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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 wha

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
      It's about what you'd pay for a studio in SF of similar size with the kitchen and bathroom taking up some of that space. Of course, the commute to UC Davis campus would be longer from SF.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        >Of course, the commute to UC Davis campus would be longer from SF. Considering UC Davis is bear Sacramento, that’s an understatement.
xienze 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 other kicker is that they bake BIG subsidies for low-income students into tuition, which I found rather counter-intuitive. We're gonna raise tuition... to help students who can't afford tuition... pay for tuition that they can't afford... because we keep raising tuition to help students who can't afford tuition. As bizarre as it sounds, I think if you stripped subsidies and the effect of near-universal availability of student loans out of the equation tuition (at least for state schools) would be downright reasonable. It certainly was when I was in school around the turn of the century. I was paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $2-3K per sememster (increasing over time, naturally) to go to a well-regarded state university. Now I see it's about 3x that. Yeesh.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Yes, universities are subject to the usual market incentives like everything else. If the market will bear $2000/semester and they can sustainably offer their service at that rate, they will. If students have guaranteed access to $20,000/semester in loans, then they know the market will bear $22,000/semester and that’s what they’ll charge.
- jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
  > As bizarre as it sounds, I think if you stripped subsidies and the effect of near-universal availability of student loans out of the equation But the lefties will cry "You're discriminating and making it harder for poor people to get an education". So it will never happen.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Or, we can go the tried-and-true European route of making higher education free instead of all this stupid experimentation for the sake of a 'free market' which results in disaster for some of our most vulnerable citizens.
    - 8y ago
ergothus 8y ago
Id' be careful in assuming meals haven't changed in the last decade. Mass-food options aren't great, but on other campuses I've visited I've been jealous enough to wish I was eating there semi-regularly.
- bytematic 8y ago
  Money spent on apartment style living and chefs are targeting certain demographics of students (rich patents) and they obviously aren't spending that money on helping students of other demographics (poor, underprivileged)
- danaris 8y ago
  We had Sodexo at the small college I work at until a couple of years ago. They're not good.
- quiq 8y ago
  I worked at a dining hall at a state university all 4 years, just graduated this spring. Some food was really good, some was mediocre, never inedible. If the hot line didn't have anything good there were always well stocked sandwich/salad bars and flat top grills open to students. I definitely ate better then than I do now. As far as pricing went, it worked out to about $9/meal. Kind of high, but also unlimited spinach/quinoa/berries/fruits/yogurts vs. burgers and panda express. I heard they nerfed some of the benefits, but as a "student supervisor" I got $9/hr and 15 meals/week for working 15 hours/week.
phil248 8y ago
Even if you apply 50% of that cost towards food, that's still around $830/mo rent for a shared room in Davis, California. You could find better deals in nice parts of San Francisco or Manhattan.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > You could find better deals in nice parts of San Francisco or Manhattan. It's about the same price as a median studio in SF,($2490 vs. $2461), but the SF studio is about the same size without the kind of shared kitchen, restroom, and living spaces outside the unit that are included, and without the convenience to the core campus. You can save rent by living off campis instead of on campus—in fact, you'll be forced to other than your first year by the woefully inadequate supply of on campus housing. On campus housing is a guaranteed-but-premium option provided for first year freshman and transfers, and which may be available to other students subject to availability, not a baseline requirement.
  - floren 8y ago
    On-campus housing is also a known quantity with an expected 9-month "lease" cycle. You can save money off-campus, but you have to deal with apartments of uncertain quality and landlords who REALLY want a 1-year lease.
patrickthebold 8y ago
Students need to decide if a college degree is worth taking on a massive amount of debt. Either we have lots of young people making bad decisions, or a college degree is incredibly valuable. It's not like the terms of student loans are exceptionally great for the students.
- colonelpopcorn 8y ago
  I managed to get through college (WGU) without any debt. Looking at the amount of debt that my peers have taken on, however, has made me reconsider the wisdom of my decision. It's likely that political campaigns in the next few years will promise some form of student debt relief. Whether delivery of those promises is possible or not remains to be seen.
  - abathur 8y ago
