Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices • Hacker News Board

Re: Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices

#51

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, May 14, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #47

jfasi wrote: post #9

I wonder how this drop in demand is distributed between American students who are eligible for financial aid and federally-backed student loans and foreign students who almost always pay full price. As an anecdote from my own engineering school experience, a staggeringly large proportion of my classes were populated by foreign, usually Chinese and Indian, students. My college has a pretty good brand, and I understand…

> (at least if the number of Canada Goose coats and Supreme hoodies is any indication). Why crane your neck to check the outfits, when you can glance at their cars? http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2014/04/michigan... "People who haven't visited Michigan State University's campus lately may be surprised to find Maseratis, Lamborghinis and Bentleys driving around. ...:

In most class environments it's a lot easier to look at someone's clothing than to follow them out to the parking lot and check their car.

Re: Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices

#52

Post by pfranz » Mon, May 14, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

technologyvault wrote: post #22

A few observations about this "will the traditional college survive" situation, which I've been following for a long time. The higher education market feels a bit like the healthcare market in that it's somewhat difficult for the consumer to tell what the actual cost will be prior to purchasing the product. Published tuition rates and other costs of attending school feel like they're abstracted until a long-term comm…

I have no idea, but I would think the sports department of any college would be run more like a profit generating business (or any losses would be tracked, but treated like "advertising" or investment in "prestige").

We tend to think of inflation and spending power as something that changes over time and affects all goods equally, but this is one of the big problems education and healthcare share; they're driven by humans. Food, furniture, and clothes have dropped in cost significantly over 100 years and the productivity of a single worker has skyrocketed. Education and healthcare have very similar ratios of patient:doctor and student:teacher over the past 100 years, so those higher salaries affect the cost. There's been a lot of talk that the true cost of teachers has been historically undervalued since women were discriminated out of most other jobs (this may not necessarily apply to colleges). Now that women have more opportunities, there's more pressure to pay the true cost of these teachers.

I do realize that colleges have push for fewer tenured professors, brought on more TAs and temporary teachers, and administrative headcount has ballooned. But that hasn't had anywhere near the magnitude of change most other industries have made.

Everyone knows you go to business school to network and a other degrees are branding (if they have X degree from school Y, you're confident they've they've met some bar). Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it'd be an uphill climb to disrupt that. Even if they get replaced, I can only see it happening by another monolithic institution that would carry all of the baggage associated with that. I think Coursera has been making very strong efforts for many years, but still hasn't found a successful model.

Re: Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices

#53

Post by mfoy_ » Mon, May 14, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #33

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For established non-profit schools? Or new, mostly for-profit schools? I find it hard to believe any reputable, 20+ year-old, non-profit schools are losing money. They should own their assets outright, have extremely low interest rates on any outstanding debt, pay close to 0 taxes. Wages for non-executive staff are not keeping pace with inflation. How are they losing money?

In addition to large amounts of new construction, administrative staff has expanded massively [0]. Between 1975 and 2011, the number of full-time, tenured faculty at universities grew by 23%. The number of administrators grew by 369%. The trend seems to be to hire part-time and untenured faculty to keep salaries down, then hire more administrators. [0]: See "Full-Time Nonfaculty Professional" at https://www.aaup.org/…

Why??

Re: Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices

#54

Post by alex_anglin » Mon, May 14, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #41

technologyvault wrote: post #22

A few observations about this "will the traditional college survive" situation, which I've been following for a long time. The higher education market feels a bit like the healthcare market in that it's somewhat difficult for the consumer to tell what the actual cost will be prior to purchasing the product. Published tuition rates and other costs of attending school feel like they're abstracted until a long-term comm…

I think salaries for football coaches is the one area where they aren't having issues because they get direct revenue from their sports teams in terms of ticket sales, merchandise sales, and TV rights. If the teams do better, all of those metrics increase, so investing there would make sense. Additionally they don't have one of the largest costs for traditional sports teams, player salaries.

Except that the players are the ones who get screwed - see much of the controversy about the NCAA.

Re: Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices

#55

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Mon, May 14, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #33

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For established non-profit schools? Or new, mostly for-profit schools? I find it hard to believe any reputable, 20+ year-old, non-profit schools are losing money. They should own their assets outright, have extremely low interest rates on any outstanding debt, pay close to 0 taxes. Wages for non-executive staff are not keeping pace with inflation. How are they losing money?

In addition to large amounts of new construction, administrative staff has expanded massively [0]. Between 1975 and 2011, the number of full-time, tenured faculty at universities grew by 23%. The number of administrators grew by 369%. The trend seems to be to hire part-time and untenured faculty to keep salaries down, then hire more administrators. [0]: See "Full-Time Nonfaculty Professional" at https://www.aaup.org/…

Wow, looks like the financialization of education is almost complete. That graph literally looks like a nightmare.

Re: Why falling demand hasn't brought down college sticker prices

#56

Post by winslow » Mon, May 14, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to large amounts of new construction, administrative staff has expanded massively [0]. Between 1975 and 2011, the number of full-time, tenured faculty at universities grew by 23%. The number of administrators grew by 369%. The trend seems to be to hire part-time and untenured faculty to keep salaries down, then hire more administrators. [0]: See "Full-Time Nonfaculty Professional" at https://www.aaup.org/…

Wow, looks like the financialization of education is almost complete. That graph literally looks like a nightmare.

Can you expand on what you mean by that?