18 ms·

Tuition at the University of California (1970)

47 points by eaguyhn 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago
It's amusing to read this now when tuitions for the UCs have grown by a factor of a hundred.
- tombert 7y ago
  I have to wonder...where does this money go? Unless all my professor friends are lying to me, it's not going to the professors' salaries. When I went to school (Florida State University about ten years ago), the dorm was absolutely dreadful, but that wasn't even part of the regular tuition, so it wasn't going to increasing student living conditions.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Administrative bloat (think about all the jobs that have dedicated people that used to just be the side job of a particular professor) and all the BS you piss money away on when budgets are dependent on what you used last year (which many university department budgets are).
    - commandlinefan 7y ago
      2.3MM on diversity employee salaries: https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11852 https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11852
  - idoh 7y ago
    For the UC system, here's a tool that gives a breakdown: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/revenue-and-expense-data https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/revenue-an...
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    They (the universities) are constantly begging for more money, too, in the form of grants. According to my professors in grad school, tuition revenue is a “drop in the bucket”.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > According to my professors in grad school I'd suggest talking to your professors in undergrad school :)
    - larnmar 7y ago
      Oh yes, certainly no University would dream of actually paying for the research that goes on within their walls. Even better, if a professor actually gets a grant, the university will “tax” the grant at around 50% to pay for the overhead of providing office space for your post docs.
  - travisoneill1 7y ago
    Useless administrators. There has somehow been an increase in administrators over a time period when the introduction of computers should have cut the number drastically. > At public research institutions specifically, there has been a particularly marked rise in the number administrators. In 1990, there were approximately twice as many full-time faculty at public research institutions as administrators. In 2012, the two groups were nearly equal. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureaucrats-and-buildings-the-case-for-why-college-is-so-expensive/#4050fcfc456a https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureau...
    - Retric 7y ago
      The data given does not support their premise. “Three decades later... administrative spending made up 24% of schools’ total expenditures” Even if admin costs where zero in the 1980’s they went up far more than 24% over the next 30 years. What happened is fewer classes are taught by full time professors which was a minor cost savings. One of these costs was a massive influx of new students required a huge increase in facilities. Another was the need for websites, computers, and networking infrastructure to keep up with the competition. Collages did not benefit from the computer revolution because few things could be automated and they suddenly needed websites, and networking in the student dorms etc.
      - azinman2 7y ago
        There's no way that computers (which have only gotten cheaper over time) and networking is why it costs nearly 50k/year to go to a private university. Facilities also get paid off and aren't being rebuilt every single year. They also often are funded through alumni contributions (which is why buildings are named).
        Retric 7y ago
        Individual computers got cheaper but the numbers increased dramatically. Few collages had high speed networking to every dorm in 1980. WiFi is a similar new expense that they suddenly ‘needed’ to pay for and staff people to maintain. My point was not that computers where the only issue just that they where a specific example that grew much faster than inflation. IT was really expensive. Many schools lack donors and actually needed to pay for new facilities. 12.1m students in 1980 vs 21.2m in 2010 means quite a few new buildings across the full range of collages.
  - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
    Administrators. Not to one super administrator that's soaking up all the money, but to an array of administrators in various, emerging roles. Anecdotal: When I went to undergrad, all of the student advisors were tenured faculty members doing it as part of their job responsibilities. When I went to grad school a few years later, the advisors were all full-time advisors, and all the departments had instructional designers to consult when creating courses.
    - impendia 7y ago
      I am curious -- were the departments, in fact, consulting the instructional designers? And, if yes, was it by choice?
      - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
        As a TA, I was only privy to certain discussions. There was talk of the instructional designer, mostly in the sense of "Maybe we should get the instructional designer involved!", but I never encountered the instructional designer in the wild.
    - jimbokun 7y ago
      If I were a student, I would prefer to be advised by an actual faculty member, than by a "full-time adviser" divorced from everyday instruction responsibilities.
      - kyleamazza 7y ago
        Not that I disagree, but I had the opportunity to have both cases, each at separate schools. Having a (capable) full-time adviser meant that they were well-versed in the requirements of the program, as well as how to navigate administrative side of things, such as adding classes even if you don't fill the prereqs, etc. With a faculty member, I found that they were more focused on their actual faculty/teaching duties, and had trouble with the more administrative side of things. This is also probably dependent on the quality of the school
  - ludwigschubert 7y ago
    The UC budget 2019–20 suggests: 68% staff + faculty salaries and benefits 15% financial aid 17% equipment From page 7, https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20-budget-summary.pdf#page=7 https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20... If someone knows a more detailed breakdown of the budget, I’d be curious! :)
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    There are about twice as many teachers per student as there used to be: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bloat-does-not-explain-the-rising-cost-of-education.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...
