9 ms·

Fancy Dorms Aren’t the Main Reason Tuition Is Skyrocketing

75 points by curtis 10y ago

squozzer 10y ago
It's worth asking what drove the states to cut aid. Some states have certainly had lower tax revenues than expected. But some states (probably) felt safe moving the funding problem onto loans and/or sources such as lottery proceeds.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Illinois it's been a pension time bomb building for 30 years. "Luxuries" like higher education are way down the line from legally mandated payments to retires teachers and policemen
  - douche 10y ago
    Is Illinois one of the states that's made a habit of raiding their pension programs over the decades, promising to pay back in later[1], and now later has come? [1] (although they never mention the interest that would have accrued if the principal hadn't been stolen...)
    - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      It's more like Illinois pensions are second to the Ten Commandments in terms of universal truths that must not be questioned under any circumstances. It's one thing to make a promise and intend to keep it. It's another thing to stick to the promise until it's beyond the realm of possibility to fix it, and a lot of people end up getting hurt.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      I do not know it super deep, but I feel like it was more a gradual thing. "Well the models predict we need to pay 5 billion into it this year, but the law says we only need to pay in 2 billion, so we will just pay in the 2 billion and deal with the shortfall later" And then repeat that 20 times. I don't THINK it was ever raided per say.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Certainly part of it is the ideological belief in reducing the size of government, and one party's dogmatic adherence to never increasing any tax, only reducing them. We get what we pay for.
coldtea 10y ago
What fancy dorms? You'd pay like $200/month or less for such a place in most cities...
- analogwzrd 10y ago
  When I was applying to college in 2006, one of the big selling points at the University of Alabama was that the honors dorms had a lazy river. I wonder if the "fancy" dorms are only a thing in non-city universities. It would make sense that building fancy, new dorms in a downtown area in a place like Boston or New York just wouldn't be worth it.
  - g52oevr0in 10y ago
    Universities get a property tax exemption that allows them to do things with land in downtown areas that wouldn't be economically rational for typical real estate investors.
- douche 10y ago
  I know... I went to a school with a sticker price over 50k+, and never lived in a dorm that was built after the stock market crash in '29. Wondered where all the money went, until I realized that six-figure salaries for deans and sub-deans and senior administrators and grand poobahs of diversity studies for every imaginable slicing and dicing of the student population doesn't come cheap, nor does effectively running a jobs program for the entire 100 mile radius, vastly overstaffing custodial and food service workers at hourly rates two or three times market rate in the area.
Fomite 10y ago
You can also see this in aspects of the university that are supported by research funds instead of tuition. States slashed their support under the assumption that the Federal government would pick up the tab with faculty writing more grants.
mwsherman 10y ago
This has been studied in other places. It appears to have a lot more to do with the subsidy of student loans: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21967 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21967 I.e., more dollars chasing the same amount of education. A bit more explanation here: https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause-almost-all-of-the-increase-in-tuition/ https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause-almost...
- yequalsx 10y ago
  I have a hard time believing this. I teach at a community college in Minnesota. Our state funding per student has been halved in the last 20 years. Salaries are not exorbitant. We went almost 5 years without a pay raise. We aren't frivolously spending money. We raise tuition because the bills have to be paid. The money isn't coming from the state. There's really only one way to raise the needed money and that is tuition increases. I wonder how it can be determined that tuition wouldn't have increased as much as it has in the absence of eussidized loans. Would salaries be even lower than what they are? Would administration not have increased as much?
  - dsp1234 10y ago
    Have you considered that state funding has been lowered due to the fact that federal loans to students have increased? We aren't frivolously spending money. We raise tuition because the bills have to be paid. The ballooning of the 'administration' staff at my wife's university over the last 20 or so years is the same type of staff explosion seen at larger public companies. Except that those companies are responsible to share holders, and thus constrict when profits cannot be maintained. Whereas the University can forgo layoffs by increasing tuition, and know that the federal (and private) loan system will fill the gap. I cannot remember there ever being even a 2% layoff of staff at the university, let alone something you'd see from MS/IBM/etc.
