27 ms·

The $10,000-a-year college education has arrived (1981)

98 points by Futurebot 11y ago

reubensutton 11y ago
I think the real problem in education is that credentials have become prized over learning.
swampthinker 11y ago
Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly $26,100 in 2015 dollars.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- muzz 11y ago
  and 1981 when the article was written was a period of hyper-inflation " 'families will still allocate about the same percentage of income in real dollars' because college charges have only paralleled the inflation in the nation's disposable personal income"
peter303 11y ago
The 'total package' at some schools recently passed 70K. Assuming 5% education inflation (twice CPI), these schools may hit 100K in 8 years.
- Alupis 11y ago
  This "total package" typically includes room and board, as well as other normal living expenses (food, transportation, clothing, etc...). You would be spending that same amount even if you did not attend university (anywhere between $20K-$40k per year in living expenses).
  - usea 11y ago
    Many schools require taking said "total package" for the first semester or first year. I know at my university, all incoming freshmen were required to live on campus and purchase a meal plan. For anyone who lives nearby or planned on shopping around, this is an additional cost.
    - Alupis 11y ago
      That's a good point. My university did not have this requirement, however I should point out, even if you lived at home, or moved out on your own - you will be spending this money anyway. As-in, it doesn't matter if the university requires you to take this package the first year, since you're spending it no matter what (on living somewhere). It's just a matter of who you give that money to. If you don't want to spend student loans on normal living expenses, one should work while attending university, this way your loans are only for your tuition and related school expenses... not for rent and food.
      - afarrell 11y ago
        Yes, but a dining plan can be significantly more costly than buying food at a grocery store. When MIT tried to require that all students get on a dining plan, there were protests from the less-expensive dorms on the east side.
        peter303 11y ago
        http://dining.mit.edu/meal-plans/options http://dining.mit.edu/meal-plans/options Their current plans are still $100 to $150 a week for 30 weeks. Thats about three times what jusdicious grocery shopping could get you. Same ratio as when I attended decades ago.
      - moron4hire 11y ago
        Well, no, not exactly. If you're living at home, your parents are paying for your housing. It's money that is already getting spent. If you have to live in the dorms, your parents don't get a break on their mortgage or rent because you moved out. If your parents are helping you out, they now have their own rent to pay, plus a new rent for you, where before they essentially got "your" rent "for free". Similarly, adding one person to the home grocery bill was not anywhere near as expensive as the meal plan. Most universities run their cafeterias as profit centers. You're paying restaurant prices. Cheap restaurant prices, typically, but still more than cooking at home.
cassieramen 11y ago
This article hints at schools inability to justify their ever increasing prices. Why is tuition continuing to rise so much faster than inflation? Is this simple supply and demand? Government backed loans create infinite supply to anyone who wants them? How can not for profit schools justify gauging their students?
- crabasa 11y ago
  1. Infinite supply of loans. Dept of Ed isn't even allowed to deny a loan to a person. 2. Culture since the Clinton era of "everyone should go to college". Massive cultural stigma for those who don't. 3. Colleges continue to justify costs based on lifetime earnings delta of people with degrees. Sadly, this data is backwards-looking and not indicative of what today's students should expect. The most heinous thing though is that student loans are exempted from American bankruptcy laws. The gov't will give you a loan, without doing any diligence on your ability to repay, but make it impossible to discharge your debt if you go bankrupt.
  - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
    +1 for the role that guaranteed, subsidized student loans play. University financial counselors are very well versed at helping students obtain the maximum amount of loans, along with an obligatory brochure cautioning them not to over-borrow.
  - jenshoop 11y ago
    Spot on. There's also been an increasing competitive push between universities to deliver "country club-esque" experiences to students, which further drives up cost. (Separately, let's not forget about the chaos of the educational publishing industry and the insane price points they command for modestly updated editions each year.) But I think items 1 and 2 above -- and a lack of education about what loans are and the value of a higher ed degree to the potential student -- are the true culprits here. There's a cultural expectation that all students will matriculate to college, and many high schools measure their success in terms of college attainment. Meanwhile, there's a lack of counseling/education for students, so few know that they're expected to repay loans and fewer explore the options (college and non-college) in front of them, and counselors would be working at cross-purposes with the secondary institution's goals if they advised against attending college. As demand for higher ed continues to grow, for-profit higher ed institutions continue to spring up to suck up federal loans and lower acceptance standards.
jnardiello 11y ago
My tuition fee in a top-notch european technical college (automation engineering) was roughly 3000$/year. But yeah, let's keep cargo-culting the US model.
- outside1234 11y ago
  You probably forgot taxes in that cost (that you will pay for the rest of your life as a high earner) but, that said, that is a great model: the country makes an investment in you, you prove you are serious about it (the $3000 a year), and in return, the country gets a higher wage earner (and more taxes) to pay for the next generation.
  - jnardiello 11y ago