    - cafard 7y ago
      The chart for teachers shows elementary and secondary schools. I wouldn't be surprised to see that the proportion of teachers in colleges has increased, but I'd need to know how much of the increase comes from adjuncts teaching a class or two per semester. Let me add that there were some very large class sizes during the peak of the baby boom. I don't think that I ever had fewer the fifty kids in my classes until I transferred out of parochial school in sixth grade. [edit: teach -> teaching]
  - yardie 7y ago
    Mortgages and more administration. I watched my school build new building after new building (New Residence Hall, New Chemistry Hall, New Engineering Building, etc.) and then wait for a benefactor to donate enough to name the building after them. These donations never approached the costs of maintaining and furnishing the new building. Just like lots of other things in America larger rooms were in demand as well. An old dorm with 200sqft dorm rooms housing 2 students was knocked down for dorms with 1000sqft suites housing 4 students.
    - vkou 7y ago
      And then, to pay for rebuilding the dorms, undergrads are forced[1] to live in them, even if they could find cheaper housing somewhere else. [1] The people justifying these requirements, of course, spend much time hand-wringing about how important it is for students to live in their expensive dorms.
  - kart23 7y ago
    https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20-budget-summary.pdf https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20... I think UC is first and foremost a research institution. A lot of these professors are barely involved in undergraduate teaching, and the massive staff employee count I think is a lot of people related to research and assisting these researchers. That's why the undergraduate student experience is going down at UCs, with worse class sizes, and less engagement.
    - eslaught 7y ago
      Research is funded by research grants from government organizations or private companies. Administrators (those involved in enabling research) are funded by "overheads" i.e. a percentage of money taken off the top of grants before any of it is allowed to be used for actual research. No tuition money goes into this. So I'd expect the tuition increase to be associated with teaching staff or teaching administrators (either dedicated to this full time or else as a percentage of their time), not with research (which is basically self-sustaining anyway). In fact, probably one of the motivations for increasing research activities is that it naturally brings in money and that you don't need to increase tuition to do it. I do agree that research professors don't necessarily make the best teaching professors, but that's an entirely separate issue from the financial one.
      - kart23 7y ago
        Oh. Thanks for clearing that up. I go to a UC, so I'm pretty interested in where all our money is going. It just seems like so much goes in, but the ROI isn't exactly there for a lot of students.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    I'm betting people will say administration, but I don't think even the swarms of useless educrats can account for the entire difference. Other possibilities: Direct funding from states to public universities has decreased. Some portion of tuition increase has gone to replace the revenue lost from reduction in subsidies. Capital costs from new campus buildings have gone up, as universities add expensive features that are not strictly required for education, such as apartment-style dormitories, or luxurious fitness centers for faculty and students. The university's money is usually fungible, so housing and recreation fees may be higher for students using those buildings than for the palmetto-bug dorms and century-old fieldhouse, yet still subsidized out of tuition revenue. The aforementioned swarms of useless educrats may be corrupt, diverting university revenues to their own pockets via schemes that require their academic credentials or administrative authority. Universities may be underwriting student loan debt, trading cash now for future income streams from future repayment. In that case, the money isn't even there yet, and the students first have to graduate and start earning before there is any of that money to spend. I know that Indiana University dumped a lot of money into its "18/20" retirement plan, to attract better quality professors. It sounds very expensive. At some point, they realized it would bankrupt the university, and stopped offering it, but current students will still be paying for it until all those old professors that got it die off. So, maybe tuition increases are going to retired employees. Last, we have accounting fictions. Universities charge $X on paper, to receive or maximize some third-party benefit, then rebate $Y to the student in the form of grants or scholarships. The money was never there, except on paper.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dhimes 7y ago
    Go 'Noles! 80% of a college's costs are personnel. Not only are there a heckuva lot more services being offered, and the services offered are being offered more broadly, but colleges are also trying to be all things. A college that was a famous teacher's college in the 1960s now wants to have top tier science departments as well. I think when boomers like me came along the number of people going to college increased so dramatically (because a. there were so many of us and b. more people were seeing a college education as valuable) that colleges expanded. It's interesting to consider how college costs have increased compared to other indexes: US inflation : ~300% https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980 US college costs: ~300% https://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tui.. https://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tui.... US GDP per capita: ~500% https://mgmresearch.com/us-gdp-data-and-charts-1980-2020/ https://mgmresearch.com/us-gdp-data-and-charts-1980-2020/ Keep in mind that those college and gdp graphs have inflation removed.
lordleft 7y ago
There has to be some upper bound to the cost of education, right? Or will I have to put aside a few million to send my kids to college twenty years from now?
