7 ms·

This is another example of the law of unintended consequences. While the idea of helping people become more educated is obviously beneficial to both individual

by jazzyk 10y ago

This is another example of the law of unintended consequences. While the idea of helping people become more educated is obviously beneficial to both individuals and the society as a whole, government loans - which are supposed to "help" - are a huge factor fueling ever-raising costs. The loans, in effect, subsidize the higher-education complex, rather than students. Many of us have been brainwashed to think that higher education has to cost a lot of money. But it need not: all that great education requires are wise, passionate teachers and a bit of infrastructure: a whiteboard, a few books, and a laptop computer (with a couple of outliers). We don't need football/hockey teams with coaches paid $3-4M/year. We don't need armies of "Deans of Diversity & Inclusion" (and other phony administrative positions), who make $400K/year, we don't need manicured lawns and Olympics-quality sports facilities (these salaries are from the Univ of California - a state school!) If a good private university cost < $20K/year and a state university < $10K, we would not have endless discussions wrt who should pay, who should study what, etc.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Except its a program that can be managed correctly. The problem was that there were no incentives to do so. My understanding is that loans initially were smaller and helped with the cost of tuition at a time where tuition was more affordable, but still out of reach for many working class families. Now they can pay for all of tuition and the cost of tuition is just pegged to the max loan offer from the government. No one put in sane cost controls. No one told the universities that federal money wouldn't just increase to their whims. No one told students what its really like in real life to payback a 50k or 100k or even 150+k loan for a 4 year degree. What that means as an opportunity cost compared to cheaper schooling. My relatively modest loan is like making car payments on a decent car everything month... for 20 years. So 4 lower-end Lexus's if you consider interest. Or less to put in retirement. I have no idea how people with large loans get by. I imagine the recent Obama rules regarding loan repayment as percentage of salary helps with an 20 year payment forgiveness plan. Not sure if the new business friendly administration is going to keep that in place.
lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
I see this sentiment a lot, and I feel like you fundamentally misunderstand what is actually happening at universities. Discounting athletics, which in some places are revenue neutral and can be counted as marketing/local cultural artifact depending on who you talk to, the "wise passionate teachers" you praise so aren't there to teach idiot undergrads. Instead, they're hired to do research with the teaching as essentially a subset of that in most cases. Pure research, especially in a political climate that's increasingly anti-intellectual and anti science, is expensive and that cost gets offloaded to incoming students since the hard requirement for a college degree for many professional jobs creates inelastic demand. The "phony administrative positions", lawns, and student facilties you dismiss as pork are the school's way of competing for the piles of grant money replacement known as undergrads. Then further more, prices are already in the ball park of your supposed ideal. An instate student can go to a school like Georgia Tech (ranked 5 or so in engineering nationally depending on the year) for 12k before scholarships, essentially free if they don't piss away their grades. Private top tier schools cost more, but tend to offer more scholarships and grants so that's harder to compare between institutions. It's not that schools are expensive, it's that students are choosing to not go to the inexpensive schools, usually to get out of their state, or to be in an institution that specializes in their major, or go someplace with better student institutions. US research is what makes our schools the top in the world, and the actual education gained from an undergrad degree isn't the drive for most people. It's the networking, the exposure, and the certification, none of which can be duplicated in a dinky classroom with a whiteboard and an underpaid teacher. Just look at American High Schools if you want to see how that turns out.
- digler999 10y ago
  > the school's way of competing for the piles of grant money replacement known as undergrads. I say it's a consequence of their windfall profits from 3-5% yearly tuition increases. Most institutions have "use-it-or-lose-it" budgets. Their accountants can only be so clever in finding ways to spend it, lest it pile up and get released on a state budget report. Then everyone would scream "Why does UXY have a $50mil surplus when they just increased tuition!". If they wanted to actually compete, they would lower prices. Thats what attracts buyers.
jimmywanger 10y ago
> But it need not: all that great education requires are wise, passionate teachers and a bit of infrastructure: a whiteboard, a few books, and a laptop computer (with a couple of outliers). It's funny that a lot of the outliers are the degrees that can actually help you with financial stability later. Universities love humanity courses, exactly for the reasons you point out. It's easy to shoehorn a couple more undergrads into a literature or philosophy class, all you need to do is buy a few more chairs, and the books sort of buy themselves, and you're paying the TAs starvation wages anyways, what's a few more students between friends. Whereas in a material science lab, you need a rockwell brinell hardness tester. For a computer science lab, you need some heavy iron if you're going to be doing heavy algorithms (might have changed lately, it's been going on 20 years for me). For electrical engineering, you need the CAD workstations with licenses for VHDL programs and the hardware to reprogram FPGAs. So that's kind of interesting