    No, I didn't. That was the total tuition fee including taxes. Obviously that didn't include any sort of college accommodation or meal plan - as I lived at reasonable distance from the campus. It was just standard "classes & exams". That said, because tuition and taxes are proportional to family income, I was in the highest and most expensive tuition fee. Most of the students in the campus would roughly pay half of it - unless they would start to repeat classes and not pass exams (for which you automatically jump to the most expensive yearly fee).
    - thesis 11y ago
      The person you're replying to mean't taxes you pay on your income after college.
    - outside1234 11y ago
      What I'm talking about is that most European countries have a higher overall income tax rate than the US. Some of this goes to pay for your education, so 3000 is not the total you are paying for it, you will keep paying for it over your lifetime in taxes. Again, I think this is a great idea. But that said, there is no free lunch in this world.
  - S4M 11y ago
zekevermillion 11y ago
Higher Ed in the US has long been a luxury good, where price is no object. Or rather, there is a correlation between price and demand. Or at least, sticker price and demand -- institutions discriminate between customers by offering scholarships and need-based aid to maximize income, and to maintain a high sticker price.
ewindisch 11y ago
Parents pay more than this per child today for daycare[1]. [1] https://www.care.com/a/how-much-does-child-care-cost-1406091737 https://www.care.com/a/how-much-does-child-care-cost-1406091...
- gohrt 11y ago
  Day care is far more labor-intensive than college. The student:staff ratio in daycare is at most 6:1, for 40 hr/wk attention to students. At a college, the ration is 10:1 or 20:1, for <20 hrs/wk attention to students
ouiyaaa 11y ago
I know its uncool to here to talk about Bernie, but if you dudes are really serious about this- vote for Bernie, even if you're rich because rainy days may come anytime
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
It's quite likely that by the time my 11-year-old hits 18, private universities will cost over $100,000 per year (tuition plus fees, housing, and food plan), and public schools will be $25K [EDITED orig. $50K] (plus or minus, depending on state subsidies and other funding such as corporate donations). While the university experience is undoubtedly a valuable one for the 18-22 age range, with tremendous intellectual and socialization opportunities during this formative period, I wonder whether it's still going to be the best and only pathway to intellectual and social growth. With MOOCs and other online learning resources flooding the internet, many free or for moderate fees, the focus now has to be on justifying the classroom experience. Are you still best off in a 300-seat lecture hall, scribbling/typing notes while a grad student or adjunct spews information from the lectern, at an arbitrary time of day that if you somehow miss it, you're out of luck? You can't exactly ask the lecturer to pause while you go to the toilet, or "please rewind 10 seconds, I missed something". Maybe they have videoed the lecture and maybe the videographer remembered to zoom in on the powerpoint screen at the right times. You hope that meeting all those fellow students will lead to a group learning experience -- "Hey, let's meet at the coffeeshop and go over this stuff together!" That's possibly the best way to learn material, to teach it to your colleagues and have them quiz you as well. But is that not reproducible in the online model, e.g. chatrooms, skype, etc.? In my opinion, the U.S. government should get out of the business of providing and guaranteeing educational loans. It has resulted in a vast, bloated system of exploitation of the students and the loan system, and we are now facing possibly a trillion dollar bubble that may burst in the next few years if all those freshly minted degrees don't lead to good paying jobs to retire those loans. Universities in the U.S. must be put on notice that the free ride is over, and they have to get costs under control, stop with the billion dollar student centers and bloated administrative offices, and try to get back to basics of providing lecture halls and white boards and reasonably secure jobs for professors to do what universities ought to focus on: teach.
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  What evidence do you have for your assertion that public schools would cost $50k a year?
  - 11y ago
wlucas 11y ago
What makes all the difference in the world now compared to the jaw-dropping prices in '81 is we have alternative education options. There were virtually no other paths to career success 30 years ago... heck... 15 years ago! A traditional path towards a degree was the only way to assure a positive career outlook. I don't think MOOCs are the panacea, but all types of learning resources (books, classes, organizations, events, people) are all more accessible. The entrepreneurial approach to learning.
- dpark 11y ago
  I feel like this is backwards. 30 years ago you could potentially work your way up the ladder without a degree. Now you need a degree to get a job working in a coffee shop, because college degrees are so ubiquitous that they've become a prerequisite for employment at many places. Sure, you could do some learning on your own now, but you could also do that 30 years ago, and I'm not certain most employers are going to put much stock in self-directed education regardless, not when there are so many underemployed college grads available.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    Totally backwards. I know a lot of people in their 30s-50s who would never be able to get hired for their jobs now since new hires in their position need a college degree which, by the way, is hilariously stupid. Employers expect you to have a college degree to clean the toilets now.
kevindeasis 11y ago
I'm still waiting for a dramatic disruption of the college/post-secondary industry. I hope it comes really soon, but I'm starting to doubt if it'll come within the next 5 years. I think it's going to take lots of people to disrupt education especially since the government will get involve. I'm starting to feel that some courses in college/university isn't worth that much money. Like a 50,000 degree that has lectures and materials freely available online? Seriously? Furthermore, some professors are amazing at research, but has no business in teaching. This looks like a massive waste. It's a huge problem and there are big opportunities in this area.
