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Why Is College in America So Expensive?

183 points by stevenwoo 8y ago

fouc 8y ago
College is expensive because people still pay that price. People pay that price because they have easy access to student loans. So if we get rid of student loans, colleges would be forced to change their pricing. If governments still want to encourage students to go to college, then perhaps non-price based methods would help. Scholarships could move away from being a monetary amount, to being a fixed amount of semesters paid for.
- quiq 8y ago
  Naively, wouldn't a blank check for a semester ecourage universities to raise prices even higher?
  - fouc 8y ago
    Yeah, seems hard to make scholarships/student loans work without putting upward pressure on college pricing. Perhaps not possible.
- trumped 8y ago
  allowing students loans to be wiped off in a bankruptcies might achieve the same goal
- linuxftw 8y ago
  We shouldn't get rid of student loans, we should force colleges to loan the money themselves with no special backing from the government. If they really believe in their crap degrees, they'll be willing to put up their own cash and make a return on investment.
jngreenlee 8y ago
Somewhat guaranteed access to Federal funding via FAFSA reduces incentives to price shop. Combined with campus building envy.
oh-kumudo 8y ago
Not enough government subsidy.
- 0xffff2 8y ago
  I take it you mean direct subsidy to the Universities? There is in fact quite a lot of government subsidy in the form of student loans. Many would argue that's one of the main driving forces behind rising tuition.
- Carlton87 8y ago
  There is far too much government subsidy, loans should be much harder to get.
  - oh-kumudo 8y ago
    College is essentially free for many european countries, that is what I think sufficient level of subsidy
    - parsnips 8y ago
      "free": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis
      - hoppelhase 8y ago
        What does this has to do with college prices? I've studied CS 3.5 years for ~550€ per year (around $700). This includes free public transportation, but excludes an apartment. In Germany, you can get a gov. funded student loan which can go up to ~750€ per Month. You have to pay back only the half of that. The 750€/Month is the highest amount that you can get. But you get it only if you have to pay the health insurance yourself, which is ~90€/Month. Otherwise, the maximum amount ~650€/Month. What you can get depends on the income of your parents. If your parents earn a lot of money, you get less. What you have to pay back is capped to 10000€ in total, free of interest. So if you get more than 20000€ in total, you still have to pay back only 10000€. You even get a discount on that if you pay back early. If you are taking this loan, your maximum debt is 10000€ (to be repaid only after the receiver exceeds a certain income level after graduation). You don't get it forever, though. It is limited to 3-5 years, depending on what you study. It is called Bafög: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesausbildungsförderungsg... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Germany) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Germa... I'd consider this as "free enough".
kylec 8y ago
Supply and demand. Everyone in high school is expected to go to college; you're essentially considered a failure if you don't. Couple this with easy access to student loans and other forms of credit and it's easy to see why the price of college has just gone up and up.
- aroberge 8y ago
  The numbers do not (fully) support your argument. We have a similar situation in Canada in terms of expectations ... but the for the price paid by students which is signficantly lower. And, the participation rate is 54% for Canada compared with 44% with the U.S. - so, by your argument, university education should be much more costly in Canada than it is in the U.S.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Domenic_S 8y ago
I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want! The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.
- bla2 8y ago
  That's just a bit over 1k / month -- similar to rent in SF :-P
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    Rent, utilities, meals? Regardless of CA, it's a lot everywhere else. Especially when they're bunking three in a room at that rate. The markup (for all of it) is the real atrocity here.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    I assume that only covers spring and fall semeseter and not the summer months and even maybe winter break. So it probably goes to 1600/mo
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    How many roommates for $1k? $1k within 20 miles of Seattle isn't enough to live alone, and I'm guessing it's much worse in SF.
    - jonknee 8y ago
      It's a triple occupancy dorm. You could definitely do that in Seattle/SF/NYC considering it's a single room with no kitchen or bathroom shared by 3 people (other than the fact that I think it would be illegal to rent out).
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
IronWolve 8y ago
Many western states got together to provide a cheaper alternative to state schools. Western Governors University is about 6k a year and is online and accredited. Its also used for teachers to get their advanced degrees while working full-time jobs. You can also go as fast or slow as you can/want. You could, in theory, do it in 3 years, so 18k TOTAL, that's pretty affordable. No idea if there is an option for eastern states. They have IT/Nursing/Teaching/Business degrees upto Masters degrees. https://www.wgu.edu/ https://www.wgu.edu/
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  WGU's great (so far as I know)... for the majors they offer. There's a bunch that they don't, though. No pure science, no humanities. They're even missing a bunch of kinds of engineering. I like the idea, though. I wish they offered more.
- colonelpopcorn 8y ago
  Alumni of WGU here. I did mine in about 1 1/2 years of work for < $16k. If anyone is looking to tick the "college educated" box I would highly recommend it as the fastest path to doing that.
- dnissley 8y ago
  I'm currently in their CS program that just opened up in June. I've been a software engineer for about a decade and so have picked up a pretty decent CS background just through osmosis. Here's the response I gave to a young person who wanted to know if they should go to a community college or WGU: Honestly if I didn't already know like 3/4 the stuff for almost every class I've taken so far I would probably hate this program because the materials and curriculum within each class aren't great. There are lots of errors and sloppiness all around, even on many of the exams. I can imagine trying to learn this all from scratch would be a crapshoot and take a really long time and be really frustrating. That said, if you're motivated it could be worth the time savings just to get out there and start working. You'll learn far more on the job than you would in the classroom anyway, and for me at least I definitely didn't appreciate the more abstract knowledge I came into contact with before I started working. But after a few years I had an actual application for it, and started to re-examine it in my own time. And it was a lot more interesting and actually held my attention at that point.
jiveturkey 8y ago
TLDR: > Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” In places like the United Kingdom, the government limits how much universities can extract by capping tuition. The same is true when it comes to health care in most developed countries, where a centralized government authority contains the prices. Both true and not true. College is indeed expensive because of unregulated price increase, but it's that way because of, not in spite of, government intervention. Much like home prices. Federal student aid has ensured that the cost of education grows to meet the amount of loan money available. Similar to mortgage guarantees. Please note that I am not decrying student aid. I only went to university because of it. But you can draw a straight line to that and price hikes.
- pwned1 8y ago
  The same goes for medical care. The article tries to say that university and medical care are somehow competitive or part of a free market. There's no coincidence that both "industries" are the most heavily regulated and subsidized industries in the economy, and they're the most expensive. Consumers of both products are completely divorced from the costs. People just don't think 20-30 years ahead. Student loans will weigh you down for a large part of your adult life, but when you're 18 you have no concept of that. Same with health care. Many many people don't care if their eating and health habits are detrimental... the consequences are years off and, frankly, someone else will pay for them. So government steps in and breaks the market mechanisms. Student loans are non-dischargeable and subsidized to an unlimited amount. Your health habits cannot be taken into account with health insurance; government mandates the same coverage for everyone, whether or not you eat 10,000 calories of potato chips a day, or you run three miles a day. The entirely predictable result is that prices go up unsustainably.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    I will link to this book over and over: "Overcharged" explains the American medical system and its problems in great detail. Cannot recommend it more. Price obfuscation, third-party payments, and government interference have warped the medical system in ways that will make you laugh (then cry). https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health-Care/dp/1944424768/ https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health-Car...
Alupis 8y ago
> Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year—nearly twice as much as the average developed country. This narrative needs to die. Hear me out before judging... Yes, University is expensive! But - a large portion of the numbers you see thrown around include living expenses! The same living expenses a student would incur if they were not attending University. The predominant reason for this is students are still today largely encouraged to be Professional Students, ie. full time students who do not work, or work very little. This mandates their living expenses having to come from elsewhere - either parents, or loans! No person should be taking out loans to eat at Taco Bell... or buy toilet paper. Instead, we need to shift the focus away from encouraging Professional Students, but rather we should encourage Professionals who attend University. Not only will our youth gain more valuable and tangible life-long skills and experience working full-time, but their education can become a more significant compliment to their ascension to adulthood. Working well with others, balancing a bank account, paying bills, working on real-world problems, and more! It will take longer to gain their degree, but it will become more valuable and appreciated in the process. Graduating students will have actual skills and experience industry needs, not just academic and homework skills. At the top of it all, they'll be graduating with much less, or no debt - since working full-time during school would have been paying the bills, buying that Taco Bell and toilet paper, and more.
- jeremyjh 8y ago
  TFA acknowledges this but points out that we still lead the world (other than Luxembourg)when taking out those expenses.
- sofaofthedamned 8y ago
  It's a good point tbf - i'm in the UK and my partner is in academia, we disagree on politics massively. One thing we agree on is that universities should be a place of constant learning - less pressure on doing it when you're 19-22, and more like your National Insurance payments as an adult should go towards being able to go to the local Uni and using these credits for learning.