    - mathattack 10y ago
      Universities do it more softly. They don't lay off tenured faculty, but they do fill more open positions with adjuncts and grad students rather than tenure-track professors.
jkot 10y ago
One university decided to change signs on toilets. Single label costs $400, it has to be in brail and match various regulations. I think education is ripe for disruption. We will see rise of bootcamps and online education. Also university in foreign country costs peanuts.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  That's right, but the missing element would be a set of widely-respected testing firms. An "A" from the "Harvard of test companies" might be as impressive as attending Harvard itself, which would benefit autodidacts.
  - pc86 10y ago
    Harvard isn't Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get an A. It's Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get in. I've heard Harvard and Harvard Extension are basically opposites. It's nearly impossible to get into Harvard, but you'll almost certainly graduate and will probably have a decent GPA. It's nearly impossible not to get into Harvard Extension but a large number of people fail out pretty quickly and spectacularly (I have no associated with either institution).
    - bbctol 10y ago
      Which is hopefully motivation to move away from old models of academia, although I really don't think that's feasible in the near future. Elite schools are just as much about pre-selecting smart people for others' benefit as they are about teaching, and this effect stacks: you can get a great job largely because of a prestigious graduate degree, which was easier to get because of your prestigious undergraduate degree, which you got by being an overachiever in high school... until the person you were at 17, despite the clear differences with who you are today, becomes awfully important.
      - douche 10y ago
        This may not be a comfortable statement, but it's no less true in the world we live in. It's as much signalling as anything else, and while you can overcome it with talent and hard work, it's going to take it.
roywiggins 10y ago
Missing from the title: ...at public schools. Which, if you've been following the amount of funding cut from state schools at all, hopefully isn't too surprising.
- drawkbox 10y ago
  Agreed, after the Great Recession state funding to universities (and K-12, colleges) dropped dramatically. Arizona leads the way with almost a -50% drop in funding, of course tuition goes up by almost 90% [1]. The article has this data from 2000-2014 but most of the damage was 2008-present. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/pf/college/public-university-tuition-increase/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/pf/college/public-university...
- donutz 10y ago
  Aren't they able to cut funding like that, because there's a willing supplier of loan money for the students?
Animats 10y ago
That site managed a breakthough in bad behavior with tracking blocked. The page turns black every five seconds, then reloads.
forrestthewoods 10y ago
This article fails to mention the exploding student population size. Over time the per-student funding from states has gone down significantly. But that doesn't mean the state slashed funding for higher education! For University of Washington the budget from the state is almost entirely flat. Up about 3%. Student Size: +100% State Tax Revenue: +40% State Higher Education Funding: +15% What would you consider the "dominant factor" here? It's several factors. But I would not consider, and I quote, "a steady decrease in support for higher education on the part of state legislatures" to be the dominant factor. In fact, that statement is flat out wrong. The state legislature hasn't decreased support at all. They're providing more support than they were! The state, and the state's coffers, have no way to keep up with the growing number of students. http://f2.washington.edu/fm/financial-report-archive http://f2.washington.edu/fm/financial-report-archive (I did a little digging last night specific to the University of Washington. Numbers from memory and a little fuzzy. But within the ballpark.)
- chrisbennet 10y ago
  It depends on how you look at it. There has been a decrease in funding per student.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    But it is presented as a state government action to cut funds, when the actual events were that action was to increase funds but not enough to catch up with increasing student numbers. Given that student numbers are not under control of the state government, describing it as a state action to cut funds in misleading. It is misleading in the same way as to say that the company substantially raised the average salary of employees when in fact what happened is that CEO salary was doubled. Technically yes, that means average salary has increased too. But such statement omits important details that make it misleading.
    - chrisbennet 10y ago
      Oh, see what you're saying now. You're right. It has been "slanted" as a funding "cut". That said, I think you'd agree that the government has failed to fund the education of its citizens to the level it used to. I got my college education when it was "cheap" so if I was selfish [OK, more selfish than I am] I would be inclined to go with the "I got mine, tough for you. I had to walk uphill both ways to school, blah, blah. Thanks for paying for my retirement."