- losteric 11y ago
  > I'm still waiting for a dramatic disruption of the college/post-secondary industry. [..] I'm starting to feel that some courses in college/university isn't worth that much money. It's still coming. As college grads increase in supply their value decreases (top-tier colleges/students aside). More and more students are realizing their college education has a negative ROI... in fact, outside of software, most of my friends are not using their degree at their job. I think the "code-school" trend is the start of a "micro-degree" program. Self-service fluff-free education with a standard certification exam is pretty compelling. As we see that proliferate to other domains, we'll start to see micro-certifications (just the test). The missing component seems to be the in-person meetings and networking that comes with physical college. I predict we'll see more online school(s) supporting a physical meeting space for students to network and learn from each other... maybe even a new campus model that strips out the cruft of traditional centralized education institutions.
- benbreen 11y ago
  One thing that I think gets lost in these debates is that those college professors who do amazing research and are terrible teachers are still important for society and shouldn't be kicked to the curb. In my experience, these are the type of people who wouldn't be able to land on their feet particularly well outside the academic system - the unorthodox, unsociable weirdos who work on some obscure problem for years. These are also the types of people who occasionally make fundamental breakthroughs, or the ones whose dogged pursuit of a seemingly impractical goal ends up reaping unexpected rewards in terms of new discoveries. I wouldn't want to take a class with the versions of this type that I know, but I'm still glad they exist and have a home in academia. I just finished my first semester as a history professor and based on my experiences I very much agree that the current system of university education and especially administration would benefit from some kind of fundamental change. But university research is a separate issue, and I worry that trying to "disrupt universities" without thinking through the societal implications might end up harming this amazing apparatus for pursuing advanced research that the US has built up over the past century. I'd argue that those professors who are terrible teachers but amazing researchers have a real value and that we need to keep in mind that universities have always been about more than teaching. (The ultimate case in point is Oxford's All Souls College, which literally doesn't allow any students onto their campus without a letter of reference - but is nonetheless an amazing institution which has given the world real benefits).
outside1234 11y ago
The question I have: What is the actual cost of having a student at a university in the US per year?
- sreyaNotfilc 11y ago
  I couldn't say. Honestly, I wouldn't think that it would be much. A lot of the courses haven't changed much year-over-year. The question I have is with modern technology, why isn't there a startup that had figured out how to remedy this issue. Surely there's a way to provide top notch education without having to break the bank doing so.
- muzz 11y ago
  Maybe this article will be helpful: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-sticker-prices-actual-college-costs-stable-over-decade-study-says.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-s...
crabasa 11y ago
Another, lesser known side effect of the unlimited access to student loans has been the rise of "degree factory" for-profit universities and their super aggressive and deceptive recruitment tactics. It is yet another lesson in the law of unintended consequences: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-for-profit-college-settlement-20151116-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-for-profit-college-set...
trentbigelow 11y ago
If you're looking for a legit degree for around or under $10,000 check out International Programmes at University of London. There's even some undergraduate degrees from the LSE you can take remotely. http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/search/?solrsort=sort_title%20asc http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/search/?solrsor...
- trentbigelow 11y ago
  I should add that I'm sharing this because I wish I knew about this before I took on a oil tanker full of student debt to go to a "prestigious" US school only to leave before graduating to do a startup. Startupers, consider this option on your own time for (relative) cheap from a prestigious uni.
igonvalue 11y ago
Adjusted for inflation, that's over $26K in 2015 dollars [0]. But of course the punch line is that price increases since then have significantly outpaced inflation. This phenomenon is known as Baumol's cost disease. [0] http://inflationcalculator.us/ http://inflationcalculator.us/
fecklessyouth 11y ago
>'If there's no major reduction in Government loans and grants, we're in good shape,' said Donald Routh, dean for financial aid. 'If there are reductions, then we have some very real problems.' Yes, if only...
dovereconomics 11y ago
Inflation-adjusted, $10000 in 1981 translates to $26109 in 2015.
abecode 11y ago
