The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#21

Post by MCRed » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 5:55 AM UTC

I think a more interesting question is, how has the ROI of college changed over the past 40 years?

The cost has gone up much faster than inflation.

The number of people going to college has also risen dramatically. This means there are a lot more college educated peers competing with you in the workplace. This means that the college degree is not as rare, and thus has lower scarcity value.

Finally, I think it's quite possible the quality of the education has declined significantly in the past 40 years. When I was in college, almost 30 years ago, I was appalled at how the university focused and spent so much of its money on a losing football team (in a zero sum situation where the other schools were always going to be abel to massively outspend it and had larger pools of students to recruit from) ... and in the decline in the education. I remember sitting in a class and learning about how universities were started by tradesman who banded together and hired experts to teach them, and I thought "Man, I wish I could go to a school like that". Since then I've seen nothing but an increase in these efforts... I've see the quality of a CS degree (based on the people who I interview for jobs who have them) decline.

So the formula is: More Cost, Less Value, Lower Quality = Lower ROI.

If things don't turn around, at some point College will be a losing proposition.

Of course, this presumes that the education colleges give can be obtained elsewhere.

Which brings up another point MOOCs, and online access to open source frameworks have really changed things in the past 30 years. 30 years ago we were buying our compilers (CodeWarrior for life!) now they and our frameworks are open source and well documented. The books are cheaper-- $40 to Oreilley rather than $120 to the campus book store (or are my prices out of date?)

You can learn more modern technologies better than going to college and spending 4 years on Java and C++.

Then there's the MooCs. you can learn CS fundamentals by video, along with people all around the world.

I think we're close to that tipping point.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#22

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:00 AM UTC

ta82828 wrote: post #7

pacifist wrote: post #5

It didn't make sense to me until I read this: from the article: "Some of this increased spending in education has been driven by a sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college." from the comments: "The money PER STUDENT was slashed. That is what matters for the cost to each student."… "This is an elaborate lie, to justify what is indefensible without the help of such lies."

Well the article disagrees with that claim, "Appropriations per student are much higher now than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when tuition was a small fraction of what it is today." so I guess it would be time to go to the references/data if we had them.

[deleted]

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#23

Post by graycat » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:01 AM UTC

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., recently Stanford announced that the tuition will be $0.00 for any student whose family earns less than $125,000 a year. Sure, maybe the list price tuition at Stanford is ballpark $50,000 a year. But the actual price is sometimes zero. And some scholarships also cover room and board making the actual price negative.

It was long the case that the tuition for a student paid only ballpark 1/3rd of the full school budget per student. So, maybe what's happened is that the schools decided to set the list price to be the full cost per student, maybe plus some, and have students from wealthy families actually pay that price. Then nearly all the rest of the students get a significantly lower actual price, maybe even $0.00.

Further, given that there are student loans available to cover the list price, then maybe just go ahead and charge list price for students using student loans.

Then we have the issue of, with so many students getting student loans, maybe they are not very good students and wouldn't even have been accepted at the school back decades ago. Maybe. Or, if some money sources are eager to pay or loan list price for some not very good students, then colleges can be tempted to go ahead and take the list price easy money and let the students attend the classes.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#24

Post by r00fus » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:04 AM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #14

morcheeba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the article is from Boulder... they just started on a $63M rec center renovation and they have a pool in the shape of a buffalo. There are only 30,000 students, so right there is $2,000 per student on a portion of the facilities that isn't involved in teaching. http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_25916902/cu-boulder-bu...

A rec center lasts for more than a year doesn't it? I'm sure there are (will be) ongoing maintenance costs, but I doubt they are also $63M/year.

A $63M rec center doesn't maintain itself. I'm sure the yearly operational costs are much larger than what they had before as well.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#25

Post by hacknat » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:21 AM UTC

MCRed wrote: post #21

I think a more interesting question is, how has the ROI of college changed over the past 40 years? The cost has gone up much faster than inflation. The number of people going to college has also risen dramatically. This means there are a lot more college educated peers competing with you in the workplace. This means that the college degree is not as rare, and thus has lower scarcity value. Finally, I think it's quite…

Agreed. One thing people usually don't take into account when they talk about current College ROI is the opportunity cost. Especially at non-first tier private schools the opportunity cost must be considerable.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#26

Post by adrusi » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:31 AM UTC

    > For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times
    > higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative
    > appropriations to higher education are more than 10
    > times higher.

This isn't the relevant statistic. I'm going to guess that the size of the national student body has increased since 1960, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was by more than a factor of ten.

I'm not saying that therefore lack of government spending is the cause of high tuition, but this article dismisses it too quickly.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#27

Post by ollebro » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:33 AM UTC

HeavenFox wrote: post #20

snogglethorpe wrote: post #3

One thing I've noticed about American universities compared with universities in other countries (Japan, Korea, UK), is that almost every decent American university I've seen seems to be really well-maintained, in that the campus is very clean, in good repair, frequently renovated, etc, even the out-of-the-public-eye spaces (grad student offices and the like). Japanese and Korean universities, on the other hand, are…

This. It basically holds true for any product: price doesn't increase linearly as quality goes up. I go to college in U.S., and a lot friends of mine attend one of the best universities in China. I have the freedom to take practically any course in the university, and my friends basically know what their four years look like before freshman year. I never worry about finding seats in the library, and my friends someti…

I went to college in Sweden and had all that you had, I didn't pay anything. I received about 1000-1500$ a month for attending school from the government.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#28

Post by nkassis » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:36 AM UTC

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…

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. But I challenge your argument that schools are listing the full cost per students.

One reason I doubt current list price of tuition covers 100% of the cost per student for the vast majority of schools (which are public and receive state funding).

Students with student loans aren't bad students. Depending on you parents salary they might not qualify for any other type of need based financial aid except student loans. Also, merit base aid is limited and can't be extended to all students with academic standing that usually leads to them successfully completing college with high grades.

In the end, a large amount of students pay for college entirely with student loans and don't realize the cost until they are in repayment. They pay the list price and more due to other costs of going to college.

To successfully be able to pay for college without aid and loans a student today would need to have a full time job while students in the 1950-60... could generally pay the full amount with a summer job.

Edit: Also, price per students vary between faculties, a engineering student might cost 50K+ while a arts student would cost half or less of that. Some students end up subsidizing others.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#29

Post by nulltype » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:37 AM UTC

adrusi wrote: post #26

> For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times > higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative > appropriations to higher education are more than 10 > times higher. This isn't the relevant statistic. I'm going to guess that the size of the national student body has increased since 1960, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was by more than a factor of ten. I'm not saying that therefore lack of government…

Well the article addresses that point like a paragraph or two later.

Re: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

#30

Post by dikaiosune » Sun, Apr 05, 2015, 6:56 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #4

The short version: "A major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration."

At the university where a friend works, a huge amount of the staffing expenditure is on (rarely well-run) IT. Another big chunk of the staff is employed to essentially wrangle the part-time faculty who are on short contracts and don't stay for more than one or two years.

I think that in many cases universities have turned to hiring staff to circumvent many of the political problems of trying to manage professors (edit: tenured people are a bitch to manage and will resist any and all changes in most departments, in case this wasn't clear before). It's a poor solution but in some areas it's the only way to make changes.

The IT, the slow rate of change among faculty, the part-timers, etc, could optimistically be put down to changing student and market demands. Pessimistically much of it could be put down to an institutional desire to have central control.