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Tuition used to be very low. When we adopted a culture of "college is everything" that's when tuitions rose rapidly to meet what could be maximally extracted fr

by acchow 10y ago

Tuition used to be very low. When we adopted a culture of "college is everything" that's when tuitions rose rapidly to meet what could be maximally extracted from the middle class. We've now reached that point so they will rise slowly now - only to meet increases in government aid (direct and indirect aid) and increases in middle class incomes.

conanbatt 10y ago
Food is more everything than college and it didnt raise prices the same way. College tuition has specific market conditions to be the way it is.
- acchow 10y ago
  Huh? Parents buy their kids crap fast food all the time. We have no cultural push to buy whatever food our kid has access to no matter how high the cost. Contrast this with college acceptances and tuition. As soon as they get accepted, the tuition can be however high it is it doesn't matter. You still pay it. This culture of spending all and everything on tuition has allowed tuition to rise to maximally extract from the middle class.
  - conanbatt 10y ago
    Maybe i can clarify: there are many things people would pay through their teeth to keep or get, but not all of those has raised prices like tuition. First of all, tuition around the world hasnt increased like in the us, and the same cultural effect has to be present in the west. My explanation for it is the debt conditions: if students were able to default on their debts, colleges would not charge what they do for majors that dont provide the value to students: if a student spends 80k for poli-sci but his job cant pay for it, he would default, and the college would lose that money , and hence have an ineterest in pricing accordingly to the value it can provide to its students. But since the debt is federal and permanent, the college's incentives is to increase the price as much as possible since it doesn't have a sustainability problem: the students and the government do. Just make the loans defaultable, you would have a default crisis by next month, and prices would crash quickly.
    - acchow 10y ago
      Yes, someone pointed out it isn't rising with incomes but instead access to debt. I agree that's more accurate - tuitions have risen to maximally extract the middle class's access to debt. If you made student loans defaultable, suddenly they would lose much access to this debt, and tuition would fall. My points about aid and tax breaks on tuition not working still apply.

by acchow 10y ago

conanbatt 10y ago

Food is more everything than college and it didnt raise prices the same way. College tuition has specific market conditions to be the way it is.

acchow 10y ago
Huh? Parents buy their kids crap fast food all the time. We have no cultural push to buy whatever food our kid has access to no matter how high the cost. Contrast this with college acceptances and tuition. As soon as they get accepted, the tuition can be however high it is it doesn't matter. You still pay it. This culture of spending all and everything on tuition has allowed tuition to rise to maximally extract from the middle class.
- conanbatt 10y ago
  Maybe i can clarify: there are many things people would pay through their teeth to keep or get, but not all of those has raised prices like tuition. First of all, tuition around the world hasnt increased like in the us, and the same cultural effect has to be present in the west. My explanation for it is the debt conditions: if students were able to default on their debts, colleges would not charge what they do for majors that dont provide the value to students: if a student spends 80k for poli-sci but his job cant pay for it, he would default, and the college would lose that money , and hence have an ineterest in pricing accordingly to the value it can provide to its students. But since the debt is federal and permanent, the college's incentives is to increase the price as much as possible since it doesn't have a sustainability problem: the students and the government do. Just make the loans defaultable, you would have a default crisis by next month, and prices would crash quickly.
  - acchow 10y ago
    Yes, someone pointed out it isn't rising with incomes but instead access to debt. I agree that's more accurate - tuitions have risen to maximally extract the middle class's access to debt. If you made student loans defaultable, suddenly they would lose much access to this debt, and tuition would fall. My points about aid and tax breaks on tuition not working still apply.