I play devil's advocate with a Cuban friend sometimes: an expensive education is better than a free one because it shows that our culture highly values knowledge, at least in terms of money. When education is free or cheap, it is devalued, at least in terms of money. It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek argument but I think that it's good that people highly value education and it would be even better if the tuition increase would trickle down into pay for professors and post-docs. The high tuition does already trickle down to scholarships for good students, at least in personal experience.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Students in the UK pay £9k (~$13.5k) per year out of pocket for the 3 year university system. They were paying just £3K (~$4.5k) until 2012. University was free in the UK until 1998. Many universities in Germany still remain free. Is this because the British or German society values education less? No, it's because Europeans pay more taxes on average, and their governments use this to subsidize the sticker price of tuition in tandem with funding and guaranteeing student loans. In the US, tax money is only used to guarantee student loans, while private universities are left to their own devices when it comes to pricing tuition. Price is not always a good proxy for value. You need to look at who is paying for it, and when.
  - distances 11y ago
    And of course, free (meaning paid in taxes) in all of the Nordics. At least for smaller countries this makes total sense, I think. There are enrolment limits, so the brightest get in regardless of their social status or wealth, ensuring that the country gets the educated workforce for its needs to stay competitive.
  - gabemart 11y ago
    > Students in the UK pay £9k (~$13.5k) per year out of pocket for the 3 year university system. Scottish students studying in Scotland ordinarily pay no fees to attend university, provided they are studying for their first undergraduate degree.
mhb 11y ago
Subsidies increase tuition: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/subsidies-increase-tuition-part-xiv.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/sub...
- fredgrott 11y ago
  that is not real truthful.. As subsidies increased the upswing in HS students attending college happen.. 1970s 25% HS students went to college 2000s 85% HS students went to college Its not the subsidies that increased its the shear numbers of students per college campus increased beyond what the US state budgets for college could weather.. The correct term would be that US Federal subsidies had a side effect of de-funding public colleges at the State levels.
jxramos 11y ago
LOL, didn't even realize this was a historical piece going in. I was about to be impressed if someone in the modern era created some means of achieving a college degree equivalent for the stated price tag. I was envisioning some sort of online thing, but too good to be true.
lsc 11y ago
I have a different perspective. I'm in my mid-30s, and I'm considering going to college. Now, I can get very senior sysadmin/sre roles, and believe I could get a mid-level swe role (certainly could get a junior swe role) Point being, I do okay; the Stanford budget of $65K/yr[1] would be super easy if I could work a half-time job/half-time school; or something of that nature, and comparing to getting accepted by Stanford[2], paying for it should be trivial. I've talked employers into letting me work part-time before. I guess that what I'm saying is that for a nerd, the real cost here is not what you pay for college, it's the time off work. Now, maybe it is worth it and maybe it is not,[3] but even when I was 18 (in 1998) I was making close to $50K/yr.[4] Considering how everything has gone, I bet that was rather more than Stanford charged at the time. I mean, sure, I see that it's a problem that people pay that much for a degree that doesn't convey a lot of privilege, but if my impression of how much privilege is implied by a degree from a top school is correct, two or three hundred grand for such a degree is downright cheap. We're talking like two Teslas, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't depreciate like a car does, unless the school falls in reputation later on. I don't want to make light of the problems people who work in lower-paying fields have, and personally, I think it sounds absolutely crazy that you ask people who are all but children to decide if they want to take out loans without the fallback of bankruptcy, and I personally don't have a problem to some extent subsidizing people who want "education for education's sake" -people who want to get educated and then work in a poorly remunerated field, but I'm just saying that as far as I can tell, at least for us nerds, if a school can do what is says it can do[5] and you aren't capable of doing that by yourself, at today's prices, it's a hell of a deal. [1]http://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/ http://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/ [2]And qualifying for Stanford will take a lot of test prep, effort and luck on my part. Qualifying is not anywhere near a sure thing for me; and that's the first step. If I can't get into a top-20 type school... I'm probably not gonna bother. My impression is that the benefits drop off pretty sharply. [3]My impression is that if I want to continue on as an individual contributor, a degree, even a Stanford degree isn't gonna get me all that much. I already can get pretty good individual contributor gigs. But, if I ever want to switch fields or advance into management, a degree from a top college would be extremely valuable. [4]I haven't yet gone over all the tax details here; all numbers are pre-tax. I do have an accountant, though; if I manage to qualify, I will spend the money to learn what the tax status of educational expenses are in my case. Obviously, if you have to pay for college out of post-tax dollars, that makes a huge difference (and makes the "work half time/school half time" bit essential, because you earn less and pay less in taxes) [5]The theory is that a school can take a normal person and teach them how to do my job. Maybe this is true, maybe it's not, but If you accept that as true, then even top schools are not expensive.
j1o1h1n 11y ago
For reference, wages in 1982 - http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1982/10/rpt2full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1982/10/rpt2full.pdf
1812Overture 11y ago
Classic case of Baumol's Cost Disease. The core of a university education is still sitting in a room writing down what a professor says. This hasn't changed in more than a thousand years. It hasn't gotten more efficient while just about everything else has, increasing its relative cost. Unlimited easy loans have allowed the problem to spiral out of control by preventing economic forces from forcing innovation and increases in efficiency.

