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Why Is College in America So Expensive?

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Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#201

Post by fzeroracer »

roenxi wrote: post #162
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain to me how the government control of those things had lead to price increases? Specifically? I hear this a lot but have never heard an explaination and I am genuinely curious of the reasoning

"The Economy" is a (surprisingly effective!) system for allocating resources. It short-circuits a human instinct that social status and fairness should be the guide, and replaces that with "a persons economic contribution" instead. Now, it turns out that the difference in productivity between people is so great (think the old 10x-100x programmer) that allocating resources according to contribution creates so much sur…

This seems like an odd way of rationalizing the extreme concentration of wealth to the top along with growing poverty and lack of opportunity to climb the economic ladder.

Defining people in baskets like 'productive' and 'unproductive' is a fairly cold and callous way of looking at the plight of many Americans ranging from the poor to the elderly.

edit: Also to add onto my point: We've seen in America that people over time have grown more productive, yet wages have stagnated. If your theory was correct that productive Americans are allocated more resources, then presumably we should've seen the economy adjust accordingly.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#202

Post by fzeroracer »

kansface wrote: post #179
fzeroracer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market does not work in all situations. There's a reason why our healthcare is an absolute disaster compared to any other first world country, why our college is far more expensive, why our drugs cost more etc And it ain't because of cost control. Every time we loosen the reins a bit and let the 'free market' take the wheels, we see things get a lot worse for Americans as a whole. Especially when you have gi…

> The free market does not work in all situations. Sure, but you did not enumerate a single free market. I'd wager the US healthcare industry is far and away the most regulated market in the entire world. We know that regulation protects the big players at the expense of their would be competition and drives up profits. Colleges are hardly any better, and ISPs are nearly all monopolies granted by municipalities in ex…

Can you prove that the US healthcare industry is more regulated than countries like say, Germany or Canada? Because it would be incredibly hard to believe that somehow America is more regulated than countries that have more direct control over their healthcare.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#203

Post by exabrial »

Mainly because of unsecured government guaranteed loans. The government pretty much has to give you a loan no matter what your predicted ability/willingness to pay back is. Colleges are capitalistically taking full advantage of this cash flow.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#204

Post by Retric »

derekp7 wrote: post #190
jayd16 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not explained by correlation? It makes sense that important things are both expensive and regulated. Besides, isn't this terribly cherry picked? Sewage is a government issue and you don't talk about runaway costs there.

Talk to the folks in Jefferson Co. AL, facing $200 a month sewer bills after a botched upgrade.

First it’s generally half that 200$ per month. Second, “six of Jefferson County's former commissioners had been found guilty of corruption for accepting the bribes, along with 15 other officials”

But yes, if you look for the absolute worst 0.05% you will find problems.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#205

Post by exabrial »

fzeroracer wrote: post #102
frebord wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our…

The free market does not work in all situations. There's a reason why our healthcare is an absolute disaster compared to any other first world country, why our college is far more expensive, why our drugs cost more etc And it ain't because of cost control. Every time we loosen the reins a bit and let the 'free market' take the wheels, we see things get a lot worse for Americans as a whole. Especially when you have gi…

Our healthcare system is not a free market. Insurance companies are forbidden to discriminate premiums on the #1 killer in America: obesity.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#206

Post by fzeroracer »

dnomad wrote: post #194
chimeracoder wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No they don't. Where do you even come up with such obvious nonsense? The numbers are right there on Wikipedia. Maybe look them up before you call it "obvious nonsense".

It's obvious nonsense to anybody who's taken even a moment to understand what those numbers mean. Here's a very, very simple chart that shows population with tertiary education [1]. The US is not significantly above other countries where education is paid for by the government. What's more is that those numbers are very generous to the US because, as everybody knows, most private colleges in the US are shit. So calle…

Of course the 'free market' solution to education I've seen peddled for education often involves taking away options for poor students in hopes that somehow the market will correct itself. Never mind that they're playing with people's lives. That's the thing I always find so appalling about many of these solutions is that lives are viewed as statistics to be experimented with.

It's gotten worse as I've seen the same nonsense peddled for lower education as we see arguments made for school vouchers and directing funding away from public schools into private ones. Which the end result should be fairly obvious as the more affluent neighborhoods move to private schools while funding is sucked away from public ones.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#207

Post by Gustomaximus »

frebord wrote: post #91
Domenic_S wrote: post #3

I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want! The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.

> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our…

> Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our society (competition).

Competition & free markets doesn't work in all markets. Medicine is a prime example of an inelastic product that allows companies to abuse the consumer. There's endless examples and research on this if you feel skeptical. Education less so but it seems to still be there.

And I think it needs to be recognised because central control in education of USA working, doesnt mean central control doesn't work. In Australia we have good systems for universal heath and an excellent system to control the price of medicine (called PBS if you want to read more). Our university system while not perfect seems much better run than USA - its called 'HELP' if you want to read more. Or Germany & finland seems to have gold star education systems.

These days people seem to increasingly worship 'free market' or 'socialised markets' wholistically. The reality to me seems each suits different market categories and many markets need a hybrid approach.

If we stop preaching political preference and look around the world for the many examples of where markets are set up well I suspect we'd improve things greatly. And stop aligning one market category with the if it works well here it must in every category.

PBS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_Benefits_Scheme

HELP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aus...

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#208

Post by droithomme »

frebord wrote: post #91
Domenic_S wrote: post #3

I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want! The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.

> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our…

> the same reason MRIs are expensive

MRIs in the US are very cheap. However people are dumb and freely choose to pay much more than they should.

This company cheapimaging.com was founded by a teacher as a part time project. They have contracts for MRI imaging throughout the entire US, at fixed, reasonable, cash-only price. Some states you can get an MRI for $265.

Or you can go to the exact same facility naively and pay $10,000 or more for the same scan.

Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?

#209

Post by mrep »

catdog wrote: post #120
swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #49

I remember when I graduated state tuition, I had a full ride scholarship through state tuition. By the time I graduated my tuition funding got cut in half due to lack of government funding. I worked 3 jobs and only had to pay for living expenses / textbooks. I checked recently my local University (the biggest one in the country, top 50 in many majors) charges $1000 per 3 semester hours(1 course). If you were to trans…

> Tuition is free (I believe?) There was a brief period where it was not free everywhere (but still very low for US standards) but this legislation has been largely rolled back so it should be basically free. You only have to pay a small (often very small) fee per semester (varies a lot mostly because it often includes a mandatory public transport ticket which can be a bit expensive in some cities but still a lot che…

How are the professors there though because this HN thread [0] titled "'We can't compete': why universities are losing their best AI scientists" was about American tech companies hiring European AI researches because European colleges pay miniscule salaries to high valued professors which is probably exacerbated by free/low cost tuition.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600275

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