- koolba 7y ago
  As long as the government continues to give people loans (ie demand side) rather than directly provide a competitor to schools (ie supply side), the price will continue to grow.
  - tzs 7y ago
    I haven't been able to find much online historical tuition data, but the little I have found (about 100 years of Stanford tuition) shows that it was increasing before there were government loans at about the same rate it increased after government loans. This makes me doubt the theory that government loans are behind high tuition.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      To add to that: many other countries subsidize or offer student loan and grant programs (including Canada) and domestic costs have not risen to the same extent. A loose example: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/13/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-go-to-college-in-the-us-compared-to-other-countries.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/13/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-g... I think there are just too many counterpoints for the student loan thing to be accurate outside of a vacuum.
    - wtvanhest 7y ago
      Stanford is not a good proxy bc the students were well funded before the loans poured fuel on the fire. Loans help increase the cost of schools with lower social economic status (middle class) schools like state schools. Loans allowed many schools to charge private costs for public education. Professor salaried have risen, cost structures are too high to support unloaned demand.
      - 7y ago
cleandreams 7y ago
Another great cost saving idea of Ronald Reagan was the closing of all the mental hospitals, supposedly to be replaced by community clinics (which never happened). The unrolling disaster of homeless with severe mental illness continues, on and on and on. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. What a legacy.
- larnmar 7y ago
  a) off topic, and (b) representative of a global trend that was going on at the time, led by the psychiatric profession, rather than being any kind of personal whim of who your president happened to be at the time. We in Australia closed our mental asylums at the same time, with the same effect. Blame Jack Nicholson if you want to blame someone; or rather the rash of 1970s “aren’t asylums terrible?” asylum fiction.
  - retrac 7y ago
    Asylums were terrible. It's a dynamic that's extremely prone to abuse. I do think some people should probably be institutionalized involuntarily, but I can see the argument where, even as a mentally ill homeless person, you at least still have the freedom to physically escape someone who is abusing you. That's not something to be deprived lightly. And yes, it was very much a global phenomenon, largely predating the 1980s.
- astura 7y ago
  Reagan did not personally come up with the idea of deinstitutionalisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation
ltbarcly3 7y ago
The increasing tuition of most college is the result of intentional fraud. When the US Government computes your 'financial need', the two primary inputs are your parents' income and the cost of tuition. If your parents' income is low enough, then the government will give you a grant based on the cost of tuition. Schools that have low tuition get a smaller check from the government for the same student than schools that have high tuition. As a result, schools push tuition higher and higher, then give grants to students to cover the high costs that remain after the government grant. For example, say school A charges $5000 per year. A low-income student is accepted and maxes out their government grants, the school can get a check for up to $5000. School B charges $50,000 per year. For that same student, they can get $23k per year (or something like that), plus the student now qualifies for subsidized loans to pay for room and board. The school can then give that student a scholarship for the remaining $27k. For this student, the higher tuition school is much cheaper. This isn't a theoretical exercise, this is exactly what Universities have been doing for over 20 years.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
alexhutcheson 7y ago
In-state tuition at the UC schools is now moderately above the median tuition rates at comparable flagship state universities. However, it's worth pointing out that the California State University system has done an amazing job keeping tuition and fees low[1]. You can get a nationally ranked education from San Diego State, Fresno State, Cal Poly Pomona, etc. for less than $7,600/year in tuition and fees. This is obviously still a lot of money, but it's far cheaper than comparable options in most other states. Florida, North Carolina, New Mexico, Montana, and Wyoming are the only other states that have similar options at that price. [1] https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Documents/19-20-coa.pdf https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Document...
hackeraccount 7y ago
I think University prices are like some weird mirror of airline ticket prices. Time was that airlines sold tickets at a premium but the service was great. Now you can get tickets at incredibly low prices but the service is at cattle car level. People complain but at a fundemental level - that's what they want. The airlines say "If you want 60's service then fly first class and pay 60's level prices" And the response of virtually everyone is - No, thank you, I just want to get to wherever I'm going as cheaply as humanly possible. It seems like the same thing in reverse happened with University. Have you seen or read about dorms in the 50's? Or all the ancillary things that went with going to a university? It was all crap. And it's like everyone went "I would like a very nice University experience. I want a nice dorm. I want a beautiful campus. I want a sports team that wins and gym to go to. I want administrators that will hold my hand." And the Universties resonse was "You go it. If you want the cheap version go to community college" Now by bent I'm classically liberal. If you asked me why prices have gone up I'd tell you a tale of government action. Make student loans widly available. Making student debt non-dischargable in bankruptcy. You may not but I find the argument plausible. What if that's not a root cause though? Because truelly none of that stuff happens by chance. It's everyone who votes putting people in government. It's everyone who votes saying- "These are my priorities" and then the people in government saying "this is how we're going to meet those priorities" and both walking away happy to some greater or lesser degree. All of which indicates to me that free University for all isn't going to cut it. If it's publically financed it won't in the long run be able to afford what people seem to want to get out of University. If that's true then they'll all run to a non-free private system and get the politicians to help them to pay for it.