    I suppose the grass is always greener, but I wouldn't reconsider the wisdom of your decision. I took the other path, and am left trying to throw off the burden while I can still take youthful risks, and carpe the damn diem. The window is closing fast on me. If I had enough in hand to pay off my loans, there's no way I'd elect to waste even more of my life waiting to see if some currently unimaginable fit of political productivity might let me off the hook.
- leesec 8y ago
  Or the kids don't fully understand the decisions since they're usually 17-19, have very little real world experience, and college has been described to them as the main path to go down from a young age.
- overeater 8y ago
  We need to stop pretending young people are complete gullible idiots who don't read anything on the internet or listen to advice from their parents and other adults. There's a simpler explanation and we already know it. Going to college and getting an education (and especially a good university) makes you so much more money in the future, that it's worth paying a lot. Prices could go to $500K and it'd be worth it. Everyone knows this implicitly. That's why immigrant parents nail their kids so hard on grades and to get into a good school. Is it because they want their kids to get a bunch of debt and become unemployed? Come on. You are way way more likely to get a job with benefits, to spend your life doing something more meaningful (however you want to define it). It's only us who already went to college, got good careers, who are now saying "well college makes you end up in debt, jobless, with a worthless degree. go into the trades. work for the post office." Why don't more people on Hacker News go into trades? Do some unpleasant, strenuous work in dangerous conditions, for about 10 years hustling day and night before your body gives out for $50K/year? Everyone actually doing a trade is encouraging their kids to go to college. This really isn't that complicated, and I think most people here are overthinking things. A college degree GREATLY greatly increases the chance you're going to have a more fulfilling career easily that makes you back all the tuition money and opportunity costs, and more.
oDot 8y ago
As Peter Schiff put it (skip to 11:57): https://youtu.be/UGL-Ex1CD1c?t=11m57s https://youtu.be/UGL-Ex1CD1c?t=11m57s
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
blairbeckwith 8y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't think this is that bad? Living on campus is a privilege, not a right. Students probably can live off-campus for less, but paying $1800/month (guessing that "a year" is ~8 months) for accommodation + food... Really doesn't seem that bad. It's certainly a premium, but it's an entirely optional one and doesn't seem like an extreme one. Add on administration overhead for dorms, etc. Proximity to classes, extra-curricular access, living with your peers... If you're going to move out of your parents' house, $15k per year doesn't sound that bad.
- bb2018 8y ago
  I think you are right but when combined with the loan issue commented above it adds to the cost. If students had the choice between dorms and living at home with 15 extra k many would choose to live at home. However, because it is part of the student loan the 15k is not really seen and no one is trying to negotiate lower costs.
- acdanger 8y ago
  At least at my college, living on campus was required for first-year students.
  - blairbeckwith 8y ago
    I've definitely heard of that, and I don't think it's a terrible idea. I didn't finish college, but looking back I do wish that I had lived on campus for my first year. It always felt like I didn't get the "true" college life experience not living on campus. As for the requirement piece, it definitely sucks if it's not an expense you can take on without debt and there's no other options in the area. If there are other options, though, then people who can't or won't pay that can just go somewhere else. School's have worse requirements (BYU comes to mind) that people can opt out of by choosing to go somewhere else.
- 50 8y ago
  I also think it's a good trade-off. Students should be wary though, no one wants to be stuck in a minimum wage job after graduation with loans. I also would add that students ought to take advantage of the resources available - meaning, don't just go to class, get food, and back to your dorm room throughout the school year, but rather participate and get involved: join clubs, develop relationships, teacher assist, etc.
armenarmen 8y ago
Exactly. Access to cheap debt will always drive up prices. Lower the interest rates for anything (houses pre recession) and prices skyrocket.
- devoply 8y ago
  It's not just access to debt. It's access to debt that can't be discharged via bankruptcy. Do that and watch all excess debt disappear.
- kfoley 8y ago
  It's not even necessarily cheap debt. A lot of my undergraduate loans were at rates of 6.8% which I consider somewhat high. The problem is it's easily accessible debt to people who have no concept of what tens of thousands of dollars is really worth. You see the amount you're borrowing on the form and it's really nothing more than a number.
  - mbostleman 8y ago
    Exactly. Ask high school graduates and the vast majority of their parents to explain the cost of capital and show the projected return on the college tuition (as well as the 4 years of lost opportunity not participating in the market) and you just get blank stares. They're way too focused on the social rituals of move in day and fraternity/sorority rush.
    - RandomInteger4 8y ago