starnixgod 10y ago
A pet peeve of mine is when an article displays data to bolster an argument but then cites the source to something extraordinarily large and generic (e.g. "SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION") which makes actually finding the primary data nearly impossible.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
spike021 10y ago
Tuition is rising at San Jose State to: get us "great partnership deals" on new equipment like expensive teleconference TVs or smartboards that are rarely used. I have had CS professors who struggle to get their computers on the projector because of old worn-out bulbs while math professors get rooms with smartboards they don't even use, and similar. Tuition rises because of bogus costs and needs that aren't needs at all or because of overspending on poorly used/misused equipment that is sorely mismanaged. I could ramble on and on about problems I've seen first-hand, but rising tuition is a serious issue not only because of costs being higher but also because schools are just plain casually misusing/abusing the money in the first place, some even carelessly.
rileymat2 10y ago
This article is largely on point, but I get the feeling they are playing games with Tuition v. Total cost. At my state university Tuition is separate from dorm costs, so fancy dorms effect loan amounts but not "tuition".
patmcguire 10y ago
What's the enrollment change? Is this the same amount of money spread over more students?
amyjess 10y ago
In 2004 or so, right after I started college, the state of Texas repealed their laws that capped tuition at public universities at a very low amount. After that, tuition at my university, UT Dallas, utterly skyrocketed. It rose far more than the other public universities: we very quickly became one of the most expensive public universities in the state, possibly the most expensive, and on par with private universities. I was insulated from that because I had a scholarship, but if I didn't, I might have had to drop out.
smsm42 10y ago
So, if the article is to be believed, the tuition costs were already high, but hidden by financing them through taxes, and now they are coming out for all to see by explicitly stating them as tuition costs and putting them on those who consumes the service instead of distributing them between all taxpayers. If so, then despite the obvious negative impact on students, I think by itself such restructuring is a good thing - if the costs are hidden, they'd never be discussed and evaluated and subjected to both public and market scrutiny. If nobody knows how much tuition really costs, it's virtually impossible to have meaningful discussion about it. If the public thinks tuition should be subsidized, these subsidies should be out there in the open, so the public knows how much it costs per student, and experiences it openly, not has to dig it up from the piles of budget allocations. One question, though, is if it was state financing drop that causes tuition to raise in public schools, wouldn't that effect be much less in private schools? So far I don't think the data confirms this.
hackuser 10y ago
For any endeavor, including education, if we shift the source of funding from democratic government to private individuals, then those needing funding will shift their focus from pleasing the public to pleasing wealthy parties. For example, there was a new park being designed in NY. Lacking traditional public funding, they sought private funding. As a result, instead of a design that serves the public, the park is designed according to the desires of a wealthy donor.[0] In higher education, instead of making progress and giving more and more people a better education, as prior generations did, we are going the wrong way (AFAIK). I believe it's fundamentally undemocratic, which is an American ideal much more than small government, which is a partisan ideology. To me, the adherence to ideology (in this case, smaller government) over practical good results (educating people and opportunity), always is a terrible idea and can lead to dangerous results. The free market allocates goods to those willing and able to pay most for them. That's efficient for many things such as soda and cars, but undesirable for basic human needs and societal goods such as education and healthcare, which we don't want to deny to people because they are poor. Funding by the public (via taxes) is a good solution for some things. [0] That was the story as I read it maybe 1-2 years ago; it's possible the situation changed since then. EDIT: added sentence, reworded another
- ende 10y ago