98 points by Futurebot 11y ago

reubensutton 11y ago

I think the real problem in education is that credentials have become prized over learning.

swampthinker 11y ago

Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly $26,100 in 2015 dollars.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
muzz 11y ago
and 1981 when the article was written was a period of hyper-inflation " 'families will still allocate about the same percentage of income in real dollars' because college charges have only paralleled the inflation in the nation's disposable personal income"

peter303 11y ago

The 'total package' at some schools recently passed 70K. Assuming 5% education inflation (twice CPI), these schools may hit 100K in 8 years.

Alupis 11y ago
This "total package" typically includes room and board, as well as other normal living expenses (food, transportation, clothing, etc...). You would be spending that same amount even if you did not attend university (anywhere between $20K-$40k per year in living expenses).
- usea 11y ago
  Many schools require taking said "total package" for the first semester or first year. I know at my university, all incoming freshmen were required to live on campus and purchase a meal plan. For anyone who lives nearby or planned on shopping around, this is an additional cost.
  - Alupis 11y ago
    That's a good point. My university did not have this requirement, however I should point out, even if you lived at home, or moved out on your own - you will be spending this money anyway. As-in, it doesn't matter if the university requires you to take this package the first year, since you're spending it no matter what (on living somewhere). It's just a matter of who you give that money to. If you don't want to spend student loans on normal living expenses, one should work while attending university, this way your loans are only for your tuition and related school expenses... not for rent and food.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      Yes, but a dining plan can be significantly more costly than buying food at a grocery store. When MIT tried to require that all students get on a dining plan, there were protests from the less-expensive dorms on the east side.
      - peter303 11y ago
        http://dining.mit.edu/meal-plans/options http://dining.mit.edu/meal-plans/options Their current plans are still $100 to $150 a week for 30 weeks. Thats about three times what jusdicious grocery shopping could get you. Same ratio as when I attended decades ago.
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      Well, no, not exactly. If you're living at home, your parents are paying for your housing. It's money that is already getting spent. If you have to live in the dorms, your parents don't get a break on their mortgage or rent because you moved out. If your parents are helping you out, they now have their own rent to pay, plus a new rent for you, where before they essentially got "your" rent "for free". Similarly, adding one person to the home grocery bill was not anywhere near as expensive as the meal plan. Most universities run their cafeterias as profit centers. You're paying restaurant prices. Cheap restaurant prices, typically, but still more than cooking at home.

cassieramen 11y ago

This article hints at schools inability to justify their ever increasing prices. Why is tuition continuing to rise so much faster than inflation? Is this simple supply and demand? Government backed loans create infinite supply to anyone who wants them? How can not for profit schools justify gauging their students?

crabasa 11y ago
1. Infinite supply of loans. Dept of Ed isn't even allowed to deny a loan to a person. 2. Culture since the Clinton era of "everyone should go to college". Massive cultural stigma for those who don't. 3. Colleges continue to justify costs based on lifetime earnings delta of people with degrees. Sadly, this data is backwards-looking and not indicative of what today's students should expect. The most heinous thing though is that student loans are exempted from American bankruptcy laws. The gov't will give you a loan, without doing any diligence on your ability to repay, but make it impossible to discharge your debt if you go bankrupt.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  +1 for the role that guaranteed, subsidized student loans play. University financial counselors are very well versed at helping students obtain the maximum amount of loans, along with an obligatory brochure cautioning them not to over-borrow.
- jenshoop 11y ago
  Spot on. There's also been an increasing competitive push between universities to deliver "country club-esque" experiences to students, which further drives up cost. (Separately, let's not forget about the chaos of the educational publishing industry and the insane price points they command for modestly updated editions each year.) But I think items 1 and 2 above -- and a lack of education about what loans are and the value of a higher ed degree to the potential student -- are the true culprits here. There's a cultural expectation that all students will matriculate to college, and many high schools measure their success in terms of college attainment. Meanwhile, there's a lack of counseling/education for students, so few know that they're expected to repay loans and fewer explore the options (college and non-college) in front of them, and counselors would be working at cross-purposes with the secondary institution's goals if they advised against attending college. As demand for higher ed continues to grow, for-profit higher ed institutions continue to spring up to suck up federal loans and lower acceptance standards.

jnardiello 11y ago

My tuition fee in a top-notch european technical college (automation engineering) was roughly 3000$/year. But yeah, let's keep cargo-culting the US model.

