Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983 • Hacker News Board

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#501

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

solarmist wrote: post #69

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knew providers would raise prices with wild abandon when demand is firmly inelastic and debt without default risk is liberally provided? /s Hopefully states experimenting with universal higher education legislation makes some improvement possible: https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-legislature-college-tui... ("Minnesota lawmakers reach deal for free college tuition") Note for this article that private colleges…

Demand isn’t fully inelastic. Many people are forgoing college that would’ve gone 20 years ago. It’s not huge yet, but it is happening. The rest of your point stands though.

Agreed, but they're forgoing college because they better opportunities without acquiring the traditional credential(s) due to a tight labor market, demographics and older folks retiring making trades and non college paths more lucrative, etc. The debt load is not worth the potential opportunity benefit.

The whole "get a college degree if you want to be middle class" scam is evaporating, which results in your observation.

https://reason.com/2023/03/31/poll-most-americans-dont-think...

https://apnews.com/article/skipping-college-student-loans-tr...

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#502

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #434

aidenn0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hint: It's tough to get your 1st credit card if you have no credit history in the US and most lenders will not even entertain that idea. Some will do if you put in a collateral like $500 of actual cash deposit to guard against the default risk. Is that true these days? At my university 20 years ago, the credit card companies would bribe 18-year-old freshmen to sign up for their cards.

Same here. 25 years ago I got a $500 AMEX card and a bag of M&Ms. A $1,000 Citi card and a T-shirt. And another card—Discover, $2,000!—along with a free CD I think? The conventional wisdom at the time was that (a) we were college students and were therefore more likely to have earnings in the near future to cover those small credit limits, and (b) we were college students and were therefore more likely to have parent…

I got a Discover and a Citi Mastercard.

The students working in the mail-room of my dorm were ... less than meticulous about sorting. My bills occasionally went to the wrong box, leaving insufficient time for me feel safe that my payment would arrive on time. When this happened with Discover, I just called customer service and they said they'd waive the late-fee since I called in advance. It happened once with Citi, I called and they said I would have to do an electronic payment with a $10 service charge. paid the bill and immediately canceled the Citi card.

Guess which (of Discover and Citi) I'm a lifetime customer of, and which one I will never sign up for again.

P.S.

After re-reading the above, it strikes me how much of a "period piece" the comment is. The bill arrived in the mail, I had to mail in payment, and I spoke with a person on the phone when I called the credit card company.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#503

Post by imtringued » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #320

reaperman wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in general, you'd think the student loans would only be in trouble if there's a large increase in the unemployment rate. I thought the government guarantees these loans, but maybe I mis-read that, mis-understood, or something changed. I think the borrower is still on the hook and accrues fees if they don't pay but I also thought the federal government literally paid to keep the bank whole.

Even if you can't discharge the loan in bankruptcy, if someone can't pay, you as the lender have a problem. The balance in your favour might keep increasing with the borrower totally screwed, but that doesn't really help you if nothing is being paid. Have to wonder how this interacts with the US healthcare system. As people get older they are more likely to have health problems that prevent them from working and cost…

>The balance in your favour might keep increasing with the borrower totally screwed, but that doesn't really help you if nothing is being paid.

The secret is to lend money and then make people spend it on something worthless. You know, the easiest way is to lend someone money so they can gamble the money away. You might now argue that this is terrible for the lender, but only if the lender doesn't own the casino. Then the gambler ends up in massive debt for no benefit. It doesn't matter if the borrower repays the loan or not because the lender didn't lose a single penny and every payment results in profit.

This is just a hypothesis because I am not aware of any banks or financial institutions operating an educational institution, except maybe lambda school which was heavily incentivized to get people to sign up for income sharing agreements but then only deliver some low quality MOOCs with the only source of support being TAs who themselves are former lambda school graduates.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#504

Post by wernercd » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

Armisael16 wrote: post #273

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I read that Wall Street is creating CDO's based on these loans, like they (continue to) do on mortgages. Some people die "early" without paying back these loans, and sometimes, they will owe more than they took out. Given the mounting problems with the numbers here, it seems a whole generation of people in the middle of this bubble are going to go to the grave while still owing on these loans. What happens to the…

One of the core elements of the 2008 meltdown was when someone abandoned a house, all the other houses in the neighborhood would see a substantial drop in their value. This made it more likely that other people would go underwater on their mortgage and also walk away. Education doesn’t have this kind of contagion. If you stop paying your student loans it has very little impact on the value on my education.