      Being shown the projected return on the degree is exactly why students take on debt, because we were given assurances that the job market for this or that degree is great along with indicators of starting salaries that seem to tell you "You can afford to go into debt for this or that, because the job you'll have" (haha, good one!) "right after college will make it possible to pay off."
  - mrep 8y ago
    Totally, I didn't have to pay for college and since you cannot write off school debt, I thought they would at least have decent interest rates since it is pretty much guaranteed unless the die. As I found out from my girlfriend who has them, they are ridiculously high. Some of her undergrad ones are at least ok at like 4-5% but almost all the ones she is getting for grad school are like 6-8%.
sli 8y ago
I live in a small city (~106k people) and the nearest university has quadruple occupancy dorms, with no kitchens, that cost $1200/mo. Apartments in this city are still (barely) under $1000/mo, except the university is in about as remote of a location as you can get in this city. An expensive Sodexo meal plan is required by the school if you live in the dorms.
- notyourday 8y ago
  Oh and in order to avoid competing with the landlords who would rent apartments for cheaper universities started to mandate that freshmen and sophomores must live on campus.
squozzer 8y ago
Essentially, the loans act as subsidies for colleges. For the student, it's a different story. And as with medical care, the response to price increases has been to shovel more money. >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,” Let me rephrase - There is no mechanism of any kind to control price increases.
- prostoalex 8y ago
  Not that it’s that prevalent but lack of demand serves as a kind of price constraint https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-college-closures-has-some-seeing-long-predicted-consolidation-taking https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-...
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  There was before the government got its hands in it. Before guaranteed loans students had to be verified based off their merritt to get a loan. Lenders took a real risk and had incentives in the person being successful so they would have hopes of the loan being paid back. This was near perfect as schools could not not charge more than lenders would risk. Thes solution in this case is to remove the government guarantee, and let the free market work.
  - kingaillas 8y ago
    Another solution would be to let students discharge their debit via bankruptcy. Surely you wouldn't want that terrible government distortion to the free market remain in place? This system is also near perfect as lenders would evaluate their risk and have incentives in the person being successful. This works very well, as we saw from how mortgage lenders and credit rating agencies worked 10 years ago. >let the free market work. Education (and healthcare for that matter) are NOT free markets. Free markets don't guarantee every buyer gets matched to a seller, in which case that buyer does without. Which is not acceptable for education or healthcare. Maybe that's fine in some circles but a modern wealthy superpower should be able to do better than throw some percentage of its own citizens in the trash because they can't afford education. Also, way back when college was "affordable", states actually funded higher education through taxes.
mbostleman 8y ago
The removal of normal economics is definitely part of it. The other part of it is general cultural assumption that if you don't have at least 4 more years after high school you will be destined for a 3rd world standard of living. Forget participating in the economy on your own and creating value - you have to work for someone else and to do that at a level everyone wants, you have to have to have a 4 year degree. I don't know who came up with that, but it's a brilliant benefit for colleges.
- mcguire 8y ago
  Roughly speaking, you will. https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/mobile/education-pays.htm https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/mobil...
frebord 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.” Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our society (competition). What happens when the government tries to provide for us: they gaurantee home loans: Financial crisis, they gaurantee drug costs: Skyrocketing drug costs, they gaurantee your student loan: Skyrocketing cost of school By it's nature, anything the government subsidizes is going to be taken advantage of. You either have to take full central control (lets not go there) or let the free market actually work. You can't layer the two.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  The free market does not work in all situations. There's a reason why our healthcare is an absolute disaster compared to any other first world country, why our college is far more expensive, why our drugs cost more etc And it ain't because of cost control. Every time we loosen the reins a bit and let the 'free market' take the wheels, we see things get a lot worse for Americans as a whole. Especially when you have giant companies controlling the market entirely, like with ISPs.
  - bhupy 8y ago
    Healthcare in America is one of the least free markets in the country. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17629526/mri-cost-certificate-of-need-north-carolina-lawsuit https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17629526/m...