outside1234 11y ago
You probably forgot taxes in that cost (that you will pay for the rest of your life as a high earner) but, that said, that is a great model: the country makes an investment in you, you prove you are serious about it (the $3000 a year), and in return, the country gets a higher wage earner (and more taxes) to pay for the next generation.
- jnardiello 11y ago
  No, I didn't. That was the total tuition fee including taxes. Obviously that didn't include any sort of college accommodation or meal plan - as I lived at reasonable distance from the campus. It was just standard "classes & exams". That said, because tuition and taxes are proportional to family income, I was in the highest and most expensive tuition fee. Most of the students in the campus would roughly pay half of it - unless they would start to repeat classes and not pass exams (for which you automatically jump to the most expensive yearly fee).
  - thesis 11y ago
    The person you're replying to mean't taxes you pay on your income after college.
  - outside1234 11y ago
    What I'm talking about is that most European countries have a higher overall income tax rate than the US. Some of this goes to pay for your education, so 3000 is not the total you are paying for it, you will keep paying for it over your lifetime in taxes. Again, I think this is a great idea. But that said, there is no free lunch in this world.
- S4M 11y ago

zekevermillion 11y ago

Higher Ed in the US has long been a luxury good, where price is no object. Or rather, there is a correlation between price and demand. Or at least, sticker price and demand -- institutions discriminate between customers by offering scholarships and need-based aid to maximize income, and to maintain a high sticker price.

ewindisch 11y ago

Parents pay more than this per child today for daycare[1]. [1] https://www.care.com/a/how-much-does-child-care-cost-1406091737 https://www.care.com/a/how-much-does-child-care-cost-1406091...

gohrt 11y ago
Day care is far more labor-intensive than college. The student:staff ratio in daycare is at most 6:1, for 40 hr/wk attention to students. At a college, the ration is 10:1 or 20:1, for <20 hrs/wk attention to students

ouiyaaa 11y ago

I know its uncool to here to talk about Bernie, but if you dudes are really serious about this- vote for Bernie, even if you're rich because rainy days may come anytime

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

It's quite likely that by the time my 11-year-old hits 18, private universities will cost over $100,000 per year (tuition plus fees, housing, and food plan), and public schools will be $25K [EDITED orig. $50K] (plus or minus, depending on state subsidies and other funding such as corporate donations). While the university experience is undoubtedly a valuable one for the 18-22 age range, with tremendous intellectual and socialization opportunities during this formative period, I wonder whether it's still going to be the best and only pathway to intellectual and social growth. With MOOCs and other online learning resources flooding the internet, many free or for moderate fees, the focus now has to be on justifying the classroom experience. Are you still best off in a 300-seat lecture hall, scribbling/typing notes while a grad student or adjunct spews information from the lectern, at an arbitrary time of day that if you somehow miss it, you're out of luck? You can't exactly ask the lecturer to pause while you go to the toilet, or "please rewind 10 seconds, I missed something". Maybe they have videoed the lecture and maybe the videographer remembered to zoom in on the powerpoint screen at the right times. You hope that meeting all those fellow students will lead to a group learning experience -- "Hey, let's meet at the coffeeshop and go over this stuff together!" That's possibly the best way to learn material, to teach it to your colleagues and have them quiz you as well. But is that not reproducible in the online model, e.g. chatrooms, skype, etc.? In my opinion, the U.S. government should get out of the business of providing and guaranteeing educational loans. It has resulted in a vast, bloated system of exploitation of the students and the loan system, and we are now facing possibly a trillion dollar bubble that may burst in the next few years if all those freshly minted degrees don't lead to good paying jobs to retire those loans. Universities in the U.S. must be put on notice that the free ride is over, and they have to get costs under control, stop with the billion dollar student centers and bloated administrative offices, and try to get back to basics of providing lecture halls and white boards and reasonably secure jobs for professors to do what universities ought to focus on: teach.

CyberDildonics 11y ago
What evidence do you have for your assertion that public schools would cost $50k a year?
- 11y ago

wlucas 11y ago

What makes all the difference in the world now compared to the jaw-dropping prices in '81 is we have alternative education options. There were virtually no other paths to career success 30 years ago... heck... 15 years ago! A traditional path towards a degree was the only way to assure a positive career outlook. I don't think MOOCs are the panacea, but all types of learning resources (books, classes, organizations, events, people) are all more accessible. The entrepreneurial approach to learning.

dpark 11y ago
I feel like this is backwards. 30 years ago you could potentially work your way up the ladder without a degree. Now you need a degree to get a job working in a coffee shop, because college degrees are so ubiquitous that they've become a prerequisite for employment at many places. Sure, you could do some learning on your own now, but you could also do that 30 years ago, and I'm not certain most employers are going to put much stock in self-directed education regardless, not when there are so many underemployed college grads available.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  Totally backwards. I know a lot of people in their 30s-50s who would never be able to get hired for their jobs now since new hires in their position need a college degree which, by the way, is hilariously stupid. Employers expect you to have a college degree to clean the toilets now.

