all the time to get community college degrees. Those loans are federally backed. So the increase in credit would indeed inflate community college costs.

Judging from a European perspective, I think society as a whole is better off if more people have access to affordable education and don't need to take out a loan to take classes.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#199

Post by seibelj » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #128

Hokusai wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that. Also, I would like to notice, that for E…

Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.

Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China, apart from a few odd balls like Spotify. Different places optimize for different things, for better and worse.

Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993

#200

Post by booboolayla » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #128

Hokusai wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that. Also, I would like to notice, that for E…

Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.

Because they have European immigrants (like me) who are more than willing to explain to Americans what exactly leftist ideas mean in practice, and how much of it is false advertising.

Stop pretending health care is better in Europe!