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the better question is how college costs continue to sky rocket in an environment with an oversupply of labor?
by darkmarmot 11y ago
the better question is how college costs continue to sky rocket in an environment with an oversupply of labor?
- jjoonathan 11y agoBecause college is how the growing pool of labor competes for the shrinking pool of meal tickets.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoMaybe costs do not raise, but revenues do?
- gozur88 11y agoBecause goods and services cost what people are willing to pay, not what they cost to produce. The value of your college degree is based on the institution's accept/reject ratio, not on the quality of instruction (which is nearly impossible to quantify). It means starting a new prestigious college is nearly impossible. Without excess applicants to reject, a new college doesn't rank well, which in turn means less interest by students and parents. The upper tier colleges can charge pretty much whatever they want without fear of competition. That also means colleges put a lot more effort into attracting students than actually educating them. As long as there is an excess of people wanting adjunct positions, institutions can get away with a high-low strategey - a handful of well known full professors and an army of starving adjuncts.
- niels_olson 11y agoIt's easy to quantify quality of instruction. Just longitudinal analysis. Messy? Probably. But in serious industries, it would be done. But higher education administrators would rather listen to instructors than students and instructors really don't like the idea. If parents had to pay directly for college, I suspect longitudinal tracking of students to assess influence of prior instructors would start in a hurry. As a med student, I presented a poster at a medical education conference. The most common comment was "Woah! Data!" A brief tour of the faculty presentations indicated this field of study is a protectionist racket. Nothing good will come of it.
- nradov 11y agoThe price of college is bounded only by the difference between the net present value of students' future income with and without a degree. Prices will tend to increase up to that point, absent government intervention to hold the price down. Some private colleges are already above the limit and will have to start cutting prices to maintain enrollment soon.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]