8 ms·

This did not happen by chance. The answer isn't hard to arrive at--simply ask why college is so expensive compared to the 1990s, and why states cannot afford to

This did not happen by chance. The answer isn't hard to arrive at--simply ask why college is so expensive compared to the 1990s, and why states cannot afford to offset these costs anymore. America is selling out its future by convincing young people that they should go into debt to pay for "the college experience". But why does "the college experience" need to include superfluous staff and wasteful resources? Follow the money.

mfukar 9y ago
> Follow the money Paint, for those of us with no familiarity with the US system, a picture.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Insane administrative salaries, ridiculous sports budgets, new buildings and amenities that no student needs ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/one-schools-formula-for-athletic-success-build-a-lazy-river-and-hope-the-recruits-will-come/2017/03/31/e1b7f5c8-1568-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/one-schools-f... )
  - slg 9y ago
    Those things are easy scapegoats but they aren't the biggest cause of tuition increases. States simply aren't spending the money on colleges like they did in the past. [1] This is likely because of all the guaranteed loan money available so the states don't feel the same pressure to fund universities. For the specific case you linked above, $25m for athletic upgrades is really not that expensive for a school the size of UCF with over 64,000 students and an annual budget of $1.5b. [2] If you abandoned building the facilities and distributed the money evenly among all students you could cut costs for a single year by 2% for in state students and 1% for out of state students. [3] That isn't nothing and you can certainly debate whether athletic facilities are a smart use of $25m, but it is a drop in the bucket compared with the actual rise in costs. [1] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... [2]- https://www.ucf.edu/about-ucf/facts/ https://www.ucf.edu/about-ucf/facts/ [3]- https://admissions.ucf.edu/cost/ https://admissions.ucf.edu/cost/
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      > Those things are easy scapegoats but they aren't the biggest cause of tuition increases. States simply aren't spending the money on colleges like they did in the past. [1] This is likely because of all the guaranteed loan money available so the states don't feel the same pressure to fund universities. I have seen the model stated that there are two Official Views on why college prices are up: 1, the Democratic View: prices are up because states have cut spending on colleges. 2, the Republican View: prices are up because given the easy availability of student loans, colleges can charge higher prices. It's surprising to me that these are considered acceptable rival opinions, because, if you assume that one is right and the other is wrong, it's very easy to determine which is which. #1 says that prices have risen due to a fall in supply. #2 says prices have risen due to a rise in demand. Both of those things do in fact increase prices, but a fall in supply causes a rise in prices and a fall in quantity traded, while a rise in demand causes a rise in prices and a rise in quantity traded. If you think that one of these things is responsible for high prices, you can determine which simply by asking "compared to the good times when prices were low, have college enrollments increased or decreased?"
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - redblacktree 9y ago
        Nah, it's both-and. States feel less pressure to fund colleges because of easy availability of student loans.
      - jmcqk6 9y ago
        That's an incredibly simplistic view and betrays own biases. For example, point 1 could better be described as "per capita state spending" and that completely annihilates your point. In the same way, for point 2, you would have to calculate the percentage of funding change per student, not the macro view alone.
    - Sacho 9y ago
      Link n1 presents some interesting information: "The picture is a bit different at private schools, which do not receive state funding but have nonetheless seen substantial tuition increases. At private nonprofit colleges, the spending categories described above — student services and faculty and administrative salaries — together explain most of the tuition increase over the past two decades." So perhaps this is a case of misattribution - you have people talking about the excesses of private schools in terms of administration and such, but the article is talking about public schools. Are people just talking past each other here? A good question to ask would be if we're looking at the same rate of student loans/defaults on loans. If students in private schools predominantly pay their loans, then this points to the reduction in state funding as the primary culprit, but it could be the other way around as well. There's also this: "Among for-profit institutions, it is much more difficult to pin down a reason for tuition increases, though recent research suggests that one big cause is the generosity of federal student aid: Some institutions may be raising tuition in order to capture as much government-backed money as possible." Since federal money and state money comes from the pockets of the same people, is it not reasonable to suggest that this "generous federal aid" is siphoning off resources into for-profits, where most of the tuition increase is "administrative bloat", instead of going to state-funded public schools, at least to some extent? One final thing - the article doesn't go into detail as to why state funding has decreased. Is it because the states have redirected education funding into other spheres, or perhaps that the states have to fund way more schools(per capita) than they used to? This is another missing piece of the puzzle.
  - kodablah 9y ago
    Alternative reason they charge such high rates: because they can. The demand (and the system/society that encourages it) is there. All of those items you listed I believe are the effect of having more money, not the cause of collecting more.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 616c 9y ago
  Former university system administrator, let me summarize: US govt style waste but in the private sector, spoiled professors to their credit who are not going to shrink their income after under and grad debt, and obtuse admins overseeing technical and nontechnical projects with zero domain expertise or project management acumen. Go work in a private uni in the US. You'll be amazed! I worked in a top 20, and on an int'l campus. My very disgusted view of private education is based on 8+ years there.
  - ikeyany 9y ago
    You've got it. And not only is university more expensive overall for these reasons, but a significantly smaller proportion of tuition/housing is coming from state funding. When education is treated like a business instead of a public good, the costs get passed on to students from wealthy families or to students who take out massive loans.
dmh2000 9y ago
and the constant drumbeat that you must attend a $60k/year private school or your life is ruined. instead of a state college or better yet a 2 year community college + 2 year state. very cheap
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- barsonme 9y ago
  I attended a state-run community/technical college. The cost was something like $6k/year, and the only company that's cared was _one_ Google recruiter who ghosted me when she learned I didn't have a 4-year degree.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  I imagine you grew up either in an at least upper-middle-class family, or in an area with unusually driven and competitive teenagers compared to the national average. There was absolutely no pressure, in my experience from a random boring part of white suburbia, for anyone to do anything but go to one of the states’s relatively cheap public universities. People who went to places like MIT, Harvard, or expensive liberal arts colleges were a rare exception by far.

mfukar 9y ago

> Follow the money Paint, for those of us with no familiarity with the US system, a picture.