- Retric 8y ago
  'Living expenses' charged by schools are insanely inflated. ~3 months of food and shelter don't cost ~7k when you have roommates.
ergothus 8y ago
Most of the other points in comments here are valid (or potentially so), but one thing I've not seen mentioned is the decrease in govt funding of public colleges and university. When I attended college 20 years ago (Penn State)I remember seeing graphs showing how decreased state funding matched tuition hikes pretty well. A quick google search turned up https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher-education-lead-to-increases-in-tuition https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher-educati... which shows the same sort of graph, even if it doesn't go back as far and isn't quite the same axis.
- xienze 8y ago
  I think a lot of university staff cry wolf over funding and always have, even in the good times. Yeah, they're really feeling the effects of it, what with admin staff sizes increasingly exponentially, constantly building new buildings and renovating existing ones, etc. My humble state school is like a luxury resort these days. There's puh-lenty of fat for colleges to trim if they're really feeling the pinch, but they seem to do anything but that. Honestly, I think we haven't done enough to force schools to get a handle on their spending habits.
  - pwthornton 8y ago
    You're conflating a bunch of stuff. New buildings almost always come out of restricted funding from donors, not from tuition. While schools are hiring more admin staff -- much of it mandated by the federal government -- the amount of faculty is dropping. Funding for state schools has dropped a lot. This is an undisputed fact. You have places that may have once been 60% funded by the state that are now down to around 10% or so. Of course tuition went up.
  - froindt 8y ago
    I agree with the luxury portion. My university hasn't added a "cheap" dorm in decades. Now they're all suites, where 2 or 4 people share a bathroom, and are much more expensive. I think a big part is students growing up in a middle class lifestyle and wanting to change as little as possible. I lived in the cheapest dorm available (no AC in the heat and humidity of Iowa). At current rates, 4694/year versus 6415 in the super nice ones, all before the meal plan. So we have tons of people with low earning potential trying to maintain the lifestyle their parents have provided for them despite the fact that maintaining that lifestyle after college will mean they're saving little to nothing, and that their student loans will live on for many years. People waking up to the harsh reality of what starting wages will get them, how long student loans would take to pay back, etc. would go a long way toward cutting the fluff costs associated with college.
cubano 8y ago
I think the actual answer is "because it can"...it's really that simple. Supply and demand dicate how much colleges can charge students, nothing else. If schools can charge $30k/year, and fill up the classrooms, why wouldn't they? It's similar to the question "what's my house worth?"...the answer is exactly how much someone is willing to pay for it, nothing more and nothing less. Any real estate agent will tell you the same. Many factors go into why colleges can charge so much and get away with it. Certainly the price distortions caused by easy-to-get guaranteed student loans is a big driver, but others exist of course.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
grandinj 8y ago
That's not a very useful article. They touch on some possibilities, but never peel the data enough to come to useful conclusions. They also jump between different kinds of costs - cost to the student, and cost to the country. Which is a pity, because normally the Atlantic does better.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  Agreed - rich topic, poor analysis. Especially given the access to primary sources/institutions that study this problem. A market research report would most likely explain this industry and its driving factors better (but would be expensive)
- jimhefferon 8y ago
  Yes, for example, I'd like to know how other countries can be cheaper. What percentage of their budget is professors? What percentage of ours is professors? What about administrators? Student services people? I've been in higher ed for decades and I don't feel I understand where the money goes.
- l9k 8y ago
  Points I found lacking: - Comparing cost of education between countries not adapted to overall cost of living - Importance of college sports in the US vs youth sports in club academies in Europe - Research conducted inside the university in the US vs external or independent institutes in other countries like France
- tathougies 8y ago
  I mean.. not every question in life has a clear cut answer, and the job of a journalist is not to spoon feed us answers. The job of a journalist is to report the facts as they are, and to only express a conclusion if they truly believe the data and expert opinions they present warrant it. Sometimes, the data may not be clear cut and the expert opinions may vary. In this case, a decent journalist presents all sides, presents a number of possible conclusions, and lets the reader engage in self-reflection and critical thought. In this sense, the Atlantic is better than most.
djschnei 8y ago
How are government guaranteed loans not mentioned?... that alone kills this articles credibility...
some_account 8y ago
The real answer is "because America". People in high places want to get rich, so they will make sure to lobby for laws and regulations so they can profit incredibly well from normal people. I don't think there is any other country where capitalism has taken over so completely, and the people are not rebelling - but cheering - for America to continue.
hulton 8y ago
Simple: the existence of government subsidies and colleges taking advantage of the existence of those subsidies.
ilamont 8y ago
Here's the line that stood out to me: more than three-quarters of students attend nonselective colleges, which admit at least half of their applicants. No one knows for sure how good these colleges are at their core job of educating students. It's important not just because of educational outcomes, but also because the tuition/cost discussion is often dominated by selective colleges, and/or colleges with national or international brands. When it comes to those colleges, that's when we start hearing about the "arms race" described in the article (and amusingly highlighted in a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that was heavily criticized: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/18/malcolm-gladwell-sets-debate-over-whether-good-campus-food-prevents-more-aid-low https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/18/malcolm-gladw...). Another cost that gets brought up: all of the administrators who apparently didn't exist in large numbers decades ago. And, I have also heard the theory that expensive liberal arts degrees are basically subsidizing STEM research, especially now that federal research grants are harder to come by. But again, these issues seem to be the domain of the selective colleges. What's going on at the nonselective colleges -- community colleges, lower-ranked liberal arts colleges, and the for-profit and online colleges -- needs more attention.
Kagerjay 8y ago
I remember when I graduated state tuition, I had a full ride scholarship through state tuition. By the time I graduated my tuition funding got cut in half due to lack of government funding. I worked 3 jobs and only had to pay for living expenses / textbooks. I checked recently my local University (the biggest one in the country, top 50 in many majors) charges $1000 per 3 semester hours(1 course). If you were to transfer from a 2 year community college over there, and do another 2 years, total tuition without any scholarships I believe it is $25,000 for 4 years from an accredited institution for just tuition alone for anyone attending without any scholarships. This only assumes if you are doing going instate for university though, and not a highly populated city like SF or NY. Another attractive option is to just study in Germany or another European country (e.g. switzerland for computerscience, etc). Tuition is free (I believe?), and still very good as well. I studied abroad there, education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences). Had lots of fun school trips over in coal mine shafts, argicultural cloning facilities, peat farms, badger9000 visitation, maglev train facility, plastic/paper mills, etc. They didn't have anything like this in the states.
- squozzer 8y ago
  I would kill for a chance to study physics at Göttingen.
  - hoppelhase 8y ago
    Is it really better than some AAA college in the US?
    - squozzer 8y ago
      Probably not, but it has a history.
- catdog 8y ago
  > Tuition is free (I believe?) There was a brief period where it was not free everywhere (but still very low for US standards) but this legislation has been largely rolled back so it should be basically free. You only have to pay a small (often very small) fee per semester (varies a lot mostly because it often includes a mandatory public transport ticket which can be a bit expensive in some cities but still a lot cheaper than buying it yourself). You also need health insurance which is usually less than 100€ / month for students inside the state mandated system so you want this anyway i think. :) > education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences) In general a Fachhochschule is a less theoretical approach to higher education. Courses are a bit more school like compared to a university and the barrier to entry is also a bit lower (don't know if this is relevant to foreigners though). There used to be a huge distinction to normal universities as they originally did no research and degrees were not considered equal to a university degree. But a lot changed in recent years, now you can even apply to a university master's program with an FH degree and it's often possible to start a research career at an FH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule
rayiner 8y ago
> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” That assertion makes no sense. In a market economy, almost all prices are unregulated. Yet the prices of TVs, hamburgers, etc., aren't skyrocketing. The lack of regulation is surely not the problem.
- dboreham 8y ago
  Well : >no central mechanism to control price increases Which would be "competition" or "regulation", right? It seems to me that the underlying problem is a principal-agent one (same as in healthcare): my son may want to go to Harvard or Princeton, but I get to foot the bill. If I point out that in-state public university would be much cheaper and nearly as good an education at undergrad level, I get to become Least Popular Dad...
  - solidsnack9000 8y ago
    There is also the issue, that college serves substantially a professional networking function when you get into the more expensive schools. This is quite apart from the quality of education but it can have a real impact on one's career outcomes.
- l9k 8y ago
  Competition in TVs and colleges differ largely in terms of quantity, quality. In any way, those are two totally different things you can't compare
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Only in the sense that you generally have fewer options and substitutes for a particular TV than you do for a particular college, right? "Hamburgers" and "TVs" are also very different products with different cost structures, different market channels, and different competitive landscapes. But we have no trouble reasoning about how the market deals with prices of both those goods. What makes college different? If you can't answer that, you're just begging the question.
