Because education is a lucrative business.
Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
501–510 of 588 posts
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 skille…
Sure, but at the same time there are lots of clever people that missed the opportunity to actually go, due to artificial barriers that consider them too dumb for university.
Morons? There are morons everywhere.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 skille…
Sure, but at the same time there are lots of clever people that missed the opportunity to actually go, due to artificial barriers that consider them too dumb for university. Morons? There are morons everywhere.
What’s wrong with a clever person becoming a truly amazing welder? Or a dentist (professional tracks do not require university)?
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but at the same time there are lots of clever people that missed the opportunity to actually go, due to artificial barriers that consider them too dumb for university. Morons? There are morons everywhere.
What’s wrong with a clever person becoming a truly amazing welder? Or a dentist (professional tracks do not require university)?
Everything if that wasn't in their life goals.
Dentist requires university degree in many European countries by the way (4 years).
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my less than complete research it seems the ranges are based from 27k-37k. Either way, that doesn't seem to to bad. So based on that number being relatively true, is that too high? Why is that too high?
It's too high if the degree doesn't lead to employment or is not useful in employment. Consider the cost over a lifetime: it is much more than 27-37k after it is paid off and there is no way to discharge the debt. It's a risk that is put on students who are 17-18 and the effect is essentially to increase worker desperation of 21-22 year olds - suppressing labor costs to employers while increasing the monthly bills of…
I think if you look at what modern on-campus housing and amenities have evolved to become, I struggle to agree with a description of that experience as "poverty conditions".
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#506The central claim in TFA is that when the government gives out loans directly, instead of guaranteeing loans made by banks, it's easier for students to get student loans, and therefore college prices go up. a) Zero evidence is provided in TFA that it is in fact easier for students to get loans under the government program. I could make an equally compelling argument and say, when the private sector provides loans gua…
> 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…
On that basis you might as well limit university education exclusively to hedge fund management.
It pays better than anything else, so what's the problem?
Never mind that some stupid math problem that only fifty people in the world ever cared about led to the creation of both crypto and computing.
So presumably it would have been "discipline" to have Turing flipping burgers instead of going to college, because most administrators, voters, and politicians had no clue what he was doing, and fewer people cared.
This is why we shouldn't make student loans justify themselves economically.
In fact we shouldn't have student loans at all. Because it's really hard to make multi-decade predictions about which areas of interest will be financially viable - as anyone doing a CS degree today will discover in the next ten years or so.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
...demand that students live in them freshman year What? I've been watching movies and series made in USA for decades and didn't know that. I assumed that students living there was a way to save money or the parents wanted it. I had no idea it was required. If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents?
> If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents? The uni I worked for eventually rolled out that policy after the initial "all freshmen live in dorms now" backlash, but it's a tiny fraction of the student population whose parents live in town. State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers, for obscure reasons involving a mistrust of European politics.
> State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers
Probably because its cheaper to buy lot of land away from population centers.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
>But recent buildings look better, and the off-campus "communities" in Texas look better than ... most apartments in New York. [0] How bad are the apartments in New York? The one you cite has great marketing literature but abysmal reviews: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-block-austin-3?osq=the+block
To be fair, the last time I was apartment shopping (8 or so years ago) I quickly realized that basically every apartment complex gets terrible reviews.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one This is part of the problem. Stop demanding a formal degree for jobs, allow anyone who can do the job to do it, and much/some of these problems will go away.
I think it is more of a problem of inflation. If you get 50 application is easy just to automatically remove the X that don't have a college degree. Similarly to the way you might have a GPA cut off of some amount but they don't actually care what your degree was in. In Ireland there are a lot of people who go on to do a Masters because when a large number of people have degrees it makes you more competitive. Anecdot…
I was mostly thinking of when lawmakers or regulators decree that to do job X you must have college degree Y.
As an employer with many resumes to choose between, you'll of course pick whoever you prefer.
Except if you're not allowed to hire them because they haven't paid a college for a document.
Re: Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? A blank check in 1993
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
No. The link I was replying to was referring to State Universities. They are owned and partially financed by the government.