The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

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The increase in public funding of universities has inflated the enrollment, decreased the quality of education, and increased the pricing by allowing sub-par schools to survive.

In any economic situation, an increase in the quantity of money trying to consume a restricted quantity of resources increases the price. This is an economic fact. How does the article simply make the point that the increase in public funding isn't why the costs have increased but not even bring up the correlation between the increase in funding and the costs going up??

If we have 100 apples of production a year at the current price, and someone comes along and gives people who want apples some money to buy apples, the apple seller can increase the price without much resistance. Everyone who wants apples pays more because the money in this market is inflated.

Government has inflated the market. As a 34 year old college senior about to graduate with honors, I see this every single day at school. The failure rates for the low levels classes is ~50% and even THAT is inflated because the teachers are frowned upon if they fail to pass students. When teachers fail to pass students, students drop out and the college stops getting money. So they string them along into higher and higher levels classes hoping they catch on and catch up. This has led to me being in 300-400 level computer science classes with people who have absolutely no business being in college at all, let alone anywhere near a computer.

They have no functional knowledge of computing, and have no chance of getting a job even if they manage to get through college with a C average.

Unfortunately, the higher level teachers bend to the lower capability in the class as well... I had a 425 advanced database class where the teacher told us that some people still had not managed to install mysql after the midterm...

The only reason kids were passing with C's is they were googling for answers on the open-laptop tests.

By subsidizing the marketplace, the government is allowing schools that should close or be radically reformed to continue chugging along.

Another tangental issue is college sports. Colleges can play all sorts of games with the way money is spent on college sports and athletes. Companies can donate huge sums of money for sports complexes that are suppose to benefit the entire student body, but the athletes at my school have a separate gym with high end amenities where the regular students use a cheaper gym with normal gym equipment. I pay for classes, but people who run faster than me get in for free, get easy A classes, and get high end amenities. They get free food, special athlete lodging, and the list goes on and on. All of this is coming out of the general coffers.

While they have both hot whirlpools and cold tanks to aid in their workout recovery, I'm in a "computer science" building rented off campus, with no place to plug in a power cord.

I'm really shocked to see the NYTimes go as far as they did. Certainly, the article will be met with spite from the left as well as the right.

Pretty much everyone throughout human history, outside of recent Western history, would probably disagree with that. By 18 you were expected to be a self-supporting adult.

I think 18 is too young to pick a career only if you wait until you're 18 to start thinking about it. If you're encouraged and allowed to explore your interests earlier, you should have a pretty good idea of what you'd like to do by the time you're 18.