kps 8y ago
> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: Bloated self-serving administration.
uhtred 8y ago
Because the game is rigged. Citizens without debt are a danger to the established order. Why else are young people encouraged to get into tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt, for a degree in something vague like "business", just to become recruitment consultants. After that they are encouraged to buy a big house (in other words take on a huge mortgage), and 3 cars. Debt keeps citizens chained down and the rich rich.
- justwalt 8y ago
  In the case of housing, how is having a mortgage worse than renting? You could at least sell the house and have [some of] the money back.
  - uhtred 8y ago
    I guess I should have emphasised a BIG mortgage. As in, own a house way bigger than you need. I agree, owning is probably better than renting.
  - uhtred 8y ago
    Actually I take back the mortgage part. People these days are lucky if they can afford any kind of house, big or small, at least in or near big cities. Most people are probably just glad to own anything let alone a big house.
- neuralRiot 8y ago
  Some might see your comment as a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory but a customer of mine who is a medium size business owner (around 150 employees maybe) once told me he helped his employees to get credits because he knew that way they would be more pressed to stay on the job.
- pjscott 8y ago
  How would the Established Order coordinate this? That's an awful lot of people who all have to work together to make the conspiracy function, and there would be a big temptation for rich people to shirk their oppression duties and just free-ride off the efforts of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem
adventured 8y ago
How come these articles never ask the obvious thing: why did college in America very rapidly become so expensive after being so reasonable for most of the prior century. And how did that magical cost inflation happen at exactly the same time that healthcare costs skyrocketed and the dollar plunged in value? (while at exactly the same time, all commodities skyrocketed and all foreign GDPs skyrocketed). That's the result of debased standards of living through destroying a nation's currency in the process of funding economic stupidity (massive budget deficits), war, etc. It's not just that college got so expensive. It's that the standard of living dropped, amplifying an already elevated cost inflation. That's represented in the permanent price increases you see in all commodities for one example (which are priced in dollars). Gold isn't going back to $300; oil isn't going back to $13. Wages didn't keep up with the rate at which the clowns in DC destroyed the American standard of living. Some things are held in check by market forces, you can only inflate the cost of video games so much in a market system, or you rapidly lose buyers. College was able to skirt that market restraint courtesy of the government's student loan backing, which pretended the US standard of living had just kept right on climbing.
- dboreham 8y ago
  >why did college in America very rapidly become so expensive after being so reasonable for most of the prior century I've seen (sorry, forget where, no citation) studies that suggest the inflation came from three factors: 1. Competition between campuses to attract students led to construction of ever more fancy facilities -- gyms, espresso bars, swanky dorms, sport stadiums, ... which all cost $$ 2. Administrators (somehow) became a new rent-seeking class (perhaps see #1?) that extracted maximum $$. 3. Sticker price vs the real price (also same as healthcare) -- when not every student is paying, or able to pay, their own fees, education providers charge different prices. We're only looking at the sticker price here.
ghobs91 8y ago
All the gov would need to do is mandate that colleges charge tuition as a percentage of post-graduation salary, and you'd see half of these low quality colleges peddling worthless degrees go bankrupt overnight. At the end of the day, this country needs to decide whether the role of universities is to train students for career paths, or purely to provide higher education. It's very difficult to orient the structure around both without the incentive's being misaligned towards one of them.
- firic 8y ago
  Then colleges would have to be in the business of risk management. That would be like charging a hospital based on the recovery rate.
secabeen 8y ago
This is such a weird article. It promotes this vision of college being expensive, then undercuts its main argument: > “The public system in the U.S. is working as well as most systems,” he says. “Parts of the U.S. look like France.” > Three out of every four American college students attend a school in this public system, which is funded through state and local subsidies, along with students’ tuition dollars and some federal aid. If 75% of students attend a school in the public system, and the public system is working as well as most systems, aren't we in pretty good shape? Why are we letting the experience of a minority of students drive the conversation here?
- majos 8y ago
  Even if the quote says the public system that covers most students is "working well", the average student loan debt of a graduate is still pretty high [1]: > When they graduate [in 2016] the average student loan borrower has $37,172 in student loans, a $20,000 increase from 13 years ago. Of course this is an average, but I don't expect this is something where some people with millions of dollars in student loans are skewing the averages. I imagine the median is not that far off. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average-student-loan-borrower-owes-when-they-graduate.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average-s...
  - mcguire 8y ago
    $17,000 And only ~50% of students had student loan debt. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2016-education-debt-loans.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-we...
topkai22 8y ago
In summary, the reason (from a spending perspective) presumably non-profit colleges are so expensive in the US is that US colleges spends 2x/student as much on staff and faculty as many OECD counterparts. College faculty, staff, and administrators form a large constituency that will be campaigning to keep spending (private, public, or otherwise) up, which campaigners for lower higher-educational spending will need to keep in mind.
- jayd16 8y ago
  If the free market is the answer why aren't there a swath of good and cheap private options?
  - sheepmullet 8y ago
    There are good and cheap alternatives. My community college was 1/3rd the cost of college. The problem is students don’t understand what they are getting themselves into.
    - topkai22 8y ago
      Also it’s almost impossible for private entities to compete with heavily subsidized public institutions on price, so they need to compete in other ways, like superior marketing, ease of financing, or “quality” If states let their subsidies flow to private institutions on a per student basis, you could get some interesting results, but frankly I think community colleges are already so efficient it’s a crowded market.
      - jayd16 8y ago
        >Also it’s almost impossible for private entities to compete with heavily subsidized public institutions on price, so they need to compete in other ways, like superior marketing, ease of financing, or “quality” The entire argument is that they would be cheaper. You could argue they might be better but saying they can't compete on price just concedes the point.
chasing 8y ago
State schools, my friends. If you're in-state, you might pay 1/4 or less the costs of a private college.
- wonderbear 8y ago
  That depends massively on which state you're a resident of.
  - chasing 8y ago
    Probably does vary by state. But overall: "According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was $34,740 at private colleges, $9,970 for state residents at public colleges, and $25,620 for out-of-state residents attending public universities." - https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064 https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm... So in-state is, overall, a shade more than 1/4 the cost of private.
bitwize 8y ago
Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads, but you'll do it for far cheaper if you attend a public university in your state of residence. If you want to do a postgrad program, don't worry: top tier schools will come sniffing if you're good enough, no matter where you're coming from.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  I agree, but... One of the things that you get in a university is contacts. A top-tier school may in fact be worth more money than a pleb-tier state school, if the people you meet there are worth more to know (over a lifetime) than the people you meet at a state school. ... says the guy who went to Random State University...
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads I went to a "pleb-tier" [1] school for undergrad and then to a top-tier university for grad school. It's just not true. There is a huge difference in the quality of education, especially in STEM fields. And most especially in Math. "pleb-tier" schools will get through everything in Harvard's Math 55 if they're lucky. Not even exaggerating -- the first year at Harvard covers what you'll get in four years of honors track at a "pleb-tier" place. And then there's the recruitment pipeline. Coming out of top-tier school I had multiple 300k-500k offers without even applying for any jobs. Out of pleb-tier school, I wasn't getting anything over 80k and that was with lots of networking. CS and Math are two of the rare fields where phd school has, IME, a positive expected value, as long as you're substantially trading up credentials. IMO the optimal route is as follows (at least in STEM): * Is your state flagship within a 1 hour drive and top-10 in your field? If so, that option is a complete no-brainer. * 3/4+-ride to a top 10 place outside of commuting distance, or a 1/2 ride to a top 10 place within commuting distance? Again, no brainer. * Otherwise, the calculus becomes harder. Your best bet is probably to aim for a PhD at a tippy top school (top 5 or so), but getting into tippy top phd program from a "pleb-tier" is not nearly as easy and you're making it out to be... especially in older/more saturated fields like Math. -- [1] FWIW I don't like this terminology but... whatever.
mrnobody_67 8y ago
Sports teams. A LOT of spending on sports teams, stadiums, etc...
kraig911 8y ago
Why is everything so expensive in America...
mr_tristan 8y ago
> Still, the return varies wildly depending on the college one attends. One in four college grads earns no more than the average high-school graduate. I found this shocking: 25% of _graduates_ are in a significantly worse financial position after college? They're not only getting zero monetary benefit for their degree, they've forgone 4 years of experience. And I'd bet that most of them are adding significant student debt on top of this. I'd be curious how _that_ number compares internationally.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  TBF these numbers can be... messy. For example, at least one statistic is based on earnings 5 years out of school. 5 years out of school I was making less than 30k as a research assistant. A few months later I was making easily 100k+ more than most senior SDEs, and doing exactly what I would be doing if I had a trust fund to pay the bills. Many of my classmates who became doctors were in similar situations -- working through residencies at T+5 years but setting themselves up for mid 6-low 7 salaries in the near future. So earnings over even a medium-term time horizon can be extremely misleading. You really need that 35-45 year career to get the full picture. Any college grad salary number with less than a 6 or evne 10 year time horizon is going to be a poor representation of what's really going on.