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      I don't see a statistic or actual citation there other than an issue with potentially out of date laws. How are you quantifying American Healthcare as being one of the least free markets? And how does it compare to other countries? I don't see anyone ever actually quantify how 'free' a market is; people only ever argue that if a market is not working therefore it's not free enough, which means we must make it free. At what point are we going to stop and realize sometimes it just doesn't work? Especially for issues that result in the death of Americans?
smokey_the_bear 8y ago
I don't know about UC Davis, but we just went to family camp at UC Santa Barbara for a week, and the food was fantastic.
paulddraper 8y ago
> the main driver is the availability of student loans 100% this. If you want to have an affordable college education, you can have one. --- 1. I'm from Florida and the best school in the state is (arguably) the University of Florida. In-state tuition is $3,191 per semester, so $25k for four years. And that's the amount if your GPA/SAT/ACT doesn't qualify for the relatively easy 75% Bright Futures state scholarships or more-difficult-but-still-common 100% scholarships. 2. I went to Brigham Young University (private school) in Utah which is $5,620 per semester, so $45k for four years. And that's assuming your GPA/SAT/ACT doesn't qualify for the easy 50% scholarships or the hard 100% scholarship. Text book are pricey, but there are ways to avoid paying the bulk of the costs. E.g. rentals, buying used. UF's libraries have text books with 3hr checkout times. A three-month $10/hr 40hr/wk summer job is $5k pre-tax. A nine-month $10/hr 10hr/wk part-time job is another $4k. Plus, the IRS will give you $2.5k per year via the American Opportunity Credit. Naturally, there's also food, rent, and transportation, but those exist regardless of college attendance. (Though finding cheap shared living is far easier in college towns.) --- Coming out of a undergrad with $50k+ in student loans is not done because you have to. It is done because you choose to. Given the availability of student loans, lots of people choose to.
jayd16 8y ago
You act like that's a lot. The Davis dorms are on campus. You couldn't find an equivalent private space across the street for that price or else everyone would do it. This argument is really disingenuous. Edit: Also I believe Sodexo only runs things like the franchised Taco Bell and not dining commons but I don't know that for sure.
mirimir 8y ago
Yes, easy money is what allows institutions to raise prices so dramatically. But it's not just student living expenses that have ballooned. As the article notes, non-teaching staff (administrators, lawyers, marketers, etc) account for much of the price inflation.
tropo 8y ago
Sodexo, like Aramark, is whatever the facility owner wants it to be. I've seen everything from a dreadful chicken nuggets to wonderful slabs of cod and pork. The facility owner decides.
jandrese 8y ago
Assuming that you live on that for roughly 9 months that's $1,645/month. Assume 90 meals for the month and call the apartment $500/month ($1500 total for the 3 students, which seems to be about what an apartment runs in Davis) that's about $12.75/meal. That's a bit high for cafeteria food, but not outrageous. You could definitely save money by living off campus and cooking your own meals, but probably not as much as you would like. It also means you have a commute to campus, which is a drag.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  IFRC, not all colleges allow students to live off-campus unless they are local students. Some won't allow freshmen to have cars on campus either, depending on the rules.
bsder 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! And the fact that student loans aren't dischargeable via bankruptcy.
noonespecial 8y ago
There is still technically an upper limit to "whatever you want" and that is the lifetime expected value of the education to the student. We recently seem to have started bumping into it as more people ask (publicly) "is it worth it at all?". The direct consequence of the government guaranteeing the loan and making it undischargeable for life is to transfer the expected monetary value of the education away from the students and to the operators of colleges with a nice cut diverted to bankers along the way. The students are reduced to being sharecroppers of their own minds, spending a lifetime working the education that someone else owns.
tzs 8y ago
> I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans People always say that, but I have my doubts. I did some Googling to try to find costs for some well known schools over time and was only able to find historical tuition data for Stanford. Stanford's tuition has been increasing faster than inflation as far back as the data goes (1920), almost linearly on a log scale [1]. There doesn't seem to be any big change in growth starting when loans became readily available. [1] https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn
- briandear 8y ago
  https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff... Research would disagree. Student loans definitely have had an effect. That the Atlantic ignores that completely calls into question their potential bias. Student loans are a sacred cow for those on the left and center-left, so it isn’t surprising that the Atlantic ignores even a potential causal relationship in the story.
jimmaswell 8y ago
I personally loved the Sodexo food at my college. Maybe it varies regionally.
tmaly 8y ago
Back in the 1950s and 1960s you could get a decent middle class blue collar job with just a high school degree. About 20 years ago I had met a retired math professor that believed the cost of college went up as a result of the anti-war protests in the 1970s.

