State schools, my friends. If you're in-state, you might pay 1/4 or less the costs of a private college.
That depends massively on which state you're a resident of.
Why Is College in America So Expensive?
251–260 of 348 posts
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#252I 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.
> I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans
People always say that, but I have my doubts. I did some Googling to try to find costs for some well known schools over time and was only able to find historical tuition data for Stanford.
Stanford's tuition has been increasing faster than inflation as far back as the data goes (1920), almost linearly on a log scale [1]. There doesn't seem to be any big change in growth starting when loans became readily available.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#253This is such a weird article. It promotes this vision of college being expensive, then undercuts its main argument: > “The public system in the U.S. is working as well as most systems,” he says. “Parts of the U.S. look like France.” > Three out of every four American college students attend a school in this public system, which is funded through state and local subsidies, along with students’ tuition dollars and some…
Even if the quote says the public system that covers most students is "working well", the average student loan debt of a graduate is still pretty high [1]: > When they graduate [in 2016] the average student loan borrower has $37,172 in student loans, a $20,000 increase from 13 years ago. Of course this is an average, but I don't expect this is something where some people with millions of dollars in student loans are…
$17,000
And only ~50% of students had student loan debt.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-we...
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#254Earlier 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…
It is interesting to me that the three areas main areas in America that have become exponentially more expensive are healthcare, construction, and education. It's curious that they have the most government control.
Of course, that's not all they have in common. Being difficult to automate, they are vulnerable to Baumol's cost disease.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 ove…
Well, I actually believe that the constant money printing (eg, expressed in the US M2 Monetary Stock) has badly messed up the ability of the economy to recognise who is and isn't productive. The system is in real trouble and not working as I'd like it to.
But the question wasn't what America is doing wrong, the question was why government intervention always leads to price increases.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#256I 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.
> I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans People always say that, but I have my doubts. I did some Googling to try to find costs for some well known schools over time and was only able to find historical tuition data for Stanford. Stanford's tuition has been increasing faster than inflation as far back as the data goes (1920), almost linearly on a log s…
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...
Research would disagree. Student loans definitely have had an effect. That the Atlantic ignores that completely calls into question their potential bias. Student loans are a sacred cow for those on the left and center-left, so it isn’t surprising that the Atlantic ignores even a potential causal relationship in the story.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#257It seems that everything the government is willing to pay for (or lend money for) gets outrageously priced. From healthcare (what is the cost of saving an american life?) to 'defense' (what is the cost of taking a killer's life?), the US has developed a system that mortgages the future of our children to subsidize the anxieties of 'adults' of the present.
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#258College is expensive because people still pay that price. People pay that price because they have easy access to student loans. So if we get rid of student loans, colleges would be forced to change their pricing. If governments still want to encourage students to go to college, then perhaps non-price based methods would help. Scholarships could move away from being a monetary amount, to being a fixed amount of semest…
allowing students loans to be wiped off in a bankruptcies might achieve the same goal
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is interesting to me that the three areas main areas in America that have become exponentially more expensive are healthcare, construction, and education. It's curious that they have the most government control.
They are also the three things that are socialized to a much higher degree in other developed countries, where they are not becoming exponentially more expensive.
I remember hearing from someone in the field that health care in Europe is indeed becoming exponentially more expensive. the exponent is smaller than the US, and the cost isn't borne by individuals, but they're still going to have a problem. (I don't have a source for this though.)
Re: Why Is College in America So Expensive?
#260State schools, my friends. If you're in-state, you might pay 1/4 or less the costs of a private college.
That depends massively on which state you're a resident of.
Probably does vary by state. But overall:
"According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was $34,740 at private colleges, $9,970 for state residents at public colleges, and $25,620 for out-of-state residents attending public universities." - https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm...
So in-state is, overall, a shade more than 1/4 the cost of private.