  - mr_tristan 8y ago
    But... I can't help but wonder about how many of the graduates from the 75% of schools that take most of their applicants just end up doing something that basically required none of the education they acquired. I'd bet it's far more common then the scenarios you present. https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college-majors/ https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college-majors/ I'm not sure the 600,000 humanities degrees lead to that kind of hockey puck style career path.
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities-Grads/242461 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities-Grads... But again, the problem is that it takes until mid-career to really assess lifetime earning potential, and that's an extremely late indicator. If the winds change, we have to wait 10 years to find out. We need a more fine-grained model of how those high earnings are happening and a way of tracking progress/bottlenecks along those tracks. E.g., I suspect the law job/salary crunch should be far more worrying than near-term earning potential of humanities majors. It's also worth pointing out that salary isn't everything and our society would be utterly screwed if everyone optimized for lifetime earnings. Fortunately, plenty of people are optimizing a multi-objective function that includes QoL and job satisfaction; see e.g. teaching in particular. I'd have a hard time telling a teacher that they made a bad career choice by not going into tech or becoming a plumber, and I'd have an equally hard time arguing that teachers shouldn't be college educated.
Gimpei 8y ago
I went to college in the US and then grad school in Europe and Asia and my personal impression is that you get what you pay for. Professors outside the states don't get anywhere near as much money and as a result don't provide the same level of personal level attention and guidance. For my undergraduate thesis, I saw my advisor once a week. For my PhD thesis, I saw my advisor four times a year. In the US a normal class had around 3-4 hours of lectures a week, plus continuous assessment, and ran from September to June. In the UK, where I did my PhD, it was 2-3 hours a week, one test at the end of the year, and classes started in October and ended in March. I didn't realize how good I had it in the states until I left. If you can afford it, it's awesome.
- alexgmcm 8y ago
  The one exam versus continuous assessment is more of a cultural thing. As are the old Oxford terms of Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity which are very short. In decent universities in the UK they still have a one on one tutorial system though (Oxbridge, Durham, Exeter etc. all had it)
exabrial 8y ago
Mainly because of unsecured government guaranteed loans. The government pretty much has to give you a loan no matter what your predicted ability/willingness to pay back is. Colleges are capitalistically taking full advantage of this cash flow.
killjoywashere 8y ago
The health-care-education correlation runs deep. The premier health care systems are almost invariably associated with the premier universities in the area. The administrators write the rules.
diogenescynic 8y ago
Why is college/housing/healthcare/childcare so expensive in America? Nothing here is optimized for the consumer, it’s all optimized for profits.
greggeter 8y ago
Because loans are cheap
balaba 8y ago
It seems that everything the government is willing to pay for (or lend money for) gets outrageously priced. From healthcare (what is the cost of saving an american life?) to 'defense' (what is the cost of taking a killer's life?), the US has developed a system that mortgages the future of our children to subsidize the anxieties of 'adults' of the present.
aphextron 8y ago
Because America is so expensive. A really good education at a state school still costs almost nothing in the long run, yet unless you are a wealthy young kid with parental support, the ability to go to school full time for 4 years is an unimaginable luxury.
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  Many enterprising youth use the military as a way to pay for school, too. I had 7 brothers and sisters growing up, not enough money for Mom and Dad to put me in school. Uncle Sam was there for me, though.
RickJWagner 8y ago
I'm always amazed at how how classes require new $200 textbooks each semester. (Have there really been breakthroughs in every subject, requiring new books?) To me, that's a big sign of what's wrong. Too many hands in the student's pocket.
stevespang 8y ago
How many other countries in the world put the "squeeze" on their poor and middle class youth such that if you join the military and go murder foreign citizens you can qualify for a GI bill that pays for all college and more (that is of course, if you survive) - - - yet, if you refuse to be a "hit man" for the Gov't (the 6th commandment), you'll likely incur $40,000 or more in college debt . . .
m3kw9 8y ago
Seem like supply and demand pricing to put it succinctly.
graycat 8y ago
As history has shown overwhelmingly for decades, it's perfectly possible to run a good four year college with quite reasonable costs for the student. E.g., it was long common for students to work off the costs just by helping in the dining hall. But, a lot of students want to go to prestige colleges. Nearly all the prestige colleges are the four year colleges of famous, high end research universities. In such universities, the teaching loads per professor are quite low, but the expenses for the research are quite high. If a student is content to make good use of an okay public four year college, hopefully live at home, keep down the cost of living, concentrate on learning and grades, then they can get a good four year education and be ready for graduate school where they need pay no tuition and maybe get a stipend. Actually, when I was a STEM field grad student, I paid no tuition, and a prof told me that they had tuition scholarship going begging from having too few well qualified applicants. A way to get an Ivy League degree is to have good grades from a four year college, good SAT and GRE scores, maybe 1-3 years of relevant work experience, and then apply to graduate school in a STEM field department of an Ivy League university. In essentially this way, I got accepted to Cornell, Brown, Princeton, and more. Much of the emphasis on research was from the US Federal government for US national security and, then, bio-medical research (all those test tubes are expensive!). The national security interest was from The Bomb, the Cold War, the Space Race, and now whatever, e.g., information security. So the DoD, NSF, and NIH made the research universities an offer they couldn't refuse: Take the money or cease to be a leading research university. Well, that Federal money is no longer so easy to get, but the research universities still want to concentrate on research, and students still think that is where the prestige and/or good education is. Then with good reputations for research, the universities get highly ranked, and students want to go there for their four year ugrad education -- which then is darned expensive. E.g., on YouTube, look at the lectures of Prof Allan Adams on introductory quantum mechanics at MIT: It appears that this is the only course he was teaching that year; it was the last year he was teaching it; and otherwise he was doing research on string theory. So, add it up anyway you want, and a seat in that course is EXPENSIVE. But, don't really need a seat in that course. Instead can buy a stack of highly regarded introductory texts on quantum mechanics (used, save money), download lectures, from Adams and possibly elsewhere, and just STUDY. If take the course at MIT and do at all well in it, still have to STUDY. Sitting in the class is not much better than watching the videos; still what's important to learn the material is to study. But if want to rub shoulders with other good students and some big time profs, then, sure, would rather be at MIT. Still, if take a course in quantum mechanics at a four year college, maybe a course not quite as well informed as at MIT, then just work to get good grades, also learn quantum mechanics from the Adams videos and the best books, do well on the physics GRE, and apply to a high end grad program in physics. Then will still have a good shot at doing as well as the MIT grads in the grad program. Similarly for other STEM fields, at least pure and applied math and, from all I can see, also computer science. Net, it really is possible to get a really good education, with really good GRE scores, in a cheap four year ugrad program, and, then, be fully competitive in a high end grad program at one of the best research universities. So, if have to sit in your parent's basement for a year getting the best ugrad STEM field education before taking your GREs and going for an Ivy League, etc. grad education, then DO that, and save some really big bucks, maybe $40,000 a year for 4 years. NBA basketball has spectators who pay big bucks and makes a good spectator sport. A good ugrad STEM field education is not a spectator sport and is essentially the same as learning to play basketball well yourself. Can't get good at a STEM field just by watching; instead have to DO it. The best video lectures, the best books, and STUDY. You CAN do that. E.g., pay all you want to MIT and take the Adams course. He still makes a total mess out of the Fourier transform. But the Fourier transform is presented with overwhelming clarity, beauty, and precision in W. Rudin, Real and Complex Analysis. At some point quantum mechanics will want to use the spectral theorem of linear operators on a Hilbert space. Well, the spectral theorem is in a finite dimensional version, intended to be a gentle introduction to the full version, in Halmos, Finite Dimensional Vector Space. There is the full version in another book, short, by Halmos, in Introduction to Hilbert Space and the Theory of Spectral Multiplicity: Second Edition (Dover Books on Mathematics) for about $10. For more, there is W. Rudin, Functional Analysis, as usual for Rudin, with astounding precision. Will have a tough time at any university finding a physics prof who will do that well with either the Fourier transform or spectral theory. So, can get the Halmos book for about $10. For Rudin, Functional Analysis, a fast Google search showed a used copy for $12.10. Why spend $40,000 a year???? Indeed, soon in high end STEM field academics it's accepted that with no more than a little guidance and some good texts, any of the good students can learn whatever they need. Basically the students are expected to be able to learn this way for their research. Once are a research prof, definitely are expected to learn this way just to keep up in the field. Net, all those $40,000+ a year ugrad expenses are for what the heck????
binwiederhier 8y ago
Stupid, slightly off topic question: With costs this high, the huge financial burden and the unclear advantage one gets from a US university education, why do Americans not simply study abroad, say in Germany, where University is free?
- IloveHN84 8y ago
  Oh some do that already
sytelus 8y ago
TLDR; Most of the cost can be traced back to staff, specifically non-teaching staff. With entire range of sport coaches to councelers on campus, things become expensive. Also, US has 4 different types of universities: public, private non-profit, for-profit, community schools. If you only take public universities in to account, US education system is actually more affordable than France or Canada. So there is huge variance and outliers which throws of the average.