- digler999 10y ago
  > For a computer science lab, you need some heavy iron if you're going to be doing heavy algorithms Not for 200 undergrads learning how to bubblesort. For that you need a lab with 50-100 PC's. For grad courses in parallel comp. or AI, you might need a semi-expensive cluster to play around with, but if you want something that just works you could just buy cluster time on AWS, which I'm sure they'd give a discounted academic rate. I'd expect the most expensive thing in a CS lab to be the electricity to power the computers.
  - tim333 10y ago
    Indeed there seem few disciplines where you really need much equipment for bachelor's degree study. Even in science where it's nice to be able to do stuff in labs, really you can learn pretty much all of it from books.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      > Even in science where it's nice to be able to do stuff in labs, really you can learn pretty much all of it from books. I think most life/physical sciences mandate a lab requirement. I think you can learn the facts from books, but if you want a job in those fields after you graduate with a bachelor's, you'll be spending most of your time in a lab.
treebeard901 10y ago
> the law of unintended consequences A cynical person might say it is an intended consequence. Higher prices raise the barrier to entry for lower classes.
- charlieflowers 10y ago
  I believe it started as an unintended consequence, but now it is intentional -- the surprise is long past. When you have wealth, you want to get maximum benefit out of that wealth. Since wealth is a relative concept, the only way to do so is to widen the gap between those who have wealth and those who don't. You're making your dollars go farther. If you can drive the cost of college (or anything else) to exorbitant heights, people will be forced to come to you for loans. Then, you own many years of their future. College is one of the most sinister purchases to do this to, because it is the very mechanism by which someone could possibly break free of being a Havenot.
snarf21 10y ago
Add to that students have "suites" with private bedrooms and shared living space. Add to that meal plans with all you can eat Nutella and endless options. That money has to come from somewhere. It used to be old buildings with one block wall room with a set of bunks and two crappy desks. It has become an arms race and the parents have helped this along by indulging their kids. A lot of this debt is the parents paying. You can't get $60K per year of loans for an undergrad degree as the student. Plus you have small liberal arts schools that cost more than Harvard (yeah, I know they need no money) to get a BA in literature and then do what......? Complain you can't get a job?
- vkou 10y ago
  And yet, in order to finance the construction of fancy student dorms, many universities require unmarried undergraduates to live in a dorm. Speaking as a commuter in my student years, this boggles my mind. Of course, any concerns about cost are dismissed by the big handwave of 'well, financial aid is available...'
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    Captive markets are the best markets! I had similar requirements for school. Meals ended up costing me ~$10 per. I could get much cheaper food on my own, but that wasn't going to make the university any money.
    - nerfhammer 10y ago
      Where I went to school the student meal plan you were required to buy costed something like $14 per meal, while they provided the same food at the university hospital for something like $4 per meal.
  - Smircio- 10y ago
    That almost happened at my university the semester after they went big into debt for a new stadium. We're one of the last ones in the state who aren't forcing under clansmen to live in the dorms. They cited things like, "it sill save them money! It will help with inclusion! It will help their GPA!" It was bogus of course. Thankfully the students protested fairly hard and our president sided with the students.
coredog64 10y ago
Alabama pays Nick Saban almost $7M/year. At first blush that seems outrageous. Then we find out that Alabama pulls in nearly $100M/year from football [0]. While not every school is so lucky, most (if not all) that are spending 7 figures on a coach are getting that money back and then some. [0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2016/02/24/the-university-of-alabama-made-almost-100-million-from-football-in-2015/#3f3fe03b6c3c http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2016/02/24/the-unive...
- jazzyk 10y ago
  Yes, but they are in the wrong business, then. it is a sports business - what does it have to do with academia?
  - stale2002 10y ago
    What it has to do with academia is that it provides lots of funds that can be spent on teachers and classrooms.
    - mercsilv 10y ago
      This isn't true, most football programs have single digit percentages of their revenue being redirected back to academic programs and most of that is earmarked for scholarships for ...student athletes.[1] The idea that football programs generate substantial revenue that improves academics for the entire university is not true. [1] http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-football-profitable/ http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      If they provide "lots of funds", why does it still cost $42K/year[1], then? [1] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=469 http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl...
      - anthony_james 10y ago

