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

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

#491

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:34 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #127

Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across…

My degree was 5 years with professional Software Engineering accreditation (legal title in Portugal), and it had a level of data structures, systems programming, distributed computing, graphics and programming languages that I still find people missing out in online discussions.

So naturally there are bad ones as well, it is a matter of doing the research, and in Portugal's case, having the required grades to get in.

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

#492

Post by bonoboTP » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #464

dehrmann wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things like sports stadiums and teams I went to a large school in one of the big NCAA athletic conferences. Their stadium cost around $100M in 2020 dollars, and they bring in roughly $100M in revenue from all sports annually . They call football and basketball "revenue sports" because they fund all the others. I'm not sure how much tuition goes to sports, but the big ones are very self-sufficient. That, and they se…

Sure but that's just an adjacent business model with very little relationship to the core mission. Universities could also say, run gambling halls, nightclubs, or any other business you can think of. The criticism is they are distracted from their core purpose and mission in society, which certainly isn't to run large entertainment venues.

Sport, at least in principle, if you squint, has more to do with education. After all, grade schools have a physical education subject but no gambling subject. (Elite, pro, spectator sport is different though, that's why the squinting is required).

Generally, Americans have an obsession with what they call "well-roundedness" and a "holistic" approach which I don't see elsewhere that much. For example in European university admissions nobody cares about subjective stuff like volunteering experience, musical talent etc, when doing university admissions. It's all focused on the narrow academic subject. You also don't take generic subjects unrelated to your study program as in American undergrad.

The whole culture and concept of what a university is supposed to be, is pretty different in the US overall

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

#493

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #333

Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As Portuguese living in Germany, with experience in other European countries as well, that tiered school system always pisses me off.

In those countries I have goten to meet clever individuals with university degree, that in Germany with their high school background would never had gotten the opportunity to attend university.

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

#494

Post by aj7 » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:51 AM UTC

In pricing solar installations, it was obvious that prices rose as vendors attempted to capture virtually all of federal and state subsidies.

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

#495

Post by ericmay » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:59 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #426

ericmay wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it highly subsidized? Any reason to think that is the case?

It is indeed highly subsidized, to the tune of billions a year. You can read the Financials online.

Do you mean subsidized in the sense of student loans backed by the government?

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

#496

Post by jfk13 » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:03 AM UTC

hadrien01 wrote: post #472

dragonwriter wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> c) TFA neglects to mention that you can take out up to $5500-7500 in government loans per year as an undergrad. https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized... . Your own source says $5,500-$12,500, not $5,500-$7,500.

I get a 404 on that studentaid.gov link

It's truncated (see the trailing dots). I assume they meant https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized...

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

#497

Post by TuringNYC » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:06 AM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #463

bjt wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government does not succeed if students are stuck in debt forever. Therefore when government gives the loans, incentives are aligned and lending goes down. That's a double edged sword. Yeah, the government doesn't have the profit motive that predatory lenders do, but they also lack the incentive to say no to students who are borrowing money to study things that won't do much to help them pay it back. Politician…

In a system of loans directly from the government, there is still some mild disincentive against lending to people that won't pay it back, even if it is tempered against some other incentives. What's more, a government body certainly can and surely would limit total loan amounts for affordability reasons. More to the point, the comparison here is against regular private lenders, but instead against private lenders wi…

In fact if private lenders enjoyed the guarantees, i can imagine them sponsoring entire schools with full easy-button applications and admissions just to take advantage of the lending profits. Anything to push volume.

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

#498

Post by kakwa_ » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #45

Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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.

Well, not really. In France for example, the cost per student per year looks like the following:

* Classe preparatoire (math & physic 2 years course to prepare ranked for Engineering schools): ~15K euros per student per year

* Engineering Schools: 10 to 25K depending on the specialty, with a few prestigious schools (Centrale Paris, Polytechnique, Mines de Paris, etc) in the 30 to 60K bracket.

* Literacy student in university: 5 to 7K

* Math or Physic student in university: 10 to 15K

* Business School: 15 to 20K

However, keep in mind this figures don't include housing.

Apart from Business schools and less prestigious engineering schools, most of these are public schools with low tuition fees for students (even if these are slowly increasing, Centrale Paris raised them to 3.5K recently for example).

Also, cost apart, having public schools with low/no tuition fees helps keeping open opportunities for everybody, and mitigate social and economic aspects.

It reduces the "my parents don't have the money to allow me to go through university" or "do I really want I 200K lawn from the start of my professional life?" aspects.

It's just better at giving more equal opportunities to every students, minimizing somewhat factors that are outside of their control like the socioeconomic background of their parents.

Don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect and these factors still play an important role, but at least it's an effort in the right direction.

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

#499

Post by donw » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #493

donw wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As Portuguese living in Germany, with experience in other European countries as well, that tiered school system always pisses me off. In those countries I have goten to meet clever individuals with university degree, that in Germany with their high school background would never had gotten the opportunity to attend university.

I have met plenty of absolute morons with university degrees.

University is, for most people, a massive waste of time and money.

Not because they are stupid, but because going to university does not further their life goals.

It certainly didn't for me.

University only one of many paths through life.

We need to stop treating it as the only option into which we force everybody.

Plenty of brilliant people go into skilled trades, or into professional tracks. There's a reason Germany still has such a robust manufacturing sector.

We would do well to follow this in the US.

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

#500

Post by etripe » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 11:07 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #127

Dannymetconan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across…

I haven't done a STEM education, but it seems to me like the quality of research output is dependent on the field, to start with. Second, doesn't it really only become relevant at the PhD level, not bachelor's or master's degrees? Seems to me like nothing precludes you from going for a good education in Europe and then getting good research opportunities in the US.