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This is nitpicking a bit, but college is affordable, it's just very expensive. A side effect of the government guaranteeing student loans is that universities

This is nitpicking a bit, but college is affordable, it's just very expensive. A side effect of the government guaranteeing student loans is that universities could charge basically whatever they want, knowing that students would still be able to pay it. It funded massive expansions, but instead of universities taking on the debt, students did.

state_less 9y ago
What I had in mind was an education system where people generally felt more financially free and stable after they had completed their college education. In short, tuition wouldn't go up faster than the value the education provided and hopefully it'd go up a bit slower. In my view, the product hasn't improved at the rate of tuition increases and I'd just follow where the money went to know where the problem lies. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-r...
jnbiche 9y ago
Sorry, if you have to take out 10- or 20-year loans to pay for even state colleges, college is NOT affordable. Unless you're working with a different definition of "affordable". I agree with you that government-guaranteed loans have had the paradoxical effect of being one of the primary contributing factors to increased tuition costs.
danans 9y ago
> A side effect of the government guaranteeing student loans is that universities could charge basically whatever they want, This is only true of private for-profit universities, not private nonprofit universities nor public universities. For public universities, the main cause of rising tuition is state funding cuts: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...
antisthenes 9y ago
Everything is affordable if you live forever. Unfortunately, most of us only ever work 40 years (if we're lucky), so the budget of a life is, in 99.9% cases, zero sum.

state_less 9y ago

What I had in mind was an education system where people generally felt more financially free and stable after they had completed their college education. In short, tuition wouldn't go up faster than the value the education provided and hopefully it'd go up a bit slower. In my view, the product hasn't improved at the rate of tuition increases and I'd just follow where the money went to know where the problem lies. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-r...

jnbiche 9y ago

Sorry, if you have to take out 10- or 20-year loans to pay for even state colleges, college is NOT affordable. Unless you're working with a different definition of "affordable". I agree with you that government-guaranteed loans have had the paradoxical effect of being one of the primary contributing factors to increased tuition costs.

danans 9y ago

> A side effect of the government guaranteeing student loans is that universities could charge basically whatever they want, This is only true of private for-profit universities, not private nonprofit universities nor public universities. For public universities, the main cause of rising tuition is state funding cuts: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

antisthenes 9y ago

Everything is affordable if you live forever. Unfortunately, most of us only ever work 40 years (if we're lucky), so the budget of a life is, in 99.9% cases, zero sum.