  I don't see how your comment is relevant to the topic. This isn't a public vs private debate. If anything it's a debate between federal loans and state appropriations, or an issue of administrative mismanagement. There is another kind of ideology, however, which may be at play here: an automatic reaction to pour public money on problems. Public institutions can be irrational actors that cator to narrow interests just as private ones can. The public sector needs to be regulated as well, and it largely is not.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > This isn't a public vs private debate We might be referring to different forms of "private". The article says that as public funding was pulled back, tuition was increased to fill the gap. Tuition is private funding, though by many (mostly) wealthy people rather than a few uber-wealthy. With funding coming from that private source, wealthy customers, educational institutions need to focus on pleasing them and invest in fancy amenities rather than educational resources. > The public sector needs to be regulated as well, and it largely is not. It is regulated by voters and their representatives - very imperfectly, and we should improve it and not be satisfied, but I've yet to find a large human endeavor for which that wasn't the case. > There is another kind of ideology, however, which may be at play here: an automatic reaction to pour public money on problems Given the radical cuts in government budgets on the federal and local level, I don't see that approach having much influence currently so I'm not worried about it. Also, spending public money is a strategy, not an ideology. Democratic socialism is an ideology, and I do dread dogmatic ideologues of all stripes, but that one also isn't a threat right now.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
As someone whose family is more steeped in higher education than most people, I have come to believe that the biggest problem with higher education is the degree with which we have allowed it to become the universal gatekeeper of professional careers. I think college is a great experience, and I do hope for a day where everyone can experience higher education in their life, but the basic mechanisms of college are NOT necessary to work in a professional field. It is only our culture that prevents it from happening. The nucleus of this problem is our obsession with pedigree. We want everything to be awesome and perfect and follow a neat little narrative where we all end up rich and famous and successful because we attended the right schools and worked with other people who attended the right schools. But life is never that clear cut, and this narrative ignores the reality that most of your ability to do a job is learned on that job. I didn't know a lick of ColdFusion or even more than a few lines of JavaScript when I graduated college, and within just a few months I could handle anything my employer threw at me. A good amount of that success was because of my education, but most of it was because they were willing to take on the risk of someone that had to learn and grow, instead of insisting on a ColdFusion expert that could have done everything from day one. College is great, but it's not for everyone. My GI Bill-aided grandfather didn't need the college he dropped out of to teach him how to run a successful restaurant and support a family. And most of us understand that a lot of what we get tested on from the age of 5 is bullshit. The way forward is not fixing education, it's fixing employment. We need employers willing to take risks with people who aren't perfect by default. To do this we need to encourage and maybe even subsidize paid apprenticeships. Real, paid work experience is better than any welfare or job retraining or $80k degree. It shows what you are worth and what you are capable of doing. As Ronald Reagan said, on one of the few occasions that he actually managed to make a damn good point: "The best social program is a job."
- zeveb 10y ago
  > As someone whose family is more steeped in higher education than most people, I have come to believe that the biggest problem with higher education is the degree with which we have allowed it to become the universal gatekeeper of professional careers. Blame Griggs vs. Duke Power Company[1], which is the reason employers are afraid to use proficiency tests in hiring (and hence are forced to rely on proxies like an applicant possessing a four-year degree). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
asbestas 10y ago
Nate Silver totally fails to note the enormous financial transfer from professors (all new professors are cheap adjuncts) to administrators. I know adjunct professors that are on food stamps. Academia is a hellhole and college administrators should be ashamed.
- jdhopeunique 10y ago
  Often the administrators are former or current faculty themselves. I've seen a professor hold a position as head of the university technology department(a non-academic support role) and teach classes. VPs, Deans, department heads, leaders of various "Centers of Excellence", leaders of various initiatives, Provosts, and even Presidents can be former faculty. The former professors just view their role as administrator as another step up the academic ladder. There's even a website poking fun at university titles: http://universitytitlegenerator.com/ http://universitytitlegenerator.com/
Spooky23 10y ago
The analysis here is pretty insipid. If primary sources of funding get cut, and your reaction is to go out on a capital projects spree, what do you expect to happen? I went to a big state school where most classrooms weren't painted since 1969. Now there's a 50" tv ok every flat surface and, the dorms are very fancy, and the mystery meat and hamburger vending machine has been replaced with better food and 24x7 cafeterias. Guess what? This shit costs more.