47 points by eaguyhn 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

It's amusing to read this now when tuitions for the UCs have grown by a factor of a hundred.

tombert 7y ago
I have to wonder...where does this money go? Unless all my professor friends are lying to me, it's not going to the professors' salaries. When I went to school (Florida State University about ten years ago), the dorm was absolutely dreadful, but that wasn't even part of the regular tuition, so it wasn't going to increasing student living conditions.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Administrative bloat (think about all the jobs that have dedicated people that used to just be the side job of a particular professor) and all the BS you piss money away on when budgets are dependent on what you used last year (which many university department budgets are).
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    2.3MM on diversity employee salaries: https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11852 https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11852
- idoh 7y ago
  For the UC system, here's a tool that gives a breakdown: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/revenue-and-expense-data https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/revenue-an...
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  They (the universities) are constantly begging for more money, too, in the form of grants. According to my professors in grad school, tuition revenue is a “drop in the bucket”.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > According to my professors in grad school I'd suggest talking to your professors in undergrad school :)
  - larnmar 7y ago
    Oh yes, certainly no University would dream of actually paying for the research that goes on within their walls. Even better, if a professor actually gets a grant, the university will “tax” the grant at around 50% to pay for the overhead of providing office space for your post docs.
- travisoneill1 7y ago
  Useless administrators. There has somehow been an increase in administrators over a time period when the introduction of computers should have cut the number drastically. > At public research institutions specifically, there has been a particularly marked rise in the number administrators. In 1990, there were approximately twice as many full-time faculty at public research institutions as administrators. In 2012, the two groups were nearly equal. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureaucrats-and-buildings-the-case-for-why-college-is-so-expensive/#4050fcfc456a https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureau...
  - Retric 7y ago
    The data given does not support their premise. “Three decades later... administrative spending made up 24% of schools’ total expenditures” Even if admin costs where zero in the 1980’s they went up far more than 24% over the next 30 years. What happened is fewer classes are taught by full time professors which was a minor cost savings. One of these costs was a massive influx of new students required a huge increase in facilities. Another was the need for websites, computers, and networking infrastructure to keep up with the competition. Collages did not benefit from the computer revolution because few things could be automated and they suddenly needed websites, and networking in the student dorms etc.
    - azinman2 7y ago
      There's no way that computers (which have only gotten cheaper over time) and networking is why it costs nearly 50k/year to go to a private university. Facilities also get paid off and aren't being rebuilt every single year. They also often are funded through alumni contributions (which is why buildings are named).
      - Retric 7y ago
        Individual computers got cheaper but the numbers increased dramatically. Few collages had high speed networking to every dorm in 1980. WiFi is a similar new expense that they suddenly ‘needed’ to pay for and staff people to maintain. My point was not that computers where the only issue just that they where a specific example that grew much faster than inflation. IT was really expensive. Many schools lack donors and actually needed to pay for new facilities. 12.1m students in 1980 vs 21.2m in 2010 means quite a few new buildings across the full range of collages.
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  Administrators. Not to one super administrator that's soaking up all the money, but to an array of administrators in various, emerging roles. Anecdotal: When I went to undergrad, all of the student advisors were tenured faculty members doing it as part of their job responsibilities. When I went to grad school a few years later, the advisors were all full-time advisors, and all the departments had instructional designers to consult when creating courses.
  - impendia 7y ago
    I am curious -- were the departments, in fact, consulting the instructional designers? And, if yes, was it by choice?
    - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
      As a TA, I was only privy to certain discussions. There was talk of the instructional designer, mostly in the sense of "Maybe we should get the instructional designer involved!", but I never encountered the instructional designer in the wild.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    If I were a student, I would prefer to be advised by an actual faculty member, than by a "full-time adviser" divorced from everyday instruction responsibilities.