183 points by stevenwoo 8y ago

fouc 8y ago

College is expensive because people still pay that price. People pay that price because they have easy access to student loans. So if we get rid of student loans, colleges would be forced to change their pricing. If governments still want to encourage students to go to college, then perhaps non-price based methods would help. Scholarships could move away from being a monetary amount, to being a fixed amount of semesters paid for.

quiq 8y ago
Naively, wouldn't a blank check for a semester ecourage universities to raise prices even higher?
- fouc 8y ago
  Yeah, seems hard to make scholarships/student loans work without putting upward pressure on college pricing. Perhaps not possible.
trumped 8y ago
allowing students loans to be wiped off in a bankruptcies might achieve the same goal
linuxftw 8y ago
We shouldn't get rid of student loans, we should force colleges to loan the money themselves with no special backing from the government. If they really believe in their crap degrees, they'll be willing to put up their own cash and make a return on investment.

jngreenlee 8y ago

Somewhat guaranteed access to Federal funding via FAFSA reduces incentives to price shop. Combined with campus building envy.

oh-kumudo 8y ago

Not enough government subsidy.

0xffff2 8y ago
I take it you mean direct subsidy to the Universities? There is in fact quite a lot of government subsidy in the form of student loans. Many would argue that's one of the main driving forces behind rising tuition.
Carlton87 8y ago
There is far too much government subsidy, loans should be much harder to get.
- oh-kumudo 8y ago
  College is essentially free for many european countries, that is what I think sufficient level of subsidy
  - parsnips 8y ago
    "free": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis
    - hoppelhase 8y ago
      What does this has to do with college prices? I've studied CS 3.5 years for ~550€ per year (around $700). This includes free public transportation, but excludes an apartment. In Germany, you can get a gov. funded student loan which can go up to ~750€ per Month. You have to pay back only the half of that. The 750€/Month is the highest amount that you can get. But you get it only if you have to pay the health insurance yourself, which is ~90€/Month. Otherwise, the maximum amount ~650€/Month. What you can get depends on the income of your parents. If your parents earn a lot of money, you get less. What you have to pay back is capped to 10000€ in total, free of interest. So if you get more than 20000€ in total, you still have to pay back only 10000€. You even get a discount on that if you pay back early. If you are taking this loan, your maximum debt is 10000€ (to be repaid only after the receiver exceeds a certain income level after graduation). You don't get it forever, though. It is limited to 3-5 years, depending on what you study. It is called Bafög: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesausbildungsförderungsg... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Germany) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Germa... I'd consider this as "free enough".

kylec 8y ago

Supply and demand. Everyone in high school is expected to go to college; you're essentially considered a failure if you don't. Couple this with easy access to student loans and other forms of credit and it's easy to see why the price of college has just gone up and up.

aroberge 8y ago
The numbers do not (fully) support your argument. We have a similar situation in Canada in terms of expectations ... but the for the price paid by students which is signficantly lower. And, the participation rate is 54% for Canada compared with 44% with the U.S. - so, by your argument, university education should be much more costly in Canada than it is in the U.S.
deleted 8y ago
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Domenic_S 8y ago

I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans. When the government guarantees loans, you can lend whatever you want! The price of a TRIPLE occupancy dorm + 7 day meal access is $14,813.29/YEAR at UC Davis. The "meals", if they haven't changed in the last decade, are Sodexo garbage. And don't forget a "year" doesn't count the summer, or winter break.

bla2 8y ago
That's just a bit over 1k / month -- similar to rent in SF :-P
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Rent, utilities, meals? Regardless of CA, it's a lot everywhere else. Especially when they're bunking three in a room at that rate. The markup (for all of it) is the real atrocity here.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  I assume that only covers spring and fall semeseter and not the summer months and even maybe winter break. So it probably goes to 1600/mo
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  How many roommates for $1k? $1k within 20 miles of Seattle isn't enough to live alone, and I'm guessing it's much worse in SF.
  - jonknee 8y ago
    It's a triple occupancy dorm. You could definitely do that in Seattle/SF/NYC considering it's a single room with no kitchen or bathroom shared by 3 people (other than the fact that I think it would be illegal to rent out).
    - dragonwriter 8y ago

IronWolve 8y ago

Many western states got together to provide a cheaper alternative to state schools. Western Governors University is about 6k a year and is online and accredited. Its also used for teachers to get their advanced degrees while working full-time jobs. You can also go as fast or slow as you can/want. You could, in theory, do it in 3 years, so 18k TOTAL, that's pretty affordable. No idea if there is an option for eastern states. They have IT/Nursing/Teaching/Business degrees upto Masters degrees. https://www.wgu.edu/ https://www.wgu.edu/

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
WGU's great (so far as I know)... for the majors they offer. There's a bunch that they don't, though. No pure science, no humanities. They're even missing a bunch of kinds of engineering. I like the idea, though. I wish they offered more.
colonelpopcorn 8y ago
Alumni of WGU here. I did mine in about 1 1/2 years of work for < $16k. If anyone is looking to tick the "college educated" box I would highly recommend it as the fastest path to doing that.
dnissley 8y ago
I'm currently in their CS program that just opened up in June. I've been a software engineer for about a decade and so have picked up a pretty decent CS background just through osmosis. Here's the response I gave to a young person who wanted to know if they should go to a community college or WGU: Honestly if I didn't already know like 3/4 the stuff for almost every class I've taken so far I would probably hate this program because the materials and curriculum within each class aren't great. There are lots of errors and sloppiness all around, even on many of the exams. I can imagine trying to learn this all from scratch would be a crapshoot and take a really long time and be really frustrating. That said, if you're motivated it could be worth the time savings just to get out there and start working. You'll learn far more on the job than you would in the classroom anyway, and for me at least I definitely didn't appreciate the more abstract knowledge I came into contact with before I started working. But after a few years I had an actual application for it, and started to re-examine it in my own time. And it was a lot more interesting and actually held my attention at that point.

jiveturkey 8y ago

TLDR: > Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” In places like the United Kingdom, the government limits how much universities can extract by capping tuition. The same is true when it comes to health care in most developed countries, where a centralized government authority contains the prices. Both true and not true. College is indeed expensive because of unregulated price increase, but it's that way because of, not in spite of, government intervention. Much like home prices. Federal student aid has ensured that the cost of education grows to meet the amount of loan money available. Similar to mortgage guarantees. Please note that I am not decrying student aid. I only went to university because of it. But you can draw a straight line to that and price hikes.

pwned1 8y ago
The same goes for medical care. The article tries to say that university and medical care are somehow competitive or part of a free market. There's no coincidence that both "industries" are the most heavily regulated and subsidized industries in the economy, and they're the most expensive. Consumers of both products are completely divorced from the costs. People just don't think 20-30 years ahead. Student loans will weigh you down for a large part of your adult life, but when you're 18 you have no concept of that. Same with health care. Many many people don't care if their eating and health habits are detrimental... the consequences are years off and, frankly, someone else will pay for them. So government steps in and breaks the market mechanisms. Student loans are non-dischargeable and subsidized to an unlimited amount. Your health habits cannot be taken into account with health insurance; government mandates the same coverage for everyone, whether or not you eat 10,000 calories of potato chips a day, or you run three miles a day. The entirely predictable result is that prices go up unsustainably.
- seibelj 8y ago
  I will link to this book over and over: "Overcharged" explains the American medical system and its problems in great detail. Cannot recommend it more. Price obfuscation, third-party payments, and government interference have warped the medical system in ways that will make you laugh (then cry). https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health-Care/dp/1944424768/ https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health-Car...

Alupis 8y ago

> Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year—nearly twice as much as the average developed country. This narrative needs to die. Hear me out before judging... Yes, University is expensive! But - a large portion of the numbers you see thrown around include living expenses! The same living expenses a student would incur if they were not attending University. The predominant reason for this is students are still today largely encouraged to be Professional Students, ie. full time students who do not work, or work very little. This mandates their living expenses having to come from elsewhere - either parents, or loans! No person should be taking out loans to eat at Taco Bell... or buy toilet paper. Instead, we need to shift the focus away from encouraging Professional Students, but rather we should encourage Professionals who attend University. Not only will our youth gain more valuable and tangible life-long skills and experience working full-time, but their education can become a more significant compliment to their ascension to adulthood. Working well with others, balancing a bank account, paying bills, working on real-world problems, and more! It will take longer to gain their degree, but it will become more valuable and appreciated in the process. Graduating students will have actual skills and experience industry needs, not just academic and homework skills. At the top of it all, they'll be graduating with much less, or no debt - since working full-time during school would have been paying the bills, buying that Taco Bell and toilet paper, and more.

jeremyjh 8y ago
TFA acknowledges this but points out that we still lead the world (other than Luxembourg)when taking out those expenses.
sofaofthedamned 8y ago
It's a good point tbf - i'm in the UK and my partner is in academia, we disagree on politics massively. One thing we agree on is that universities should be a place of constant learning - less pressure on doing it when you're 19-22, and more like your National Insurance payments as an adult should go towards being able to go to the local Uni and using these credits for learning.
Retric 8y ago
'Living expenses' charged by schools are insanely inflated. ~3 months of food and shelter don't cost ~7k when you have roommates.