75 points by curtis 10y ago

It's worth asking what drove the states to cut aid. Some states have certainly had lower tax revenues than expected. But some states (probably) felt safe moving the funding problem onto loans and/or sources such as lottery proceeds.

brianwawok 10y ago
Illinois it's been a pension time bomb building for 30 years. "Luxuries" like higher education are way down the line from legally mandated payments to retires teachers and policemen
- douche 10y ago
  Is Illinois one of the states that's made a habit of raiding their pension programs over the decades, promising to pay back in later[1], and now later has come? [1] (although they never mention the interest that would have accrued if the principal hadn't been stolen...)
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    It's more like Illinois pensions are second to the Ten Commandments in terms of universal truths that must not be questioned under any circumstances. It's one thing to make a promise and intend to keep it. It's another thing to stick to the promise until it's beyond the realm of possibility to fix it, and a lot of people end up getting hurt.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    I do not know it super deep, but I feel like it was more a gradual thing. "Well the models predict we need to pay 5 billion into it this year, but the law says we only need to pay in 2 billion, so we will just pay in the 2 billion and deal with the shortfall later" And then repeat that 20 times. I don't THINK it was ever raided per say.
hackuser 10y ago
Certainly part of it is the ideological belief in reducing the size of government, and one party's dogmatic adherence to never increasing any tax, only reducing them. We get what we pay for.

coldtea 10y ago

What fancy dorms? You'd pay like $200/month or less for such a place in most cities...

analogwzrd 10y ago
When I was applying to college in 2006, one of the big selling points at the University of Alabama was that the honors dorms had a lazy river. I wonder if the "fancy" dorms are only a thing in non-city universities. It would make sense that building fancy, new dorms in a downtown area in a place like Boston or New York just wouldn't be worth it.
- g52oevr0in 10y ago
  Universities get a property tax exemption that allows them to do things with land in downtown areas that wouldn't be economically rational for typical real estate investors.
douche 10y ago
I know... I went to a school with a sticker price over 50k+, and never lived in a dorm that was built after the stock market crash in '29. Wondered where all the money went, until I realized that six-figure salaries for deans and sub-deans and senior administrators and grand poobahs of diversity studies for every imaginable slicing and dicing of the student population doesn't come cheap, nor does effectively running a jobs program for the entire 100 mile radius, vastly overstaffing custodial and food service workers at hourly rates two or three times market rate in the area.

Fomite 10y ago

You can also see this in aspects of the university that are supported by research funds instead of tuition. States slashed their support under the assumption that the Federal government would pick up the tab with faculty writing more grants.

mwsherman 10y ago

This has been studied in other places. It appears to have a lot more to do with the subsidy of student loans: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21967 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21967 I.e., more dollars chasing the same amount of education. A bit more explanation here: https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause-almost-all-of-the-increase-in-tuition/ https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause-almost...

yequalsx 10y ago
I have a hard time believing this. I teach at a community college in Minnesota. Our state funding per student has been halved in the last 20 years. Salaries are not exorbitant. We went almost 5 years without a pay raise. We aren't frivolously spending money. We raise tuition because the bills have to be paid. The money isn't coming from the state. There's really only one way to raise the needed money and that is tuition increases. I wonder how it can be determined that tuition wouldn't have increased as much as it has in the absence of eussidized loans. Would salaries be even lower than what they are? Would administration not have increased as much?
- dsp1234 10y ago
  Have you considered that state funding has been lowered due to the fact that federal loans to students have increased? We aren't frivolously spending money. We raise tuition because the bills have to be paid. The ballooning of the 'administration' staff at my wife's university over the last 20 or so years is the same type of staff explosion seen at larger public companies. Except that those companies are responsible to share holders, and thus constrict when profits cannot be maintained. Whereas the University can forgo layoffs by increasing tuition, and know that the federal (and private) loan system will fill the gap. I cannot remember there ever being even a 2% layoff of staff at the university, let alone something you'd see from MS/IBM/etc.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    Universities do it more softly. They don't lay off tenured faculty, but they do fill more open positions with adjuncts and grad students rather than tenure-track professors.