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
    It's about what you'd pay for a studio in SF of similar size with the kitchen and bathroom taking up some of that space. Of course, the commute to UC Davis campus would be longer from SF.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      >Of course, the commute to UC Davis campus would be longer from SF. Considering UC Davis is bear Sacramento, that’s an understatement.

xienze 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 other kicker is that they bake BIG subsidies for low-income students into tuition, which I found rather counter-intuitive. We're gonna raise tuition... to help students who can't afford tuition... pay for tuition that they can't afford... because we keep raising tuition to help students who can't afford tuition. As bizarre as it sounds, I think if you stripped subsidies and the effect of near-universal availability of student loans out of the equation tuition (at least for state schools) would be downright reasonable. It certainly was when I was in school around the turn of the century. I was paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $2-3K per sememster (increasing over time, naturally) to go to a well-regarded state university. Now I see it's about 3x that. Yeesh.

ryandrake 8y ago
Yes, universities are subject to the usual market incentives like everything else. If the market will bear $2000/semester and they can sustainably offer their service at that rate, they will. If students have guaranteed access to $20,000/semester in loans, then they know the market will bear $22,000/semester and that’s what they’ll charge.
jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
> As bizarre as it sounds, I think if you stripped subsidies and the effect of near-universal availability of student loans out of the equation But the lefties will cry "You're discriminating and making it harder for poor people to get an education". So it will never happen.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Or, we can go the tried-and-true European route of making higher education free instead of all this stupid experimentation for the sake of a 'free market' which results in disaster for some of our most vulnerable citizens.
  - 8y ago

ergothus 8y ago

Id' be careful in assuming meals haven't changed in the last decade. Mass-food options aren't great, but on other campuses I've visited I've been jealous enough to wish I was eating there semi-regularly.

bytematic 8y ago
Money spent on apartment style living and chefs are targeting certain demographics of students (rich patents) and they obviously aren't spending that money on helping students of other demographics (poor, underprivileged)
danaris 8y ago
We had Sodexo at the small college I work at until a couple of years ago. They're not good.
quiq 8y ago
I worked at a dining hall at a state university all 4 years, just graduated this spring. Some food was really good, some was mediocre, never inedible. If the hot line didn't have anything good there were always well stocked sandwich/salad bars and flat top grills open to students. I definitely ate better then than I do now. As far as pricing went, it worked out to about $9/meal. Kind of high, but also unlimited spinach/quinoa/berries/fruits/yogurts vs. burgers and panda express. I heard they nerfed some of the benefits, but as a "student supervisor" I got $9/hr and 15 meals/week for working 15 hours/week.

phil248 8y ago

Even if you apply 50% of that cost towards food, that's still around $830/mo rent for a shared room in Davis, California. You could find better deals in nice parts of San Francisco or Manhattan.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> You could find better deals in nice parts of San Francisco or Manhattan. It's about the same price as a median studio in SF,($2490 vs. $2461), but the SF studio is about the same size without the kind of shared kitchen, restroom, and living spaces outside the unit that are included, and without the convenience to the core campus. You can save rent by living off campis instead of on campus—in fact, you'll be forced to other than your first year by the woefully inadequate supply of on campus housing. On campus housing is a guaranteed-but-premium option provided for first year freshman and transfers, and which may be available to other students subject to availability, not a baseline requirement.
- floren 8y ago
  On-campus housing is also a known quantity with an expected 9-month "lease" cycle. You can save money off-campus, but you have to deal with apartments of uncertain quality and landlords who REALLY want a 1-year lease.

patrickthebold 8y ago

Students need to decide if a college degree is worth taking on a massive amount of debt. Either we have lots of young people making bad decisions, or a college degree is incredibly valuable. It's not like the terms of student loans are exceptionally great for the students.

