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Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

statecraft.beehiiv.com

701–710 of 771 posts

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Prior to 1976? That might as well be another century. My guess is not many loans discharged by BK. I would also guess loan amounts were not insane, as they are today. I would further guess the no-discharge rule had to have origin in excessive defaults. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

I’d bet (without evidence sadly) that credit cards have a higher rate of default and you can declare bankruptcy for CC debt.

Surprisingly (some) student loan debt can be discharged under bankruptcy per the CFPB: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/busting-myths-...

What a mess.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#702
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…

The reality in many cases is that total cost per student has actually decreased; meanwhile, governmental funding of universities has flatlined for decades. If enrolment doubles and funding remains stable, there's only one solution: Increased tuition.

Easy access to loans may create large amounts of debt, but increased tuition fees are mostly -- though I admit my research isn't exhaustive -- a function of an effective decrease in governmental funding per student.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#703
post #619

The situation for students is pretty close to a double bind situation [1]: - Get loans and go to school, or I (your family, society, the job market) will punish you. - Do not get loans, or I (the economy, lenders, your credit score) will punish you. - You must got to higher education and get a degree, but only if you want to. ("college isn't for everybody", except all we ever say is a HS education is a dead end). - W…

Sshhhh your theory implies systemic issues. And everyone knows the individual is supposed to be the one to be blamed for that!

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#704
post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then parents with money and pull in academic orgs will make sure that tuition will float just far enough above that limit that their children won't suffer from too much competition by the less fortunate. But then on the other hand I'm not really convinced that this would actually be worse than the model of betting (or worse: bidding, it's a market with limited supply of high-status slots) seemingly unbounded amounts…

> Then parents with money and pull in academic orgs will make sure that tuition will float just far enough above that limit that their children won't suffer from too much competition by the less fortunate Universities do that already. "Need-based" financial aid ensures that the parental contribution is near the hardship threshold for low-income parents - tipping the scale toward those with greater ability to pay. And…

there's a very nice video I saw posted a while back where a graphic designer talks about how he'll charge different amounts for a logo for different customers - a small mom and pop shop will pay much less than a large multinational.

You price the customer, not the service.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems wrong to influence your son's decision based on your financial situation rather than his desires/passions. Of course if he's naturally interested in the trades then sure.

Education is an investment, period, end of story. If you don't do a modicum of Research before you take on tens or hundreds of thousands in debt to invest in something, that's on you and you alone. If people were not bailed out and subsidized we would not have these issues of this magnitude.

you mean like this one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#706
post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? Half the faculty at any college, no matter the price, are adjuncts, who earn $2500 or so PER CLASS PER SEMESTER, while the 30 students in that class are charged $2500 EACH for that class. It's as close as you can get to free labor for knowledge work, basically the original Gig economy; Uber for teaching.

Almost none of that is true

That adjunct pay seems low but not unheard of. Here is a thread I found on it [1]. The cost per student per class is not far off (at least at my state school). Assuming a 3-credit undergrad class at Penn State @$800 ($2400) [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/un7uei/average_... [2] https://tuition.psu.edu/tuitiondynamic/tabledrivenrates.aspx...

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It really depends on what you mean by that. Plenty of people get bachelor’s degrees with little to no civics or history education included. And historically, college degrees were rare. Only 28% of the Silent Generation had any college. Now, 67% of Millennials do. Did democracy not function before? https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/14/millenn... However, to the extent that education enables better inco…

Democracy gets harder the more technologically advanced the world is. In the decades of newspapers and limited information it was much easier to control information, placing the burden of information flow on a limited set of journalists.

Now that burden is put on each and everyone of us with social media and other alternative media. People from the Silent Generation are drowning in todays information age.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#708
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t they government issued loans? That’s how it worked over here

Yes. It's not the bankers doing it, it's the US Government - the Feds are the market, they own 93% of student debt. What a coincidence they dictate whether you can discharge the debt too, not too difficult to spot the gigantic conflict of interest. It's designed by the US Government to bring in massive, on-going funding to help fill in the red ink in the entitlement programs now that those are no longer funding sourc…

The cost of studying is amazing in the USA. I did three degrees and I think it cost me around around $2.300 per year. I do think the prices differ between foreigners and local students.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#709
The article lost me at the continued suggestion we forgive debt. If the gov wants to wholesale forgive debt, send everybody a check. Otherwise it isn’t fair to those who have no degree, couldn’t afford one or get loans, or already paid theirs off or paid cash.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#710

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…

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 studen…

> 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

You can revoke the degree. Given that most people out of school don’t remember most of school anyways this should be enough for most.

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