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No, I am saying that cuts in government education subsidies cause higher tuition, something that makes perfect sense. It also makes perfect sense that total ed
by hristov 16y ago
No, I am saying that cuts in government education subsidies cause higher tuition, something that makes perfect sense.
It also makes perfect sense that total education spending would increase, because (a) the population is increasing, and (b) our economy is changing in such a manner as to require higher and higher portion of college-education-necessary jobs.
- chopsueyar 16y agoHow do you explain a similar increase in private tuition?
- hristov 16y agoI thought I explained that in my initial post. Many of the state schools (such as the UC system, but many others too) provide high quality education and take so many students that they influence the market. Thus private school tuitions depend on market forces created by public school tuitions. Once the public schools raised their tuitions the private schools knew it would be safe to raise theirs as well.
- bd_at_rivenhill 16y agoI could see this argument carrying some weight if you just looked at California, but the top-tier private schools on the East coast have never had such strong competition from state schools and geography is definitely a factor in school choice, so I expect that the effect of this price competition would be limited.
- ckinnan 16y agoState budgets are growing but university education is getting a smaller share. The lost dollars are going to Medicaid.
- mnemonicsloth 16y agoIt makes sense for cuts in ed subsidies to cause tuition to rise, but you'd expect universities to make up some of the shortfall by cutting services. There would be a drop in total spending, but smaller than the cut. Instead, total spending increased by 30% (about 100Bn/yr) between 2000 and 2007 even though the student population dropped from 15M to 13M during the same period. http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school.html You could be right about the subsidy cuts, but they would have been a drop in the bucket compared to whatever else was going on.
- hristov 16y agoThe link you cited shows total college student enrolment increasing from ~15 mil to ~18 mil from 2000 to 2007.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoEven so, spending per student went up 8%. Usually when demand drops, prices go down. Why do you believe education behaves differently than virtually all other goods?
- hristov 16y ago"Even so, spending per student went up 8%." And where do you get that data? "Usually when demand drops, prices go down. Why do you believe education behaves differently than virtually all other goods?" As I said above, demand went up from 15 mil to 18 mil.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- yummyfajitas 16y agoAccording to you, demand dropped when states reduced their purchases of higher education. (By the way, did you ever provide numbers on gov subsidies for colleges?)
- spoondan 16y agoYou may need to spell out what you're trying to say. Why should one expect the spending per student to decrease solely (or even primarily) as subsidies decrease? Aren't tuition and enrollment far more important?
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThere are two countervailing effects going on: a drop in demand for college by states, and an increase in demand due to more college-age people. If the latter effect is the important one, then Hristov's original point (regarding reduced state subsidies for college) is irrelevant. If the former effect is the important one, then spending should have gone down. And if Hristov believes the decrease in demand due to reduced state spending caused prices to go up, he should explain why he believes college behaves so strangely relative to other goods and services.