CaptSpify 9y ago
Insane administrative salaries, ridiculous sports budgets, new buildings and amenities that no student needs ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/one-schools-formula-for-athletic-success-build-a-lazy-river-and-hope-the-recruits-will-come/2017/03/31/e1b7f5c8-1568-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/one-schools-f... )
- slg 9y ago
  Those things are easy scapegoats but they aren't the biggest cause of tuition increases. States simply aren't spending the money on colleges like they did in the past. [1] This is likely because of all the guaranteed loan money available so the states don't feel the same pressure to fund universities. For the specific case you linked above, $25m for athletic upgrades is really not that expensive for a school the size of UCF with over 64,000 students and an annual budget of $1.5b. [2] If you abandoned building the facilities and distributed the money evenly among all students you could cut costs for a single year by 2% for in state students and 1% for out of state students. [3] That isn't nothing and you can certainly debate whether athletic facilities are a smart use of $25m, but it is a drop in the bucket compared with the actual rise in costs. [1] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... [2]- https://www.ucf.edu/about-ucf/facts/ https://www.ucf.edu/about-ucf/facts/ [3]- https://admissions.ucf.edu/cost/ https://admissions.ucf.edu/cost/
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > Those things are easy scapegoats but they aren't the biggest cause of tuition increases. States simply aren't spending the money on colleges like they did in the past. [1] This is likely because of all the guaranteed loan money available so the states don't feel the same pressure to fund universities. I have seen the model stated that there are two Official Views on why college prices are up: 1, the Democratic View: prices are up because states have cut spending on colleges. 2, the Republican View: prices are up because given the easy availability of student loans, colleges can charge higher prices. It's surprising to me that these are considered acceptable rival opinions, because, if you assume that one is right and the other is wrong, it's very easy to determine which is which. #1 says that prices have risen due to a fall in supply. #2 says prices have risen due to a rise in demand. Both of those things do in fact increase prices, but a fall in supply causes a rise in prices and a fall in quantity traded, while a rise in demand causes a rise in prices and a rise in quantity traded. If you think that one of these things is responsible for high prices, you can determine which simply by asking "compared to the good times when prices were low, have college enrollments increased or decreased?"
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - redblacktree 9y ago
      Nah, it's both-and. States feel less pressure to fund colleges because of easy availability of student loans.
    - jmcqk6 9y ago
      That's an incredibly simplistic view and betrays own biases. For example, point 1 could better be described as "per capita state spending" and that completely annihilates your point. In the same way, for point 2, you would have to calculate the percentage of funding change per student, not the macro view alone.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    Link n1 presents some interesting information: "The picture is a bit different at private schools, which do not receive state funding but have nonetheless seen substantial tuition increases. At private nonprofit colleges, the spending categories described above — student services and faculty and administrative salaries — together explain most of the tuition increase over the past two decades." So perhaps this is a case of misattribution - you have people talking about the excesses of private schools in terms of administration and such, but the article is talking about public schools. Are people just talking past each other here? A good question to ask would be if we're looking at the same rate of student loans/defaults on loans. If students in private schools predominantly pay their loans, then this points to the reduction in state funding as the primary culprit, but it could be the other way around as well. There's also this: "Among for-profit institutions, it is much more difficult to pin down a reason for tuition increases, though recent research suggests that one big cause is the generosity of federal student aid: Some institutions may be raising tuition in order to capture as much government-backed money as possible." Since federal money and state money comes from the pockets of the same people, is it not reasonable to suggest that this "generous federal aid" is siphoning off resources into for-profits, where most of the tuition increase is "administrative bloat", instead of going to state-funded public schools, at least to some extent? One final thing - the article doesn't go into detail as to why state funding has decreased. Is it because the states have redirected education funding into other spheres, or perhaps that the states have to fund way more schools(per capita) than they used to? This is another missing piece of the puzzle.
- kodablah 9y ago
  Alternative reason they charge such high rates: because they can. The demand (and the system/society that encourages it) is there. All of those items you listed I believe are the effect of having more money, not the cause of collecting more.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
616c 9y ago
Former university system administrator, let me summarize: US govt style waste but in the private sector, spoiled professors to their credit who are not going to shrink their income after under and grad debt, and obtuse admins overseeing technical and nontechnical projects with zero domain expertise or project management acumen. Go work in a private uni in the US. You'll be amazed! I worked in a top 20, and on an int'l campus. My very disgusted view of private education is based on 8+ years there.
- ikeyany 9y ago
  You've got it. And not only is university more expensive overall for these reasons, but a significantly smaller proportion of tuition/housing is coming from state funding. When education is treated like a business instead of a public good, the costs get passed on to students from wealthy families or to students who take out massive loans.

dmh2000 9y ago

and the constant drumbeat that you must attend a $60k/year private school or your life is ruined. instead of a state college or better yet a 2 year community college + 2 year state. very cheap

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
barsonme 9y ago
I attended a state-run community/technical college. The cost was something like $6k/year, and the only company that's cared was _one_ Google recruiter who ghosted me when she learned I didn't have a 4-year degree.
umanwizard 9y ago
I imagine you grew up either in an at least upper-middle-class family, or in an area with unusually driven and competitive teenagers compared to the national average. There was absolutely no pressure, in my experience from a random boring part of white suburbia, for anyone to do anything but go to one of the states’s relatively cheap public universities. People who went to places like MIT, Harvard, or expensive liberal arts colleges were a rare exception by far.