kevindeasis 11y ago

I'm still waiting for a dramatic disruption of the college/post-secondary industry. I hope it comes really soon, but I'm starting to doubt if it'll come within the next 5 years. I think it's going to take lots of people to disrupt education especially since the government will get involve. I'm starting to feel that some courses in college/university isn't worth that much money. Like a 50,000 degree that has lectures and materials freely available online? Seriously? Furthermore, some professors are amazing at research, but has no business in teaching. This looks like a massive waste. It's a huge problem and there are big opportunities in this area.

losteric 11y ago
> I'm still waiting for a dramatic disruption of the college/post-secondary industry. [..] I'm starting to feel that some courses in college/university isn't worth that much money. It's still coming. As college grads increase in supply their value decreases (top-tier colleges/students aside). More and more students are realizing their college education has a negative ROI... in fact, outside of software, most of my friends are not using their degree at their job. I think the "code-school" trend is the start of a "micro-degree" program. Self-service fluff-free education with a standard certification exam is pretty compelling. As we see that proliferate to other domains, we'll start to see micro-certifications (just the test). The missing component seems to be the in-person meetings and networking that comes with physical college. I predict we'll see more online school(s) supporting a physical meeting space for students to network and learn from each other... maybe even a new campus model that strips out the cruft of traditional centralized education institutions.
benbreen 11y ago
One thing that I think gets lost in these debates is that those college professors who do amazing research and are terrible teachers are still important for society and shouldn't be kicked to the curb. In my experience, these are the type of people who wouldn't be able to land on their feet particularly well outside the academic system - the unorthodox, unsociable weirdos who work on some obscure problem for years. These are also the types of people who occasionally make fundamental breakthroughs, or the ones whose dogged pursuit of a seemingly impractical goal ends up reaping unexpected rewards in terms of new discoveries. I wouldn't want to take a class with the versions of this type that I know, but I'm still glad they exist and have a home in academia. I just finished my first semester as a history professor and based on my experiences I very much agree that the current system of university education and especially administration would benefit from some kind of fundamental change. But university research is a separate issue, and I worry that trying to "disrupt universities" without thinking through the societal implications might end up harming this amazing apparatus for pursuing advanced research that the US has built up over the past century. I'd argue that those professors who are terrible teachers but amazing researchers have a real value and that we need to keep in mind that universities have always been about more than teaching. (The ultimate case in point is Oxford's All Souls College, which literally doesn't allow any students onto their campus without a letter of reference - but is nonetheless an amazing institution which has given the world real benefits).

outside1234 11y ago

The question I have: What is the actual cost of having a student at a university in the US per year?

sreyaNotfilc 11y ago
I couldn't say. Honestly, I wouldn't think that it would be much. A lot of the courses haven't changed much year-over-year. The question I have is with modern technology, why isn't there a startup that had figured out how to remedy this issue. Surely there's a way to provide top notch education without having to break the bank doing so.
muzz 11y ago
Maybe this article will be helpful: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-sticker-prices-actual-college-costs-stable-over-decade-study-says.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-s...

crabasa 11y ago

Another, lesser known side effect of the unlimited access to student loans has been the rise of "degree factory" for-profit universities and their super aggressive and deceptive recruitment tactics. It is yet another lesson in the law of unintended consequences: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-for-profit-college-settlement-20151116-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-for-profit-college-set...

trentbigelow 11y ago

If you're looking for a legit degree for around or under $10,000 check out International Programmes at University of London. There's even some undergraduate degrees from the LSE you can take remotely. http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/search/?solrsort=sort_title%20asc http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/search/?solrsor...

trentbigelow 11y ago
I should add that I'm sharing this because I wish I knew about this before I took on a oil tanker full of student debt to go to a "prestigious" US school only to leave before graduating to do a startup. Startupers, consider this option on your own time for (relative) cheap from a prestigious uni.

igonvalue 11y ago

Adjusted for inflation, that's over $26K in 2015 dollars [0]. But of course the punch line is that price increases since then have significantly outpaced inflation. This phenomenon is known as Baumol's cost disease. [0] http://inflationcalculator.us/ http://inflationcalculator.us/

fecklessyouth 11y ago

>'If there's no major reduction in Government loans and grants, we're in good shape,' said Donald Routh, dean for financial aid. 'If there are reductions, then we have some very real problems.' Yes, if only...

dovereconomics 11y ago

Inflation-adjusted, $10000 in 1981 translates to $26109 in 2015.

abecode 11y ago

I play devil's advocate with a Cuban friend sometimes: an expensive education is better than a free one because it shows that our culture highly values knowledge, at least in terms of money. When education is free or cheap, it is devalued, at least in terms of money. It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek argument but I think that it's good that people highly value education and it would be even better if the tuition increase would trickle down into pay for professors and post-docs. The high tuition does already trickle down to scholarships for good students, at least in personal experience.