ergothus 8y ago

Most of the other points in comments here are valid (or potentially so), but one thing I've not seen mentioned is the decrease in govt funding of public colleges and university. When I attended college 20 years ago (Penn State)I remember seeing graphs showing how decreased state funding matched tuition hikes pretty well. A quick google search turned up https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher-education-lead-to-increases-in-tuition https://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/cuts-to-higher-educati... which shows the same sort of graph, even if it doesn't go back as far and isn't quite the same axis.

xienze 8y ago
I think a lot of university staff cry wolf over funding and always have, even in the good times. Yeah, they're really feeling the effects of it, what with admin staff sizes increasingly exponentially, constantly building new buildings and renovating existing ones, etc. My humble state school is like a luxury resort these days. There's puh-lenty of fat for colleges to trim if they're really feeling the pinch, but they seem to do anything but that. Honestly, I think we haven't done enough to force schools to get a handle on their spending habits.
- pwthornton 8y ago
  You're conflating a bunch of stuff. New buildings almost always come out of restricted funding from donors, not from tuition. While schools are hiring more admin staff -- much of it mandated by the federal government -- the amount of faculty is dropping. Funding for state schools has dropped a lot. This is an undisputed fact. You have places that may have once been 60% funded by the state that are now down to around 10% or so. Of course tuition went up.
- froindt 8y ago
  I agree with the luxury portion. My university hasn't added a "cheap" dorm in decades. Now they're all suites, where 2 or 4 people share a bathroom, and are much more expensive. I think a big part is students growing up in a middle class lifestyle and wanting to change as little as possible. I lived in the cheapest dorm available (no AC in the heat and humidity of Iowa). At current rates, 4694/year versus 6415 in the super nice ones, all before the meal plan. So we have tons of people with low earning potential trying to maintain the lifestyle their parents have provided for them despite the fact that maintaining that lifestyle after college will mean they're saving little to nothing, and that their student loans will live on for many years. People waking up to the harsh reality of what starting wages will get them, how long student loans would take to pay back, etc. would go a long way toward cutting the fluff costs associated with college.

cubano 8y ago

I think the actual answer is "because it can"...it's really that simple. Supply and demand dicate how much colleges can charge students, nothing else. If schools can charge $30k/year, and fill up the classrooms, why wouldn't they? It's similar to the question "what's my house worth?"...the answer is exactly how much someone is willing to pay for it, nothing more and nothing less. Any real estate agent will tell you the same. Many factors go into why colleges can charge so much and get away with it. Certainly the price distortions caused by easy-to-get guaranteed student loans is a big driver, but others exist of course.

deleted 8y ago
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grandinj 8y ago

That's not a very useful article. They touch on some possibilities, but never peel the data enough to come to useful conclusions. They also jump between different kinds of costs - cost to the student, and cost to the country. Which is a pity, because normally the Atlantic does better.

roymurdock 8y ago
Agreed - rich topic, poor analysis. Especially given the access to primary sources/institutions that study this problem. A market research report would most likely explain this industry and its driving factors better (but would be expensive)
jimhefferon 8y ago
Yes, for example, I'd like to know how other countries can be cheaper. What percentage of their budget is professors? What percentage of ours is professors? What about administrators? Student services people? I've been in higher ed for decades and I don't feel I understand where the money goes.
l9k 8y ago
Points I found lacking: - Comparing cost of education between countries not adapted to overall cost of living - Importance of college sports in the US vs youth sports in club academies in Europe - Research conducted inside the university in the US vs external or independent institutes in other countries like France
tathougies 8y ago
I mean.. not every question in life has a clear cut answer, and the job of a journalist is not to spoon feed us answers. The job of a journalist is to report the facts as they are, and to only express a conclusion if they truly believe the data and expert opinions they present warrant it. Sometimes, the data may not be clear cut and the expert opinions may vary. In this case, a decent journalist presents all sides, presents a number of possible conclusions, and lets the reader engage in self-reflection and critical thought. In this sense, the Atlantic is better than most.

djschnei 8y ago

How are government guaranteed loans not mentioned?... that alone kills this articles credibility...

some_account 8y ago

The real answer is "because America". People in high places want to get rich, so they will make sure to lobby for laws and regulations so they can profit incredibly well from normal people. I don't think there is any other country where capitalism has taken over so completely, and the people are not rebelling - but cheering - for America to continue.

hulton 8y ago

Simple: the existence of government subsidies and colleges taking advantage of the existence of those subsidies.

ilamont 8y ago

Here's the line that stood out to me: more than three-quarters of students attend nonselective colleges, which admit at least half of their applicants. No one knows for sure how good these colleges are at their core job of educating students. It's important not just because of educational outcomes, but also because the tuition/cost discussion is often dominated by selective colleges, and/or colleges with national or international brands. When it comes to those colleges, that's when we start hearing about the "arms race" described in the article (and amusingly highlighted in a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that was heavily criticized: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/18/malcolm-gladwell-sets-debate-over-whether-good-campus-food-prevents-more-aid-low https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/18/malcolm-gladw...). Another cost that gets brought up: all of the administrators who apparently didn't exist in large numbers decades ago. And, I have also heard the theory that expensive liberal arts degrees are basically subsidizing STEM research, especially now that federal research grants are harder to come by. But again, these issues seem to be the domain of the selective colleges. What's going on at the nonselective colleges -- community colleges, lower-ranked liberal arts colleges, and the for-profit and online colleges -- needs more attention.

Kagerjay 8y ago

I remember when I graduated state tuition, I had a full ride scholarship through state tuition. By the time I graduated my tuition funding got cut in half due to lack of government funding. I worked 3 jobs and only had to pay for living expenses / textbooks. I checked recently my local University (the biggest one in the country, top 50 in many majors) charges $1000 per 3 semester hours(1 course). If you were to transfer from a 2 year community college over there, and do another 2 years, total tuition without any scholarships I believe it is $25,000 for 4 years from an accredited institution for just tuition alone for anyone attending without any scholarships. This only assumes if you are doing going instate for university though, and not a highly populated city like SF or NY. Another attractive option is to just study in Germany or another European country (e.g. switzerland for computerscience, etc). Tuition is free (I believe?), and still very good as well. I studied abroad there, education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences). Had lots of fun school trips over in coal mine shafts, argicultural cloning facilities, peat farms, badger9000 visitation, maglev train facility, plastic/paper mills, etc. They didn't have anything like this in the states.

squozzer 8y ago
I would kill for a chance to study physics at Göttingen.
- hoppelhase 8y ago
  Is it really better than some AAA college in the US?
  - squozzer 8y ago
    Probably not, but it has a history.
catdog 8y ago
> Tuition is free (I believe?) There was a brief period where it was not free everywhere (but still very low for US standards) but this legislation has been largely rolled back so it should be basically free. You only have to pay a small (often very small) fee per semester (varies a lot mostly because it often includes a mandatory public transport ticket which can be a bit expensive in some cities but still a lot cheaper than buying it yourself). You also need health insurance which is usually less than 100€ / month for students inside the state mandated system so you want this anyway i think. :) > education is fantastic at the Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences) In general a Fachhochschule is a less theoretical approach to higher education. Courses are a bit more school like compared to a university and the barrier to entry is also a bit lower (don't know if this is relevant to foreigners though). There used to be a huge distinction to normal universities as they originally did no research and degrees were not considered equal to a university degree. But a lot changed in recent years, now you can even apply to a university master's program with an FH degree and it's often possible to start a research career at an FH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachhochschule

rayiner 8y ago

> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: There is no central mechanism to control price increases. “Universities extract money from students because they can,” says Schleicher at the OECD. “It’s the inevitable outcome of an unregulated fee structure.” That assertion makes no sense. In a market economy, almost all prices are unregulated. Yet the prices of TVs, hamburgers, etc., aren't skyrocketing. The lack of regulation is surely not the problem.

dboreham 8y ago
Well : >no central mechanism to control price increases Which would be "competition" or "regulation", right? It seems to me that the underlying problem is a principal-agent one (same as in healthcare): my son may want to go to Harvard or Princeton, but I get to foot the bill. If I point out that in-state public university would be much cheaper and nearly as good an education at undergrad level, I get to become Least Popular Dad...
- solidsnack9000 8y ago
  There is also the issue, that college serves substantially a professional networking function when you get into the more expensive schools. This is quite apart from the quality of education but it can have a real impact on one's career outcomes.
l9k 8y ago
Competition in TVs and colleges differ largely in terms of quantity, quality. In any way, those are two totally different things you can't compare
- tptacek 8y ago
  Only in the sense that you generally have fewer options and substitutes for a particular TV than you do for a particular college, right? "Hamburgers" and "TVs" are also very different products with different cost structures, different market channels, and different competitive landscapes. But we have no trouble reasoning about how the market deals with prices of both those goods. What makes college different? If you can't answer that, you're just begging the question.

kps 8y ago

> Ultimately, college is expensive in the U.S. for the same reason MRIs are expensive: Bloated self-serving administration.

uhtred 8y ago

Because the game is rigged. Citizens without debt are a danger to the established order. Why else are young people encouraged to get into tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt, for a degree in something vague like "business", just to become recruitment consultants. After that they are encouraged to buy a big house (in other words take on a huge mortgage), and 3 cars. Debt keeps citizens chained down and the rich rich.

