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Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

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Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#541

Post by mrguyorama »

nsvd wrote: post #470
mrguyorama wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is better off as a whole with a well educated populace. We shouldn't optimize for college only for kids who can learn to program or whatever. Most other developed nations manage to send every smart kid to college for ten thousand dollars per kid or less. Once again, it is only the US that thinks it is a special butterfly that can't somehow manage to give kids college. Sure, most European colleges don't spend…

That's a popular opinion, but how do you quantitatively prove it? While the formal education of a population may correlate with wealth, I think it would be harder to prove a causal link.

It's about what is necessary for DEMOCRACY to work well. I don't care what provides a higher ROI to some rich owner-class people, I care about a society that represents its people.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#542

Post by dv_dt »

dv_dt wrote: post #111

In the same time period, stay public university systems had their state funding also decimated. Federally sourced loans were favored over expanding grant programs. The thought that public universities should “run like private businesses” is a disease of neoliberalism. They largely succeeded in running like businesses, but it’s all the wrong metrics. public goods should not be profit centers for state or federal gover…

*state public university systems.

Take away state funding, make it a business objective to capture students, add a abstraction of student loans and direct federal funding, and of course tuition increases.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#543

Post by doalldrugs »

eschulz wrote: post #10

Makes sense when you have student loans backed by the federal government. If an 18 year old with no money and no credit history gets accepted into a qualifying university, she will be able to receive a loan since the bank knows that the government will protect their investment if she fails to pay them back. So now young people have this easy access to credit, and universities can greatly increase tuition and fees wit…

So the easier solution then since the government is effectively already paying for anyone who doesn't pay back their loan (a dead person for example) then is to just pay for everyone's college education (Public Universities).

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#544

Post by function_seven »

aidenn0 wrote: post #502
function_seven wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> ... it strikes me how much of a "period piece" the comment is...

Ha. I mean, I got a free CD, which itself dates the story. But even more old-timey? That Citi card I referenced above was actually an AT&T Universal Card. The "Universal" was because it was also a calling card! On the back was a separate number I could use to place calls from a payphone, at cheaper rates than dropping coins into it.

It's been many years since the card had that feature, but the branding relationship must be strong, because it's still called that, and my card still sports an AT&T logo on the front.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#545

Post by foolinaround »

if we had to eat this elephant one bite at a time, one option to consider is completely seperating sports from colleges?

What would be the impact? What are the drivers that could enable youth to participate in sports run/administered by a 3rd party as well as attend college?

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#546

Post by nielsbot »

robomartin wrote: post #391
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'…

> When students can file for bankruptcy Agree with everything you say, except for this. Allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will result in millions of students pulling that lever as soon as they graduate. They, of course, get to keep their degrees and use them to make money their entire lives. If you file for bankruptcy and, for example, want to keep your car (which has a loan), you have to reaffirm…

> Allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will result in millions of students pulling that lever as soon as they graduate.

What happened in the days before student loans become exempt from bankruptcy?

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#547

Post by tzs »

eschulz wrote: post #10

Makes sense when you have student loans backed by the federal government. If an 18 year old with no money and no credit history gets accepted into a qualifying university, she will be able to receive a loan since the bank knows that the government will protect their investment if she fails to pay them back. So now young people have this easy access to credit, and universities can greatly increase tuition and fees wit…

> Makes sense when you have student loans backed by the federal government.

Everyone says that, but I've not seen much actual evidence.

I tried to find evidence, by looking for tuitions of various major universities over time and seeing if there was any clear difference in the tuition growth rates before Federal loans and after.

I know the data is available. Most schools list tuition in their catalog, and have their old catalogs in their library, but it wasn't turning up in. Google searches.

I was only able to find historical data for Stanford, giving tuition by decade, and one big state school whose name I don't remember. Here's a graph of log10(Stanford_tution) over time [1]. I don't have a copy of the graph for the other school but recall it was similar. It looks like it has been growing about the same for a century.

I also remember comparing tuition rate increases to inflation, and found that tuition has grown pretty consistently at roughly 2x inflation both before and after Federal backed loans.

[1] https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#548

Post by tomohawk »

Universities are heavily subsidized industries with little or no oversight.

Any other industry has all kinds of regulations and consumer protections they have to comply with.

A university is allowed to sell degrees to unsophisticated buyers, and if the degree is worthless, they are not on the hook. Who else can do that?

Universities never experience recessions or any other kind of contraction, so they never have to shed dead weight. The administrator to student/faculty ratio is way out of whack.

Student loans should be guaranteed by the university, not by the government. If the university has enough confidence in admitting a person and conferring a degree, they should stand behind it.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#550

Post by nielsbot »

drewg123 wrote: post #173

One thing that was mentioned in the article, but which seems to be missing from the discussion is the decrease in state funding for higher education. When I was looking for colleges in the 80s, the most expensive private schools were on the order of $20K all in. Those same schools are on the order of $85K all in, which is an increase of "only" (hah) 450%. However, my alma mater (SUNY Buffalo) has increased in-state t…

This seems relevant:

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/28/science/california-weighs...

Apparently University of California used to be free.

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