jkot 10y ago

One university decided to change signs on toilets. Single label costs $400, it has to be in brail and match various regulations. I think education is ripe for disruption. We will see rise of bootcamps and online education. Also university in foreign country costs peanuts.

jessaustin 10y ago
That's right, but the missing element would be a set of widely-respected testing firms. An "A" from the "Harvard of test companies" might be as impressive as attending Harvard itself, which would benefit autodidacts.
- pc86 10y ago
  Harvard isn't Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get an A. It's Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get in. I've heard Harvard and Harvard Extension are basically opposites. It's nearly impossible to get into Harvard, but you'll almost certainly graduate and will probably have a decent GPA. It's nearly impossible not to get into Harvard Extension but a large number of people fail out pretty quickly and spectacularly (I have no associated with either institution).
  - bbctol 10y ago
    Which is hopefully motivation to move away from old models of academia, although I really don't think that's feasible in the near future. Elite schools are just as much about pre-selecting smart people for others' benefit as they are about teaching, and this effect stacks: you can get a great job largely because of a prestigious graduate degree, which was easier to get because of your prestigious undergraduate degree, which you got by being an overachiever in high school... until the person you were at 17, despite the clear differences with who you are today, becomes awfully important.
    - douche 10y ago
      This may not be a comfortable statement, but it's no less true in the world we live in. It's as much signalling as anything else, and while you can overcome it with talent and hard work, it's going to take it.

roywiggins 10y ago

Missing from the title: ...at public schools. Which, if you've been following the amount of funding cut from state schools at all, hopefully isn't too surprising.

drawkbox 10y ago
Agreed, after the Great Recession state funding to universities (and K-12, colleges) dropped dramatically. Arizona leads the way with almost a -50% drop in funding, of course tuition goes up by almost 90% [1]. The article has this data from 2000-2014 but most of the damage was 2008-present. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/pf/college/public-university-tuition-increase/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/pf/college/public-university...
donutz 10y ago
Aren't they able to cut funding like that, because there's a willing supplier of loan money for the students?

Animats 10y ago

That site managed a breakthough in bad behavior with tracking blocked. The page turns black every five seconds, then reloads.

forrestthewoods 10y ago

This article fails to mention the exploding student population size. Over time the per-student funding from states has gone down significantly. But that doesn't mean the state slashed funding for higher education! For University of Washington the budget from the state is almost entirely flat. Up about 3%. Student Size: +100% State Tax Revenue: +40% State Higher Education Funding: +15% What would you consider the "dominant factor" here? It's several factors. But I would not consider, and I quote, "a steady decrease in support for higher education on the part of state legislatures" to be the dominant factor. In fact, that statement is flat out wrong. The state legislature hasn't decreased support at all. They're providing more support than they were! The state, and the state's coffers, have no way to keep up with the growing number of students. http://f2.washington.edu/fm/financial-report-archive http://f2.washington.edu/fm/financial-report-archive (I did a little digging last night specific to the University of Washington. Numbers from memory and a little fuzzy. But within the ballpark.)

chrisbennet 10y ago
It depends on how you look at it. There has been a decrease in funding per student.
- smsm42 10y ago
  But it is presented as a state government action to cut funds, when the actual events were that action was to increase funds but not enough to catch up with increasing student numbers. Given that student numbers are not under control of the state government, describing it as a state action to cut funds in misleading. It is misleading in the same way as to say that the company substantially raised the average salary of employees when in fact what happened is that CEO salary was doubled. Technically yes, that means average salary has increased too. But such statement omits important details that make it misleading.
  - chrisbennet 10y ago
    Oh, see what you're saying now. You're right. It has been "slanted" as a funding "cut". That said, I think you'd agree that the government has failed to fund the education of its citizens to the level it used to. I got my college education when it was "cheap" so if I was selfish [OK, more selfish than I am] I would be inclined to go with the "I got mine, tough for you. I had to walk uphill both ways to school, blah, blah. Thanks for paying for my retirement."