> Education doesn’t have this kind of contagion.

It's never been more true that education is overpriced and underdelivers.

The contagion may not be "house goes bust and my house value goes down"... but there is a contagion: My degree is now no better than the degrees for the mills pumping out idiots while lowering standards and full of soft degrees filling the markets with "educated" people that aren't qualified to fill a coffee cup at starbucks.

If you don't see a market flooded with lower value results as devaluing the worth of higher education then you're not looking closely enough.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#505

Post by spaceman_2020 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

I studied a year abroad in a US public university back in 2008. Annual tuition back then was around $10k. In local currency, that was about 400,000.

Today, that tuition is $28k. But the dollar has also appreciated so real cost in local currency is now 2,268,000 - an appreciation of 467%.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#506

Post by gowld » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #147

Workaccount2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't going to happen because the whole point of the current government back student loan program is to give kids from not-ideal backgrounds access to credit, and hence access to the full range of schools available.

Why not just make it free? Kids from not-ideal backgrounds can compete on merit alone. The way this Supreme Court intended?

The Supreme Court did nothing of the sort.

What is "merit" for access to education?

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#507

Post by FormerBandmate » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #434

aidenn0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hint: It's tough to get your 1st credit card if you have no credit history in the US and most lenders will not even entertain that idea. Some will do if you put in a collateral like $500 of actual cash deposit to guard against the default risk. Is that true these days? At my university 20 years ago, the credit card companies would bribe 18-year-old freshmen to sign up for their cards.

Same here. 25 years ago I got a $500 AMEX card and a bag of M&Ms. A $1,000 Citi card and a T-shirt. And another card—Discover, $2,000!—along with a free CD I think? The conventional wisdom at the time was that (a) we were college students and were therefore more likely to have earnings in the near future to cover those small credit limits, and (b) we were college students and were therefore more likely to have parent…

There is also a massive difference between a $500 credit limit of hypothetical spending for a credit card and actually giving out $100,000 in an unsecured loan. At the worst case scenario, your credit card loss will probably on average be $50 per customer if not much less, but for unsecured student loans it will be much higher, which will require higher interest rates that further increase defaults.

The reason student loans aren’t dischargeable in bankruptcy is because it’s basically literally impossible to collect on them, you can’t repo a college education

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#508

Post by gowld » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #41

It is free money for lenders because backed by the Govt AND protected against bankruptcy. It is Free money for colleges because they know they will get paid regardless. Remove this "free money guarantee" and watch how market corrects itself. When students can file for bankruptcy and/or the debt is not guaranteed by Govt, lenders would now use the same criteria they use to issue credit cards to 18 year olds. Hint: It'…

I can vividly recall having this exact conversation in my grandmother's apartment, in 1995.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#509

Post by burkaman » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

hospitalJail wrote: post #415

burkaman wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postdocs are paid, and that's basically what a residency is. Or you can think of it as a co-op during a CS degree, which is also paid.

Postdocs/PhDs theoretically are supposed to be paid to advance scientific knowledge. Physicians are not advancing scientific knowledge. Also a co-op during a CS degree isnt paid with taxes.

I think I understand where you're coming from, but even ignoring resident salaries the majority of other healthcare spending is already government-funded, and in my ideal world all of it would be, so it's hard for me to be upset about this.

I don't understand your point about scientific knowledge, in my mind keeping people alive is at least equally as important as advancing scientific knowledge.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#510

Post by gen220 » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

gorjusborg wrote: post #433

gen220 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more paths to discharging than bankruptcy. Somebody I know had a medical emergency while in their repayment period. They were unable to work and went on to disability insurance, and eventually had their loans forgiven. I think they had to be on disability for a certain period of time (measured in years, iirc) before they were discharged. Eventually, they recovered sufficiently to be able to return to the work…

Thanks for sharing the anecdotes. Doesn't it seem like a society shouldn't encourage people to financially self-immolate in order to start their adult life? I mean, giving the self-immolators some tweaky hacks to prevent being lit on fire is not really the best solution.

I totally agree, I think most level-headed people do.

It's a tricky problem. We want people to have equal opportunity to pursue college, even if their parents can't afford it. But at the same time, we don't want to subsidize cost creep.

Clearly the current solution doesn't work. Alas, we're deeply invested in it (literally), and each passing year the entanglement grows.

I think you can make a strong case for govt-funded tuition at public universities. But I don't know how to get to there from here without making a handful of people very unhappy.