justwalt 8y ago
In the case of housing, how is having a mortgage worse than renting? You could at least sell the house and have [some of] the money back.
- uhtred 8y ago
  I guess I should have emphasised a BIG mortgage. As in, own a house way bigger than you need. I agree, owning is probably better than renting.
- uhtred 8y ago
  Actually I take back the mortgage part. People these days are lucky if they can afford any kind of house, big or small, at least in or near big cities. Most people are probably just glad to own anything let alone a big house.
neuralRiot 8y ago
Some might see your comment as a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory but a customer of mine who is a medium size business owner (around 150 employees maybe) once told me he helped his employees to get credits because he knew that way they would be more pressed to stay on the job.
pjscott 8y ago
How would the Established Order coordinate this? That's an awful lot of people who all have to work together to make the conspiracy function, and there would be a big temptation for rich people to shirk their oppression duties and just free-ride off the efforts of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

adventured 8y ago

How come these articles never ask the obvious thing: why did college in America very rapidly become so expensive after being so reasonable for most of the prior century. And how did that magical cost inflation happen at exactly the same time that healthcare costs skyrocketed and the dollar plunged in value? (while at exactly the same time, all commodities skyrocketed and all foreign GDPs skyrocketed). That's the result of debased standards of living through destroying a nation's currency in the process of funding economic stupidity (massive budget deficits), war, etc. It's not just that college got so expensive. It's that the standard of living dropped, amplifying an already elevated cost inflation. That's represented in the permanent price increases you see in all commodities for one example (which are priced in dollars). Gold isn't going back to $300; oil isn't going back to $13. Wages didn't keep up with the rate at which the clowns in DC destroyed the American standard of living. Some things are held in check by market forces, you can only inflate the cost of video games so much in a market system, or you rapidly lose buyers. College was able to skirt that market restraint courtesy of the government's student loan backing, which pretended the US standard of living had just kept right on climbing.

dboreham 8y ago
>why did college in America very rapidly become so expensive after being so reasonable for most of the prior century I've seen (sorry, forget where, no citation) studies that suggest the inflation came from three factors: 1. Competition between campuses to attract students led to construction of ever more fancy facilities -- gyms, espresso bars, swanky dorms, sport stadiums, ... which all cost $$ 2. Administrators (somehow) became a new rent-seeking class (perhaps see #1?) that extracted maximum $$. 3. Sticker price vs the real price (also same as healthcare) -- when not every student is paying, or able to pay, their own fees, education providers charge different prices. We're only looking at the sticker price here.

ghobs91 8y ago

All the gov would need to do is mandate that colleges charge tuition as a percentage of post-graduation salary, and you'd see half of these low quality colleges peddling worthless degrees go bankrupt overnight. At the end of the day, this country needs to decide whether the role of universities is to train students for career paths, or purely to provide higher education. It's very difficult to orient the structure around both without the incentive's being misaligned towards one of them.

firic 8y ago
Then colleges would have to be in the business of risk management. That would be like charging a hospital based on the recovery rate.

secabeen 8y ago

This is such a weird article. It promotes this vision of college being expensive, then undercuts its main argument: > “The public system in the U.S. is working as well as most systems,” he says. “Parts of the U.S. look like France.” > Three out of every four American college students attend a school in this public system, which is funded through state and local subsidies, along with students’ tuition dollars and some federal aid. If 75% of students attend a school in the public system, and the public system is working as well as most systems, aren't we in pretty good shape? Why are we letting the experience of a minority of students drive the conversation here?

majos 8y ago
Even if the quote says the public system that covers most students is "working well", the average student loan debt of a graduate is still pretty high [1]: > When they graduate [in 2016] the average student loan borrower has $37,172 in student loans, a $20,000 increase from 13 years ago. Of course this is an average, but I don't expect this is something where some people with millions of dollars in student loans are skewing the averages. I imagine the median is not that far off. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average-student-loan-borrower-owes-when-they-graduate.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average-s...
- mcguire 8y ago
  $17,000 And only ~50% of students had student loan debt. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2016-education-debt-loans.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-we...

topkai22 8y ago

In summary, the reason (from a spending perspective) presumably non-profit colleges are so expensive in the US is that US colleges spends 2x/student as much on staff and faculty as many OECD counterparts. College faculty, staff, and administrators form a large constituency that will be campaigning to keep spending (private, public, or otherwise) up, which campaigners for lower higher-educational spending will need to keep in mind.

jayd16 8y ago
If the free market is the answer why aren't there a swath of good and cheap private options?
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  There are good and cheap alternatives. My community college was 1/3rd the cost of college. The problem is students don’t understand what they are getting themselves into.
  - topkai22 8y ago
    Also it’s almost impossible for private entities to compete with heavily subsidized public institutions on price, so they need to compete in other ways, like superior marketing, ease of financing, or “quality” If states let their subsidies flow to private institutions on a per student basis, you could get some interesting results, but frankly I think community colleges are already so efficient it’s a crowded market.
    - jayd16 8y ago
      >Also it’s almost impossible for private entities to compete with heavily subsidized public institutions on price, so they need to compete in other ways, like superior marketing, ease of financing, or “quality” The entire argument is that they would be cheaper. You could argue they might be better but saying they can't compete on price just concedes the point.

chasing 8y ago

State schools, my friends. If you're in-state, you might pay 1/4 or less the costs of a private college.

wonderbear 8y ago
That depends massively on which state you're a resident of.
- chasing 8y ago
  Probably does vary by state. But overall: "According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was $34,740 at private colleges, $9,970 for state residents at public colleges, and $25,620 for out-of-state residents attending public universities." - https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064 https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tm... So in-state is, overall, a shade more than 1/4 the cost of private.

bitwize 8y ago

Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads, but you'll do it for far cheaper if you attend a public university in your state of residence. If you want to do a postgrad program, don't worry: top tier schools will come sniffing if you're good enough, no matter where you're coming from.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I agree, but... One of the things that you get in a university is contacts. A top-tier school may in fact be worth more money than a pleb-tier state school, if the people you meet there are worth more to know (over a lifetime) than the people you meet at a state school. ... says the guy who went to Random State University...
throwawayjava 8y ago
> Unless you have a full-ride scholarship, go to pleb-tier state school. If you are studying a STEM field you'll have to learn the exact same math and science as the Harvard and Stanford grads I went to a "pleb-tier" [1] school for undergrad and then to a top-tier university for grad school. It's just not true. There is a huge difference in the quality of education, especially in STEM fields. And most especially in Math. "pleb-tier" schools will get through everything in Harvard's Math 55 if they're lucky. Not even exaggerating -- the first year at Harvard covers what you'll get in four years of honors track at a "pleb-tier" place. And then there's the recruitment pipeline. Coming out of top-tier school I had multiple 300k-500k offers without even applying for any jobs. Out of pleb-tier school, I wasn't getting anything over 80k and that was with lots of networking. CS and Math are two of the rare fields where phd school has, IME, a positive expected value, as long as you're substantially trading up credentials. IMO the optimal route is as follows (at least in STEM): * Is your state flagship within a 1 hour drive and top-10 in your field? If so, that option is a complete no-brainer. * 3/4+-ride to a top 10 place outside of commuting distance, or a 1/2 ride to a top 10 place within commuting distance? Again, no brainer. * Otherwise, the calculus becomes harder. Your best bet is probably to aim for a PhD at a tippy top school (top 5 or so), but getting into tippy top phd program from a "pleb-tier" is not nearly as easy and you're making it out to be... especially in older/more saturated fields like Math. -- [1] FWIW I don't like this terminology but... whatever.

mrnobody_67 8y ago

Sports teams. A LOT of spending on sports teams, stadiums, etc...

kraig911 8y ago

Why is everything so expensive in America...

mr_tristan 8y ago

> Still, the return varies wildly depending on the college one attends. One in four college grads earns no more than the average high-school graduate. I found this shocking: 25% of _graduates_ are in a significantly worse financial position after college? They're not only getting zero monetary benefit for their degree, they've forgone 4 years of experience. And I'd bet that most of them are adding significant student debt on top of this. I'd be curious how _that_ number compares internationally.

throwawayjava 8y ago
TBF these numbers can be... messy. For example, at least one statistic is based on earnings 5 years out of school. 5 years out of school I was making less than 30k as a research assistant. A few months later I was making easily 100k+ more than most senior SDEs, and doing exactly what I would be doing if I had a trust fund to pay the bills. Many of my classmates who became doctors were in similar situations -- working through residencies at T+5 years but setting themselves up for mid 6-low 7 salaries in the near future. So earnings over even a medium-term time horizon can be extremely misleading. You really need that 35-45 year career to get the full picture. Any college grad salary number with less than a 6 or evne 10 year time horizon is going to be a poor representation of what's really going on.
- mr_tristan 8y ago
  But... I can't help but wonder about how many of the graduates from the 75% of schools that take most of their applicants just end up doing something that basically required none of the education they acquired. I'd bet it's far more common then the scenarios you present. https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college-majors/ https://www.niche.com/blog/the-most-popular-college-majors/ I'm not sure the 600,000 humanities degrees lead to that kind of hockey puck style career path.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities-Grads/242461 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Over-Time-Humanities-Grads... But again, the problem is that it takes until mid-career to really assess lifetime earning potential, and that's an extremely late indicator. If the winds change, we have to wait 10 years to find out. We need a more fine-grained model of how those high earnings are happening and a way of tracking progress/bottlenecks along those tracks. E.g., I suspect the law job/salary crunch should be far more worrying than near-term earning potential of humanities majors. It's also worth pointing out that salary isn't everything and our society would be utterly screwed if everyone optimized for lifetime earnings. Fortunately, plenty of people are optimizing a multi-objective function that includes QoL and job satisfaction; see e.g. teaching in particular. I'd have a hard time telling a teacher that they made a bad career choice by not going into tech or becoming a plumber, and I'd have an equally hard time arguing that teachers shouldn't be college educated.

