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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

#331

Post by throwawaygh »

secabeen wrote: post #304
throwawaygh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is a great summary, and exactly what is going on. Interestingly, it hasn't seemed to have much change on the spending side. Colleges are charging more to the median student, but are using a lot of it to subsidize less well-off students. It's not showing up in huge increases in faculty salaries, or administrative costs.

> It's not showing up in huge increases in faculty salaries, or administrative costs.

Not in faculty salaries, but often in faculty headcount. Lots of colleges and universities have added a lot of faculty while keeping student headcount constant. Mostly because they can't fire their tenured humanities faculty but need to hire people who can prepare students for something other than the Barista life.

IMO: tenure should be used very sparingly and should be viewed as part of a competitive compensation package. E.g., if the CS PhDs you want to recruit all have $300K offers in industry and the best you can do is $70K-$80K even with salary inversion, then you absolutely do need to offer tenure. It's part of the comp package and you simply will not recruit good people without offsetting such significant pay gaps.

But tenure for humanities borders on fiduciary irresponsibility. The job market for humanities PhDs is such that you can hire truly top-tier candidates without committing to having another head in the Philosophy or English department 40+ years. The $50K three-year contract is a competitive offer in the humanities. No need for tenure.

> Colleges are charging more to the median student, but are using a lot of it to subsidize less well-off students.

Certainly some of that too. I expect this will be the leading cause through 2030.

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

#332

Post by jldugger »

philwelch wrote: post #93
jefftk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For those who are unaware, these tests are considered a violation of the Civil Rights Act because they result in hiring blacks at a much lower rate than whites. Work sample tests are legal; otherwise we wouldn't see tech companies giving whiteboard interviews. More general tests are not legal ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. ) unless you can demonstrate that they "bear a demonstrable relatio…

IQ tests aren’t blanket-banned; they just have additional hurdles. For instance, the Wonderlic test is routinely used in hiring contexts and is even part of the NFL scouting combine.

While the Wonderlic published, is it even used as a factor? Does a coach say "no linebackers who scored less than 18?"

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

#333

Post by donw »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #40
noetic_techy wrote: post #34

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…

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

> Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost.

And not universal. You do not go to a German university from a Realschule or a Hauptschule -- you go to Gymnasium, and if you succeed there, you can go to University.

Otherwise, there are professional and vocational tracks available.

University slots are limited as well -- you may have to hunt around for a university that has open space for you in your program of choice, or choose a different course of study.

Changing study programs is much more difficult than in the US.

I would be abundantly happy if we did this in the US, but the "everybody must go to college" crowd would have none of it.

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

#334

Post by [deleted] »

DINKDINK wrote: post #285
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…

>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. An institution whose survival depends on profits is incentivized to...reduce costs, not increase them. All profits are, are the difference between what is consumed and what is produced. Either y…

[deleted]

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

#335

Post by triceratops »

jldugger wrote: post #329
triceratops wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Title IX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX#Equity_in_athletics ) has pretty broadly been interpreted as meaning equal funding. So scholarships you allocate to men's football needs to be equally funded in women's scholarships. IDK what the OP is talking about, beacuse there's no way the status quo changes until Title IX is repealed.

Equal funding, yes, but not necessarily to the same sports. They're allowed to take into account interest and participation. Otherwise, wouldn't we see million-dollar coaches for women's college football teams too? (I actually don't know of any women's college football teams, for that matter)

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

#336

Post by Digory »

jldugger wrote: post #325
bonoboTP wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the cost of American college doesn't go towards education but things like sports stadiums and teams, various non-academic events, administrators, various other non-academic staff, uniquely-expensive American legal costs and insurance, on-campus police (a big wtf for Europeans), and then there are also those people who decide which Halloween costumes are appropriate for students, investigate various misconduc…

> Americans expect college campuses to be like resorts You say that but the typical dorm room offers no privacy or air conditioning, and the showers and bathrooms are shared. They're similar in nature to SROs which the US pretty much abolished anywhere else, but way more expensive. And then universities have the audacity to demand that students live in them freshman year, even though living off campus would be cheape…

Many colleges have old buildings on campus that are cash cows. There's little incentive to cut margins by building new.

But recent buildings look better, and the off-campus "communities" in Texas look better than ... most apartments in New York. [0]

[0] https://www.theblockwestcampus.com/features.aspx

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

#337

Post by Aperocky »

jefftk wrote: post #313
Aperocky wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not evaluate them based on whether they went to school or where. This is akin to how you can fire someone for ANY REASON, except a few forbidden reason. Guess which reason Timmy is fired for? Certainly not for trying to start a union.

That does happen some, but it would be much harder for large companies to have an off-the-books policy of requiring a college degree if they couldn't talk about it with each other or put anything in writing for fear it would come out in a suit.

A large company would simply have a policy to not even interview, resumes can be discarded for 'lack of qualification' or any other reason. You can't sue a company for discarding applications.

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

#338

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

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…

What does homogeneity have to do with anything?

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

#339

Post by donw »

jessaustin wrote: post #321
dodobirdlord wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their point is that most of the University of Phoenix's programs are online.

The time is past, when one could disparage online learning merely for being online.

I don't think that UoP is being disparaged -- it just sounds a bit odd to tie a virtual university to a physical place.

On the other hand, "University of 4Chan" doesn't have the same ring to it.

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

#340

Post by 7thaccount »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #260
pa7x1 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Camb…

US college isn't longer because it's remedial, it's because it has more out of major liberal arts required courses. There are a lot of remedial classes at US colleges, but those students wouldn't be in college at all in Europe.

This is true. There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US. For example, my engineering degree required 3 English classes, psychology, fine arts, and sociology. These were all incredibly easy and I found the course material was what I was used to as a freshman in highschool (no I'm not exaggerating). So those classes weren't even remedial, but felt like a joke. Please note that I'm not saying all liberal arts classes are a waste, but I think all the 101 classes are pretty bad. The fact that people were complaining and struggling to make a C was mind boggling. The university says they're there to make you well rounded, but we all know it's an excuse to charge more money. The human brain can only take so many technical courses at the same time as well, so it's not like I could cram in another mathematics or engineering course and stay sane. Instead of giving you a break and getting to use that time to study, you have to take the useless other classes which costs more money.
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