colonelpopcorn 8y ago
I managed to get through college (WGU) without any debt. Looking at the amount of debt that my peers have taken on, however, has made me reconsider the wisdom of my decision. It's likely that political campaigns in the next few years will promise some form of student debt relief. Whether delivery of those promises is possible or not remains to be seen.
- abathur 8y ago
  I suppose the grass is always greener, but I wouldn't reconsider the wisdom of your decision. I took the other path, and am left trying to throw off the burden while I can still take youthful risks, and carpe the damn diem. The window is closing fast on me. If I had enough in hand to pay off my loans, there's no way I'd elect to waste even more of my life waiting to see if some currently unimaginable fit of political productivity might let me off the hook.
leesec 8y ago
Or the kids don't fully understand the decisions since they're usually 17-19, have very little real world experience, and college has been described to them as the main path to go down from a young age.
overeater 8y ago
We need to stop pretending young people are complete gullible idiots who don't read anything on the internet or listen to advice from their parents and other adults. There's a simpler explanation and we already know it. Going to college and getting an education (and especially a good university) makes you so much more money in the future, that it's worth paying a lot. Prices could go to $500K and it'd be worth it. Everyone knows this implicitly. That's why immigrant parents nail their kids so hard on grades and to get into a good school. Is it because they want their kids to get a bunch of debt and become unemployed? Come on. You are way way more likely to get a job with benefits, to spend your life doing something more meaningful (however you want to define it). It's only us who already went to college, got good careers, who are now saying "well college makes you end up in debt, jobless, with a worthless degree. go into the trades. work for the post office." Why don't more people on Hacker News go into trades? Do some unpleasant, strenuous work in dangerous conditions, for about 10 years hustling day and night before your body gives out for $50K/year? Everyone actually doing a trade is encouraging their kids to go to college. This really isn't that complicated, and I think most people here are overthinking things. A college degree GREATLY greatly increases the chance you're going to have a more fulfilling career easily that makes you back all the tuition money and opportunity costs, and more.

oDot 8y ago

As Peter Schiff put it (skip to 11:57): https://youtu.be/UGL-Ex1CD1c?t=11m57s https://youtu.be/UGL-Ex1CD1c?t=11m57s

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

blairbeckwith 8y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't think this is that bad? Living on campus is a privilege, not a right. Students probably can live off-campus for less, but paying $1800/month (guessing that "a year" is ~8 months) for accommodation + food... Really doesn't seem that bad. It's certainly a premium, but it's an entirely optional one and doesn't seem like an extreme one. Add on administration overhead for dorms, etc. Proximity to classes, extra-curricular access, living with your peers... If you're going to move out of your parents' house, $15k per year doesn't sound that bad.

bb2018 8y ago
I think you are right but when combined with the loan issue commented above it adds to the cost. If students had the choice between dorms and living at home with 15 extra k many would choose to live at home. However, because it is part of the student loan the 15k is not really seen and no one is trying to negotiate lower costs.
acdanger 8y ago
At least at my college, living on campus was required for first-year students.
- blairbeckwith 8y ago
  I've definitely heard of that, and I don't think it's a terrible idea. I didn't finish college, but looking back I do wish that I had lived on campus for my first year. It always felt like I didn't get the "true" college life experience not living on campus. As for the requirement piece, it definitely sucks if it's not an expense you can take on without debt and there's no other options in the area. If there are other options, though, then people who can't or won't pay that can just go somewhere else. School's have worse requirements (BYU comes to mind) that people can opt out of by choosing to go somewhere else.
50 8y ago
I also think it's a good trade-off. Students should be wary though, no one wants to be stuck in a minimum wage job after graduation with loans. I also would add that students ought to take advantage of the resources available - meaning, don't just go to class, get food, and back to your dorm room throughout the school year, but rather participate and get involved: join clubs, develop relationships, teacher assist, etc.

armenarmen 8y ago

Exactly. Access to cheap debt will always drive up prices. Lower the interest rates for anything (houses pre recession) and prices skyrocket.

devoply 8y ago
It's not just access to debt. It's access to debt that can't be discharged via bankruptcy. Do that and watch all excess debt disappear.
kfoley 8y ago
It's not even necessarily cheap debt. A lot of my undergraduate loans were at rates of 6.8% which I consider somewhat high. The problem is it's easily accessible debt to people who have no concept of what tens of thousands of dollars is really worth. You see the amount you're borrowing on the form and it's really nothing more than a number.
- mbostleman 8y ago
  Exactly. Ask high school graduates and the vast majority of their parents to explain the cost of capital and show the projected return on the college tuition (as well as the 4 years of lost opportunity not participating in the market) and you just get blank stares. They're way too focused on the social rituals of move in day and fraternity/sorority rush.
  - RandomInteger4 8y ago
    Being shown the projected return on the degree is exactly why students take on debt, because we were given assurances that the job market for this or that degree is great along with indicators of starting salaries that seem to tell you "You can afford to go into debt for this or that, because the job you'll have" (haha, good one!) "right after college will make it possible to pay off."
- mrep 8y ago
  Totally, I didn't have to pay for college and since you cannot write off school debt, I thought they would at least have decent interest rates since it is pretty much guaranteed unless the die. As I found out from my girlfriend who has them, they are ridiculously high. Some of her undergrad ones are at least ok at like 4-5% but almost all the ones she is getting for grad school are like 6-8%.