by jazzyk 10y ago

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

Except its a program that can be managed correctly. The problem was that there were no incentives to do so. My understanding is that loans initially were smaller and helped with the cost of tuition at a time where tuition was more affordable, but still out of reach for many working class families. Now they can pay for all of tuition and the cost of tuition is just pegged to the max loan offer from the government. No one put in sane cost controls. No one told the universities that federal money wouldn't just increase to their whims. No one told students what its really like in real life to payback a 50k or 100k or even 150+k loan for a 4 year degree. What that means as an opportunity cost compared to cheaper schooling. My relatively modest loan is like making car payments on a decent car everything month... for 20 years. So 4 lower-end Lexus's if you consider interest. Or less to put in retirement. I have no idea how people with large loans get by. I imagine the recent Obama rules regarding loan repayment as percentage of salary helps with an 20 year payment forgiveness plan. Not sure if the new business friendly administration is going to keep that in place.

lordCarbonFiber 10y ago

I see this sentiment a lot, and I feel like you fundamentally misunderstand what is actually happening at universities. Discounting athletics, which in some places are revenue neutral and can be counted as marketing/local cultural artifact depending on who you talk to, the "wise passionate teachers" you praise so aren't there to teach idiot undergrads. Instead, they're hired to do research with the teaching as essentially a subset of that in most cases. Pure research, especially in a political climate that's increasingly anti-intellectual and anti science, is expensive and that cost gets offloaded to incoming students since the hard requirement for a college degree for many professional jobs creates inelastic demand. The "phony administrative positions", lawns, and student facilties you dismiss as pork are the school's way of competing for the piles of grant money replacement known as undergrads. Then further more, prices are already in the ball park of your supposed ideal. An instate student can go to a school like Georgia Tech (ranked 5 or so in engineering nationally depending on the year) for 12k before scholarships, essentially free if they don't piss away their grades. Private top tier schools cost more, but tend to offer more scholarships and grants so that's harder to compare between institutions. It's not that schools are expensive, it's that students are choosing to not go to the inexpensive schools, usually to get out of their state, or to be in an institution that specializes in their major, or go someplace with better student institutions. US research is what makes our schools the top in the world, and the actual education gained from an undergrad degree isn't the drive for most people. It's the networking, the exposure, and the certification, none of which can be duplicated in a dinky classroom with a whiteboard and an underpaid teacher. Just look at American High Schools if you want to see how that turns out.

digler999 10y ago
> the school's way of competing for the piles of grant money replacement known as undergrads. I say it's a consequence of their windfall profits from 3-5% yearly tuition increases. Most institutions have "use-it-or-lose-it" budgets. Their accountants can only be so clever in finding ways to spend it, lest it pile up and get released on a state budget report. Then everyone would scream "Why does UXY have a $50mil surplus when they just increased tuition!". If they wanted to actually compete, they would lower prices. Thats what attracts buyers.

jimmywanger 10y ago

> But it need not: all that great education requires are wise, passionate teachers and a bit of infrastructure: a whiteboard, a few books, and a laptop computer (with a couple of outliers). It's funny that a lot of the outliers are the degrees that can actually help you with financial stability later. Universities love humanity courses, exactly for the reasons you point out. It's easy to shoehorn a couple more undergrads into a literature or philosophy class, all you need to do is buy a few more chairs, and the books sort of buy themselves, and you're paying the TAs starvation wages anyways, what's a few more students between friends. Whereas in a material science lab, you need a rockwell brinell hardness tester. For a computer science lab, you need some heavy iron if you're going to be doing heavy algorithms (might have changed lately, it's been going on 20 years for me). For electrical engineering, you need the CAD workstations with licenses for VHDL programs and the hardware to reprogram FPGAs. So that's kind of interesting