Gimpei 8y ago

I went to college in the US and then grad school in Europe and Asia and my personal impression is that you get what you pay for. Professors outside the states don't get anywhere near as much money and as a result don't provide the same level of personal level attention and guidance. For my undergraduate thesis, I saw my advisor once a week. For my PhD thesis, I saw my advisor four times a year. In the US a normal class had around 3-4 hours of lectures a week, plus continuous assessment, and ran from September to June. In the UK, where I did my PhD, it was 2-3 hours a week, one test at the end of the year, and classes started in October and ended in March. I didn't realize how good I had it in the states until I left. If you can afford it, it's awesome.

alexgmcm 8y ago
The one exam versus continuous assessment is more of a cultural thing. As are the old Oxford terms of Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity which are very short. In decent universities in the UK they still have a one on one tutorial system though (Oxbridge, Durham, Exeter etc. all had it)

exabrial 8y ago

Mainly because of unsecured government guaranteed loans. The government pretty much has to give you a loan no matter what your predicted ability/willingness to pay back is. Colleges are capitalistically taking full advantage of this cash flow.

killjoywashere 8y ago

The health-care-education correlation runs deep. The premier health care systems are almost invariably associated with the premier universities in the area. The administrators write the rules.

diogenescynic 8y ago

Why is college/housing/healthcare/childcare so expensive in America? Nothing here is optimized for the consumer, it’s all optimized for profits.

greggeter 8y ago

Because loans are cheap

balaba 8y ago

It seems that everything the government is willing to pay for (or lend money for) gets outrageously priced. From healthcare (what is the cost of saving an american life?) to 'defense' (what is the cost of taking a killer's life?), the US has developed a system that mortgages the future of our children to subsidize the anxieties of 'adults' of the present.

aphextron 8y ago

Because America is so expensive. A really good education at a state school still costs almost nothing in the long run, yet unless you are a wealthy young kid with parental support, the ability to go to school full time for 4 years is an unimaginable luxury.

RickJWagner 8y ago
Many enterprising youth use the military as a way to pay for school, too. I had 7 brothers and sisters growing up, not enough money for Mom and Dad to put me in school. Uncle Sam was there for me, though.

RickJWagner 8y ago

I'm always amazed at how how classes require new $200 textbooks each semester. (Have there really been breakthroughs in every subject, requiring new books?) To me, that's a big sign of what's wrong. Too many hands in the student's pocket.

stevespang 8y ago

How many other countries in the world put the "squeeze" on their poor and middle class youth such that if you join the military and go murder foreign citizens you can qualify for a GI bill that pays for all college and more (that is of course, if you survive) - - - yet, if you refuse to be a "hit man" for the Gov't (the 6th commandment), you'll likely incur $40,000 or more in college debt . . .

m3kw9 8y ago

Seem like supply and demand pricing to put it succinctly.

graycat 8y ago

As history has shown overwhelmingly for decades, it's perfectly possible to run a good four year college with quite reasonable costs for the student. E.g., it was long common for students to work off the costs just by helping in the dining hall. But, a lot of students want to go to prestige colleges. Nearly all the prestige colleges are the four year colleges of famous, high end research universities. In such universities, the teaching loads per professor are quite low, but the expenses for the research are quite high. If a student is content to make good use of an okay public four year college, hopefully live at home, keep down the cost of living, concentrate on learning and grades, then they can get a good four year education and be ready for graduate school where they need pay no tuition and maybe get a stipend. Actually, when I was a STEM field grad student, I paid no tuition, and a prof told me that they had tuition scholarship going begging from having too few well qualified applicants. A way to get an Ivy League degree is to have good grades from a four year college, good SAT and GRE scores, maybe 1-3 years of relevant work experience, and then apply to graduate school in a STEM field department of an Ivy League university. In essentially this way, I got accepted to Cornell, Brown, Princeton, and more. Much of the emphasis on research was from the US Federal government for US national security and, then, bio-medical research (all those test tubes are expensive!). The national security interest was from The Bomb, the Cold War, the Space Race, and now whatever, e.g., information security. So the DoD, NSF, and NIH made the research universities an offer they couldn't refuse: Take the money or cease to be a leading research university. Well, that Federal money is no longer so easy to get, but the research universities still want to concentrate on research, and students still think that is where the prestige and/or good education is. Then with good reputations for research, the universities get highly ranked, and students want to go there for their four year ugrad education -- which then is darned expensive. E.g., on YouTube, look at the lectures of Prof Allan Adams on introductory quantum mechanics at MIT: It appears that this is the only course he was teaching that year; it was the last year he was teaching it; and otherwise he was doing research on string theory. So, add it up anyway you want, and a seat in that course is EXPENSIVE. But, don't really need a seat in that course. Instead can buy a stack of highly regarded introductory texts on quantum mechanics (used, save money), download lectures, from Adams and possibly elsewhere, and just STUDY. If take the course at MIT and do at all well in it, still have to STUDY. Sitting in the class is not much better than watching the videos; still what's important to learn the material is to study. But if want to rub shoulders with other good students and some big time profs, then, sure, would rather be at MIT. Still, if take a course in quantum mechanics at a four year college, maybe a course not quite as well informed as at MIT, then just work to get good grades, also learn quantum mechanics from the Adams videos and the best books, do well on the physics GRE, and apply to a high end grad program in physics. Then will still have a good shot at doing as well as the MIT grads in the grad program. Similarly for other STEM fields, at least pure and applied math and, from all I can see, also computer science. Net, it really is possible to get a really good education, with really good GRE scores, in a cheap four year ugrad program, and, then, be fully competitive in a high end grad program at one of the best research universities. So, if have to sit in your parent's basement for a year getting the best ugrad STEM field education before taking your GREs and going for an Ivy League, etc. grad education, then DO that, and save some really big bucks, maybe $40,000 a year for 4 years. NBA basketball has spectators who pay big bucks and makes a good spectator sport. A good ugrad STEM field education is not a spectator sport and is essentially the same as learning to play basketball well yourself. Can't get good at a STEM field just by watching; instead have to DO it. The best video lectures, the best books, and STUDY. You CAN do that. E.g., pay all you want to MIT and take the Adams course. He still makes a total mess out of the Fourier transform. But the Fourier transform is presented with overwhelming clarity, beauty, and precision in W. Rudin, Real and Complex Analysis. At some point quantum mechanics will want to use the spectral theorem of linear operators on a Hilbert space. Well, the spectral theorem is in a finite dimensional version, intended to be a gentle introduction to the full version, in Halmos, Finite Dimensional Vector Space. There is the full version in another book, short, by Halmos, in Introduction to Hilbert Space and the Theory of Spectral Multiplicity: Second Edition (Dover Books on Mathematics) for about $10. For more, there is W. Rudin, Functional Analysis, as usual for Rudin, with astounding precision. Will have a tough time at any university finding a physics prof who will do that well with either the Fourier transform or spectral theory. So, can get the Halmos book for about $10. For Rudin, Functional Analysis, a fast Google search showed a used copy for $12.10. Why spend $40,000 a year???? Indeed, soon in high end STEM field academics it's accepted that with no more than a little guidance and some good texts, any of the good students can learn whatever they need. Basically the students are expected to be able to learn this way for their research. Once are a research prof, definitely are expected to learn this way just to keep up in the field. Net, all those $40,000+ a year ugrad expenses are for what the heck????

binwiederhier 8y ago

Stupid, slightly off topic question: With costs this high, the huge financial burden and the unclear advantage one gets from a US university education, why do Americans not simply study abroad, say in Germany, where University is free?

IloveHN84 8y ago
Oh some do that already

sytelus 8y ago

TLDR; Most of the cost can be traced back to staff, specifically non-teaching staff. With entire range of sport coaches to councelers on campus, things become expensive. Also, US has 4 different types of universities: public, private non-profit, for-profit, community schools. If you only take public universities in to account, US education system is actually more affordable than France or Canada. So there is huge variance and outliers which throws of the average.