sli 8y ago

I live in a small city (~106k people) and the nearest university has quadruple occupancy dorms, with no kitchens, that cost $1200/mo. Apartments in this city are still (barely) under $1000/mo, except the university is in about as remote of a location as you can get in this city. An expensive Sodexo meal plan is required by the school if you live in the dorms.

notyourday 8y ago
Oh and in order to avoid competing with the landlords who would rent apartments for cheaper universities started to mandate that freshmen and sophomores must live on campus.

squozzer 8y ago

Essentially, the loans act as subsidies for colleges. For the student, it's a different story. And as with medical care, the response to price increases has been to shovel more money. >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,” Let me rephrase - There is no mechanism of any kind to control price increases.

prostoalex 8y ago
Not that it’s that prevalent but lack of demand serves as a kind of price constraint https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-college-closures-has-some-seeing-long-predicted-consolidation-taking https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-...
mbrumlow 8y ago
There was before the government got its hands in it. Before guaranteed loans students had to be verified based off their merritt to get a loan. Lenders took a real risk and had incentives in the person being successful so they would have hopes of the loan being paid back. This was near perfect as schools could not not charge more than lenders would risk. Thes solution in this case is to remove the government guarantee, and let the free market work.
- kingaillas 8y ago
  Another solution would be to let students discharge their debit via bankruptcy. Surely you wouldn't want that terrible government distortion to the free market remain in place? This system is also near perfect as lenders would evaluate their risk and have incentives in the person being successful. This works very well, as we saw from how mortgage lenders and credit rating agencies worked 10 years ago. >let the free market work. Education (and healthcare for that matter) are NOT free markets. Free markets don't guarantee every buyer gets matched to a seller, in which case that buyer does without. Which is not acceptable for education or healthcare. Maybe that's fine in some circles but a modern wealthy superpower should be able to do better than throw some percentage of its own citizens in the trash because they can't afford education. Also, way back when college was "affordable", states actually funded higher education through taxes.

mbostleman 8y ago

The removal of normal economics is definitely part of it. The other part of it is general cultural assumption that if you don't have at least 4 more years after high school you will be destined for a 3rd world standard of living. Forget participating in the economy on your own and creating value - you have to work for someone else and to do that at a level everyone wants, you have to have to have a 4 year degree. I don't know who came up with that, but it's a brilliant benefit for colleges.

mcguire 8y ago
Roughly speaking, you will. https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/mobile/education-pays.htm https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/mobil...

frebord 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.” Why do people always reach for central control, when we have the ultimate mechanism of price control as a core part of our society (competition). What happens when the government tries to provide for us: they gaurantee home loans: Financial crisis, they gaurantee drug costs: Skyrocketing drug costs, they gaurantee your student loan: Skyrocketing cost of school By it's nature, anything the government subsidizes is going to be taken advantage of. You either have to take full central control (lets not go there) or let the free market actually work. You can't layer the two.

fzeroracer 8y ago
The free market does not work in all situations. There's a reason why our healthcare is an absolute disaster compared to any other first world country, why our college is far more expensive, why our drugs cost more etc And it ain't because of cost control. Every time we loosen the reins a bit and let the 'free market' take the wheels, we see things get a lot worse for Americans as a whole. Especially when you have giant companies controlling the market entirely, like with ISPs.
- bhupy 8y ago
  Healthcare in America is one of the least free markets in the country. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17629526/mri-cost-certificate-of-need-north-carolina-lawsuit https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17629526/m...
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    I don't see a statistic or actual citation there other than an issue with potentially out of date laws. How are you quantifying American Healthcare as being one of the least free markets? And how does it compare to other countries? I don't see anyone ever actually quantify how 'free' a market is; people only ever argue that if a market is not working therefore it's not free enough, which means we must make it free. At what point are we going to stop and realize sometimes it just doesn't work? Especially for issues that result in the death of Americans?