digler999 10y ago
> For a computer science lab, you need some heavy iron if you're going to be doing heavy algorithms Not for 200 undergrads learning how to bubblesort. For that you need a lab with 50-100 PC's. For grad courses in parallel comp. or AI, you might need a semi-expensive cluster to play around with, but if you want something that just works you could just buy cluster time on AWS, which I'm sure they'd give a discounted academic rate. I'd expect the most expensive thing in a CS lab to be the electricity to power the computers.
- tim333 10y ago
  Indeed there seem few disciplines where you really need much equipment for bachelor's degree study. Even in science where it's nice to be able to do stuff in labs, really you can learn pretty much all of it from books.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > Even in science where it's nice to be able to do stuff in labs, really you can learn pretty much all of it from books. I think most life/physical sciences mandate a lab requirement. I think you can learn the facts from books, but if you want a job in those fields after you graduate with a bachelor's, you'll be spending most of your time in a lab.

treebeard901 10y ago

> the law of unintended consequences A cynical person might say it is an intended consequence. Higher prices raise the barrier to entry for lower classes.

charlieflowers 10y ago
I believe it started as an unintended consequence, but now it is intentional -- the surprise is long past. When you have wealth, you want to get maximum benefit out of that wealth. Since wealth is a relative concept, the only way to do so is to widen the gap between those who have wealth and those who don't. You're making your dollars go farther. If you can drive the cost of college (or anything else) to exorbitant heights, people will be forced to come to you for loans. Then, you own many years of their future. College is one of the most sinister purchases to do this to, because it is the very mechanism by which someone could possibly break free of being a Havenot.

snarf21 10y ago

Add to that students have "suites" with private bedrooms and shared living space. Add to that meal plans with all you can eat Nutella and endless options. That money has to come from somewhere. It used to be old buildings with one block wall room with a set of bunks and two crappy desks. It has become an arms race and the parents have helped this along by indulging their kids. A lot of this debt is the parents paying. You can't get $60K per year of loans for an undergrad degree as the student. Plus you have small liberal arts schools that cost more than Harvard (yeah, I know they need no money) to get a BA in literature and then do what......? Complain you can't get a job?

vkou 10y ago
And yet, in order to finance the construction of fancy student dorms, many universities require unmarried undergraduates to live in a dorm. Speaking as a commuter in my student years, this boggles my mind. Of course, any concerns about cost are dismissed by the big handwave of 'well, financial aid is available...'
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Captive markets are the best markets! I had similar requirements for school. Meals ended up costing me ~$10 per. I could get much cheaper food on my own, but that wasn't going to make the university any money.
  - nerfhammer 10y ago
    Where I went to school the student meal plan you were required to buy costed something like $14 per meal, while they provided the same food at the university hospital for something like $4 per meal.
- Smircio- 10y ago
  That almost happened at my university the semester after they went big into debt for a new stadium. We're one of the last ones in the state who aren't forcing under clansmen to live in the dorms. They cited things like, "it sill save them money! It will help with inclusion! It will help their GPA!" It was bogus of course. Thankfully the students protested fairly hard and our president sided with the students.

coredog64 10y ago

Alabama pays Nick Saban almost $7M/year. At first blush that seems outrageous. Then we find out that Alabama pulls in nearly $100M/year from football [0]. While not every school is so lucky, most (if not all) that are spending 7 figures on a coach are getting that money back and then some. [0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2016/02/24/the-university-of-alabama-made-almost-100-million-from-football-in-2015/#3f3fe03b6c3c http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2016/02/24/the-unive...

jazzyk 10y ago
Yes, but they are in the wrong business, then. it is a sports business - what does it have to do with academia?
- stale2002 10y ago
  What it has to do with academia is that it provides lots of funds that can be spent on teachers and classrooms.
  - mercsilv 10y ago
    This isn't true, most football programs have single digit percentages of their revenue being redirected back to academic programs and most of that is earmarked for scholarships for ...student athletes.[1] The idea that football programs generate substantial revenue that improves academics for the entire university is not true. [1] http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-football-profitable/ http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    If they provide "lots of funds", why does it still cost $42K/year[1], then? [1] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=469 http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl...
    - anthony_james 10y ago