roymurdock 11y ago
Students in the UK pay £9k (~$13.5k) per year out of pocket for the 3 year university system. They were paying just £3K (~$4.5k) until 2012. University was free in the UK until 1998. Many universities in Germany still remain free. Is this because the British or German society values education less? No, it's because Europeans pay more taxes on average, and their governments use this to subsidize the sticker price of tuition in tandem with funding and guaranteeing student loans. In the US, tax money is only used to guarantee student loans, while private universities are left to their own devices when it comes to pricing tuition. Price is not always a good proxy for value. You need to look at who is paying for it, and when.
- distances 11y ago
  And of course, free (meaning paid in taxes) in all of the Nordics. At least for smaller countries this makes total sense, I think. There are enrolment limits, so the brightest get in regardless of their social status or wealth, ensuring that the country gets the educated workforce for its needs to stay competitive.
- gabemart 11y ago
  > Students in the UK pay £9k (~$13.5k) per year out of pocket for the 3 year university system. Scottish students studying in Scotland ordinarily pay no fees to attend university, provided they are studying for their first undergraduate degree.

mhb 11y ago

Subsidies increase tuition: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/subsidies-increase-tuition-part-xiv.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/sub...

fredgrott 11y ago
that is not real truthful.. As subsidies increased the upswing in HS students attending college happen.. 1970s 25% HS students went to college 2000s 85% HS students went to college Its not the subsidies that increased its the shear numbers of students per college campus increased beyond what the US state budgets for college could weather.. The correct term would be that US Federal subsidies had a side effect of de-funding public colleges at the State levels.

jxramos 11y ago

LOL, didn't even realize this was a historical piece going in. I was about to be impressed if someone in the modern era created some means of achieving a college degree equivalent for the stated price tag. I was envisioning some sort of online thing, but too good to be true.

lsc 11y ago

I have a different perspective. I'm in my mid-30s, and I'm considering going to college. Now, I can get very senior sysadmin/sre roles, and believe I could get a mid-level swe role (certainly could get a junior swe role) Point being, I do okay; the Stanford budget of $65K/yr[1] would be super easy if I could work a half-time job/half-time school; or something of that nature, and comparing to getting accepted by Stanford[2], paying for it should be trivial. I've talked employers into letting me work part-time before. I guess that what I'm saying is that for a nerd, the real cost here is not what you pay for college, it's the time off work. Now, maybe it is worth it and maybe it is not,[3] but even when I was 18 (in 1998) I was making close to $50K/yr.[4] Considering how everything has gone, I bet that was rather more than Stanford charged at the time. I mean, sure, I see that it's a problem that people pay that much for a degree that doesn't convey a lot of privilege, but if my impression of how much privilege is implied by a degree from a top school is correct, two or three hundred grand for such a degree is downright cheap. We're talking like two Teslas, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't depreciate like a car does, unless the school falls in reputation later on. I don't want to make light of the problems people who work in lower-paying fields have, and personally, I think it sounds absolutely crazy that you ask people who are all but children to decide if they want to take out loans without the fallback of bankruptcy, and I personally don't have a problem to some extent subsidizing people who want "education for education's sake" -people who want to get educated and then work in a poorly remunerated field, but I'm just saying that as far as I can tell, at least for us nerds, if a school can do what is says it can do[5] and you aren't capable of doing that by yourself, at today's prices, it's a hell of a deal. [1]http://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/ http://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/ [2]And qualifying for Stanford will take a lot of test prep, effort and luck on my part. Qualifying is not anywhere near a sure thing for me; and that's the first step. If I can't get into a top-20 type school... I'm probably not gonna bother. My impression is that the benefits drop off pretty sharply. [3]My impression is that if I want to continue on as an individual contributor, a degree, even a Stanford degree isn't gonna get me all that much. I already can get pretty good individual contributor gigs. But, if I ever want to switch fields or advance into management, a degree from a top college would be extremely valuable. [4]I haven't yet gone over all the tax details here; all numbers are pre-tax. I do have an accountant, though; if I manage to qualify, I will spend the money to learn what the tax status of educational expenses are in my case. Obviously, if you have to pay for college out of post-tax dollars, that makes a huge difference (and makes the "work half time/school half time" bit essential, because you earn less and pay less in taxes) [5]The theory is that a school can take a normal person and teach them how to do my job. Maybe this is true, maybe it's not, but If you accept that as true, then even top schools are not expensive.

j1o1h1n 11y ago

For reference, wages in 1982 - http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1982/10/rpt2full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1982/10/rpt2full.pdf

1812Overture 11y ago

Classic case of Baumol's Cost Disease. The core of a university education is still sitting in a room writing down what a professor says. This hasn't changed in more than a thousand years. It hasn't gotten more efficient while just about everything else has, increasing its relative cost. Unlimited easy loans have allowed the problem to spiral out of control by preventing economic forces from forcing innovation and increases in efficiency.