starnixgod 10y ago

A pet peeve of mine is when an article displays data to bolster an argument but then cites the source to something extraordinarily large and generic (e.g. "SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION") which makes actually finding the primary data nearly impossible.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

spike021 10y ago

Tuition is rising at San Jose State to: get us "great partnership deals" on new equipment like expensive teleconference TVs or smartboards that are rarely used. I have had CS professors who struggle to get their computers on the projector because of old worn-out bulbs while math professors get rooms with smartboards they don't even use, and similar. Tuition rises because of bogus costs and needs that aren't needs at all or because of overspending on poorly used/misused equipment that is sorely mismanaged. I could ramble on and on about problems I've seen first-hand, but rising tuition is a serious issue not only because of costs being higher but also because schools are just plain casually misusing/abusing the money in the first place, some even carelessly.

rileymat2 10y ago

This article is largely on point, but I get the feeling they are playing games with Tuition v. Total cost. At my state university Tuition is separate from dorm costs, so fancy dorms effect loan amounts but not "tuition".

patmcguire 10y ago

What's the enrollment change? Is this the same amount of money spread over more students?

amyjess 10y ago

In 2004 or so, right after I started college, the state of Texas repealed their laws that capped tuition at public universities at a very low amount. After that, tuition at my university, UT Dallas, utterly skyrocketed. It rose far more than the other public universities: we very quickly became one of the most expensive public universities in the state, possibly the most expensive, and on par with private universities. I was insulated from that because I had a scholarship, but if I didn't, I might have had to drop out.

smsm42 10y ago

So, if the article is to be believed, the tuition costs were already high, but hidden by financing them through taxes, and now they are coming out for all to see by explicitly stating them as tuition costs and putting them on those who consumes the service instead of distributing them between all taxpayers. If so, then despite the obvious negative impact on students, I think by itself such restructuring is a good thing - if the costs are hidden, they'd never be discussed and evaluated and subjected to both public and market scrutiny. If nobody knows how much tuition really costs, it's virtually impossible to have meaningful discussion about it. If the public thinks tuition should be subsidized, these subsidies should be out there in the open, so the public knows how much it costs per student, and experiences it openly, not has to dig it up from the piles of budget allocations. One question, though, is if it was state financing drop that causes tuition to raise in public schools, wouldn't that effect be much less in private schools? So far I don't think the data confirms this.

hackuser 10y ago

For any endeavor, including education, if we shift the source of funding from democratic government to private individuals, then those needing funding will shift their focus from pleasing the public to pleasing wealthy parties. For example, there was a new park being designed in NY. Lacking traditional public funding, they sought private funding. As a result, instead of a design that serves the public, the park is designed according to the desires of a wealthy donor.[0] In higher education, instead of making progress and giving more and more people a better education, as prior generations did, we are going the wrong way (AFAIK). I believe it's fundamentally undemocratic, which is an American ideal much more than small government, which is a partisan ideology. To me, the adherence to ideology (in this case, smaller government) over practical good results (educating people and opportunity), always is a terrible idea and can lead to dangerous results. The free market allocates goods to those willing and able to pay most for them. That's efficient for many things such as soda and cars, but undesirable for basic human needs and societal goods such as education and healthcare, which we don't want to deny to people because they are poor. Funding by the public (via taxes) is a good solution for some things. [0] That was the story as I read it maybe 1-2 years ago; it's possible the situation changed since then. EDIT: added sentence, reworded another