smokey_the_bear 8y ago

I don't know about UC Davis, but we just went to family camp at UC Santa Barbara for a week, and the food was fantastic.

paulddraper 8y ago

> the main driver is the availability of student loans 100% this. If you want to have an affordable college education, you can have one. --- 1. I'm from Florida and the best school in the state is (arguably) the University of Florida. In-state tuition is $3,191 per semester, so $25k for four years. And that's the amount if your GPA/SAT/ACT doesn't qualify for the relatively easy 75% Bright Futures state scholarships or more-difficult-but-still-common 100% scholarships. 2. I went to Brigham Young University (private school) in Utah which is $5,620 per semester, so $45k for four years. And that's assuming your GPA/SAT/ACT doesn't qualify for the easy 50% scholarships or the hard 100% scholarship. Text book are pricey, but there are ways to avoid paying the bulk of the costs. E.g. rentals, buying used. UF's libraries have text books with 3hr checkout times. A three-month $10/hr 40hr/wk summer job is $5k pre-tax. A nine-month $10/hr 10hr/wk part-time job is another $4k. Plus, the IRS will give you $2.5k per year via the American Opportunity Credit. Naturally, there's also food, rent, and transportation, but those exist regardless of college attendance. (Though finding cheap shared living is far easier in college towns.) --- Coming out of a undergrad with $50k+ in student loans is not done because you have to. It is done because you choose to. Given the availability of student loans, lots of people choose to.

jayd16 8y ago

You act like that's a lot. The Davis dorms are on campus. You couldn't find an equivalent private space across the street for that price or else everyone would do it. This argument is really disingenuous. Edit: Also I believe Sodexo only runs things like the franchised Taco Bell and not dining commons but I don't know that for sure.

mirimir 8y ago

Yes, easy money is what allows institutions to raise prices so dramatically. But it's not just student living expenses that have ballooned. As the article notes, non-teaching staff (administrators, lawyers, marketers, etc) account for much of the price inflation.

tropo 8y ago

Sodexo, like Aramark, is whatever the facility owner wants it to be. I've seen everything from a dreadful chicken nuggets to wonderful slabs of cod and pork. The facility owner decides.

jandrese 8y ago

Assuming that you live on that for roughly 9 months that's $1,645/month. Assume 90 meals for the month and call the apartment $500/month ($1500 total for the 3 students, which seems to be about what an apartment runs in Davis) that's about $12.75/meal. That's a bit high for cafeteria food, but not outrageous. You could definitely save money by living off campus and cooking your own meals, but probably not as much as you would like. It also means you have a commute to campus, which is a drag.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
IFRC, not all colleges allow students to live off-campus unless they are local students. Some won't allow freshmen to have cars on campus either, depending on the rules.

bsder 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! And the fact that student loans aren't dischargeable via bankruptcy.

noonespecial 8y ago

There is still technically an upper limit to "whatever you want" and that is the lifetime expected value of the education to the student. We recently seem to have started bumping into it as more people ask (publicly) "is it worth it at all?". The direct consequence of the government guaranteeing the loan and making it undischargeable for life is to transfer the expected monetary value of the education away from the students and to the operators of colleges with a nice cut diverted to bankers along the way. The students are reduced to being sharecroppers of their own minds, spending a lifetime working the education that someone else owns.

tzs 8y ago

> I didn't see this discussed in the article, but IMO the main driver is the availability of student loans People always say that, but I have my doubts. I did some Googling to try to find costs for some well known schools over time and was only able to find historical tuition data for Stanford. Stanford's tuition has been increasing faster than inflation as far back as the data goes (1920), almost linearly on a log scale [1]. There doesn't seem to be any big change in growth starting when loans became readily available. [1] https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn

briandear 8y ago
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff... Research would disagree. Student loans definitely have had an effect. That the Atlantic ignores that completely calls into question their potential bias. Student loans are a sacred cow for those on the left and center-left, so it isn’t surprising that the Atlantic ignores even a potential causal relationship in the story.

jimmaswell 8y ago

I personally loved the Sodexo food at my college. Maybe it varies regionally.

tmaly 8y ago

Back in the 1950s and 1960s you could get a decent middle class blue collar job with just a high school degree. About 20 years ago I had met a retired math professor that believed the cost of college went up as a result of the anti-war protests in the 1970s.