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

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

#211

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

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.

Please refrain from nationalist slander. It's unproductive and against site rules.

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

#212

Post by apsec112 »

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…

Calculating state support as a percentage of total cost is misleading, since universities can make "total cost" be whatever they please. California spends 34% more on higher education than it did in 1975, adjusted both for inflation and for state population growth. If a university wants their budget to double, and the state won't double their funding, then the remainder will have to come from tuition. But that's not the state's fault, it's the universities' fault for spending more.

(Sources:

https://lao.ca.gov/analysis/1975/01_transmittal_1975.pdf http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2019-20/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/... https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California)

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

#213

Post by kolbe »

"Unsurprisingly, this decision lead to exactly what the Bennett Hypothesis predicted in 1987, that “colleges will raise tuition when financial aid is increased” in order to capture as much of that government money as possible. In essence, the feds handed colleges a blank check, and the result is just as expected for a decision like that."

That's a feature, not a bug.

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

#214

Post by brightball »

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…

Is it though? Costs can’t rise if people can’t pay them. With student loans, no matter what people can pay them...so they keep rising.

We have high demand, limited supply and no sensitivity to price to drive down demand.

It’s only now that the costs have become so high that the payback cost can’t be ignored that we are seeing a societal shift questioning the value of college for the price.

And even then, people still choose to pay the price.

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

#215

Post by triceratops »

ericmay wrote: post #110
silvestrov wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the cost to tax payers in Europe is less than what people in USA have to pay the college. This is because my University (in Europe) had no sport facilities whatsoever , not even a soccer field. It also had no dormitories, canteens, no fancy library, sport teams etc. It did teaching + research, and nothing else.

Idk. People say this but are sports the real cost driver here? Many sports programs in the US pay for themselves and more or might be close to break even. We also have Title IX (1) which in some cases will lead to increased costs. Not to mention we have, you guessed it, a Title IX coordinator at every university that has to comply with Title IX who probably makes $50,000 - $100,000. If you think about other programs…

> We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though.

Why not? Can't they be funded in the same way as intra-mural sports i.e. by the athletes?

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

#216

Post by dnautics »

Hokusai wrote: post #111
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. Not US high but still, it's not free, there's lots of bloat in the system that thrives on volume of students not on quality so they try to push forward legislation and programs to increase the number of students, especially from abroad and build more faculties/universities with more…

> 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…

> That is a supposition that proves to be false.

To date, that may be true. But give it a few decades. With the GI bill and the immediate post-war boom the US is arguably ahead of Europe in terms of the "college access for all" mindset, and cost of college only really became near the turn of the millenium (note that college debt is a "millenial" issue) and unbearable around 2005-2010 or so; so US colleges have had a bit more time to hone the fine art of rent-seeking.

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

#217

Post by ryandrake »

pb7 wrote: post #207
giantrobot wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't declare bankruptcy like Michael Scott by just yelling into a hallway. If college loans could be discharged, your fresh grad example still has to convince a court to discharge the loan. That's not likely to happen unless they also managed to rack up many tens of thousands of dollars in unsecured debt. No one is going to give a 22 year old that much unsecured credit so it would be pretty obvious they're tryin…

Your argument doesn’t sound very convincing. People declare bankruptcy now all the time; it’s quite easy actually if you really have no assets and don’t mind your credit ruined for 7 years or less. You haven’t actually stated under what conditions you would be allowed to discharge your debt, you’re just trying to convince me that it wouldn’t be abused and also that we really need this to happen. Again, not very convi…

Isn't the risk of default/bankruptcy part of what justifies charging interest? If there is no risk for lenders, how do they justify charging interest?

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

#218

Post by 121789 »

etempleton wrote: post #84
rtkwe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a lot on who you know and what department you're in. In 40 of 50 states the highest paid public employee is a sports coach... https://fanbuzz.com/national/highest-paid-state-employees/

At many universities athletics is a major revenue driver. There is a very real financial incentive to have high performing athletic programs.

I think for most universities it's not a significant profit driver, but I bet it's great marketing for prospective students.

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

#219

Post by coredog64 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #193
twic wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

There’s no such thing as “European healthcare”. European countries (and I’m going to ignore Brexit and include the UK) approach provision of healthcare in a unique way. For example, the UK has the NHS, Switzerland has insurance mandates, and France has strict regulation of private insurance companies.

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

#220

Post by ummonk »

mjn wrote: post #182
ummonk wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter. We've seen an increase in cost of education (as evidenced by private school tuitions, which have gone up and never had taxpayer support). In addition to this, student enrollment has increased, so per-student taxpayer funding has not kept pace even as taxpayer funding for public universities has gone up relative to the overall population.

In some state university systems the inflation-adjusted total funding has actually decreased. For example, the University of California system was budgeted about $2.1 billion in state money in 1990, which is $4.3 billion in 2020 dollars. At the time, there were 9 campuses, serving 125,000 undergraduates, in a state with population 30 million. Fast-forward to 2020, and the system is budgeted $3.9 billion in state fund…

You're cherrypicking by focusing on UC in isolation. Higher education funding in California has gone up from ~5.5 billion to ~16 billion nominal from 1990 to now.

Overall funding has gone up - it was just focused on community colleges at the expense of UC, as it should be to avoid exacerbating economic inequality.

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