ende 10y ago
I don't see how your comment is relevant to the topic. This isn't a public vs private debate. If anything it's a debate between federal loans and state appropriations, or an issue of administrative mismanagement. There is another kind of ideology, however, which may be at play here: an automatic reaction to pour public money on problems. Public institutions can be irrational actors that cator to narrow interests just as private ones can. The public sector needs to be regulated as well, and it largely is not.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > This isn't a public vs private debate We might be referring to different forms of "private". The article says that as public funding was pulled back, tuition was increased to fill the gap. Tuition is private funding, though by many (mostly) wealthy people rather than a few uber-wealthy. With funding coming from that private source, wealthy customers, educational institutions need to focus on pleasing them and invest in fancy amenities rather than educational resources. > The public sector needs to be regulated as well, and it largely is not. It is regulated by voters and their representatives - very imperfectly, and we should improve it and not be satisfied, but I've yet to find a large human endeavor for which that wasn't the case. > There is another kind of ideology, however, which may be at play here: an automatic reaction to pour public money on problems Given the radical cuts in government budgets on the federal and local level, I don't see that approach having much influence currently so I'm not worried about it. Also, spending public money is a strategy, not an ideology. Democratic socialism is an ideology, and I do dread dogmatic ideologues of all stripes, but that one also isn't a threat right now.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

As someone whose family is more steeped in higher education than most people, I have come to believe that the biggest problem with higher education is the degree with which we have allowed it to become the universal gatekeeper of professional careers. I think college is a great experience, and I do hope for a day where everyone can experience higher education in their life, but the basic mechanisms of college are NOT necessary to work in a professional field. It is only our culture that prevents it from happening. The nucleus of this problem is our obsession with pedigree. We want everything to be awesome and perfect and follow a neat little narrative where we all end up rich and famous and successful because we attended the right schools and worked with other people who attended the right schools. But life is never that clear cut, and this narrative ignores the reality that most of your ability to do a job is learned on that job. I didn't know a lick of ColdFusion or even more than a few lines of JavaScript when I graduated college, and within just a few months I could handle anything my employer threw at me. A good amount of that success was because of my education, but most of it was because they were willing to take on the risk of someone that had to learn and grow, instead of insisting on a ColdFusion expert that could have done everything from day one. College is great, but it's not for everyone. My GI Bill-aided grandfather didn't need the college he dropped out of to teach him how to run a successful restaurant and support a family. And most of us understand that a lot of what we get tested on from the age of 5 is bullshit. The way forward is not fixing education, it's fixing employment. We need employers willing to take risks with people who aren't perfect by default. To do this we need to encourage and maybe even subsidize paid apprenticeships. Real, paid work experience is better than any welfare or job retraining or $80k degree. It shows what you are worth and what you are capable of doing. As Ronald Reagan said, on one of the few occasions that he actually managed to make a damn good point: "The best social program is a job."

zeveb 10y ago
> As someone whose family is more steeped in higher education than most people, I have come to believe that the biggest problem with higher education is the degree with which we have allowed it to become the universal gatekeeper of professional careers. Blame Griggs vs. Duke Power Company[1], which is the reason employers are afraid to use proficiency tests in hiring (and hence are forced to rely on proxies like an applicant possessing a four-year degree). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

asbestas 10y ago

Nate Silver totally fails to note the enormous financial transfer from professors (all new professors are cheap adjuncts) to administrators. I know adjunct professors that are on food stamps. Academia is a hellhole and college administrators should be ashamed.

jdhopeunique 10y ago
Often the administrators are former or current faculty themselves. I've seen a professor hold a position as head of the university technology department(a non-academic support role) and teach classes. VPs, Deans, department heads, leaders of various "Centers of Excellence", leaders of various initiatives, Provosts, and even Presidents can be former faculty. The former professors just view their role as administrator as another step up the academic ladder. There's even a website poking fun at university titles: http://universitytitlegenerator.com/ http://universitytitlegenerator.com/

Spooky23 10y ago

The analysis here is pretty insipid. If primary sources of funding get cut, and your reaction is to go out on a capital projects spree, what do you expect to happen? I went to a big state school where most classrooms weren't painted since 1969. Now there's a 50" tv ok every flat surface and, the dorms are very fancy, and the mystery meat and hamburger vending machine has been replaced with better food and 24x7 cafeterias. Guess what? This shit costs more.