    - kyleamazza 7y ago
      Not that I disagree, but I had the opportunity to have both cases, each at separate schools. Having a (capable) full-time adviser meant that they were well-versed in the requirements of the program, as well as how to navigate administrative side of things, such as adding classes even if you don't fill the prereqs, etc. With a faculty member, I found that they were more focused on their actual faculty/teaching duties, and had trouble with the more administrative side of things. This is also probably dependent on the quality of the school
- ludwigschubert 7y ago
  The UC budget 2019–20 suggests: 68% staff + faculty salaries and benefits 15% financial aid 17% equipment From page 7, https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20-budget-summary.pdf#page=7 https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20... If someone knows a more detailed breakdown of the budget, I’d be curious! :)
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  There are about twice as many teachers per student as there used to be: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bloat-does-not-explain-the-rising-cost-of-education.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...
  - cafard 7y ago
    The chart for teachers shows elementary and secondary schools. I wouldn't be surprised to see that the proportion of teachers in colleges has increased, but I'd need to know how much of the increase comes from adjuncts teaching a class or two per semester. Let me add that there were some very large class sizes during the peak of the baby boom. I don't think that I ever had fewer the fifty kids in my classes until I transferred out of parochial school in sixth grade. [edit: teach -> teaching]
- yardie 7y ago
  Mortgages and more administration. I watched my school build new building after new building (New Residence Hall, New Chemistry Hall, New Engineering Building, etc.) and then wait for a benefactor to donate enough to name the building after them. These donations never approached the costs of maintaining and furnishing the new building. Just like lots of other things in America larger rooms were in demand as well. An old dorm with 200sqft dorm rooms housing 2 students was knocked down for dorms with 1000sqft suites housing 4 students.
  - vkou 7y ago
    And then, to pay for rebuilding the dorms, undergrads are forced[1] to live in them, even if they could find cheaper housing somewhere else. [1] The people justifying these requirements, of course, spend much time hand-wringing about how important it is for students to live in their expensive dorms.
- kart23 7y ago
  https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20-budget-summary.pdf https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/rbudget/2019-20... I think UC is first and foremost a research institution. A lot of these professors are barely involved in undergraduate teaching, and the massive staff employee count I think is a lot of people related to research and assisting these researchers. That's why the undergraduate student experience is going down at UCs, with worse class sizes, and less engagement.
  - eslaught 7y ago
    Research is funded by research grants from government organizations or private companies. Administrators (those involved in enabling research) are funded by "overheads" i.e. a percentage of money taken off the top of grants before any of it is allowed to be used for actual research. No tuition money goes into this. So I'd expect the tuition increase to be associated with teaching staff or teaching administrators (either dedicated to this full time or else as a percentage of their time), not with research (which is basically self-sustaining anyway). In fact, probably one of the motivations for increasing research activities is that it naturally brings in money and that you don't need to increase tuition to do it. I do agree that research professors don't necessarily make the best teaching professors, but that's an entirely separate issue from the financial one.
    - kart23 7y ago
      Oh. Thanks for clearing that up. I go to a UC, so I'm pretty interested in where all our money is going. It just seems like so much goes in, but the ROI isn't exactly there for a lot of students.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  I'm betting people will say administration, but I don't think even the swarms of useless educrats can account for the entire difference. Other possibilities: Direct funding from states to public universities has decreased. Some portion of tuition increase has gone to replace the revenue lost from reduction in subsidies. Capital costs from new campus buildings have gone up, as universities add expensive features that are not strictly required for education, such as apartment-style dormitories, or luxurious fitness centers for faculty and students. The university's money is usually fungible, so housing and recreation fees may be higher for students using those buildings than for the palmetto-bug dorms and century-old fieldhouse, yet still subsidized out of tuition revenue. The aforementioned swarms of useless educrats may be corrupt, diverting university revenues to their own pockets via schemes that require their academic credentials or administrative authority. Universities may be underwriting student loan debt, trading cash now for future income streams from future repayment. In that case, the money isn't even there yet, and the students first have to graduate and start earning before there is any of that money to spend. I know that Indiana University dumped a lot of money into its "18/20" retirement plan, to attract better quality professors. It sounds very expensive. At some point, they realized it would bankrupt the university, and stopped offering it, but current students will still be paying for it until all those old professors that got it die off. So, maybe tuition increases are going to retired employees. Last, we have accounting fictions. Universities charge $X on paper, to receive or maximize some third-party benefit, then rebate $Y to the student in the form of grants or scholarships. The money was never there, except on paper.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dhimes 7y ago
  Go 'Noles! 80% of a college's costs are personnel. Not only are there a heckuva lot more services being offered, and the services offered are being offered more broadly, but colleges are also trying to be all things. A college that was a famous teacher's college in the 1960s now wants to have top tier science departments as well. I think when boomers like me came along the number of people going to college increased so dramatically (because a. there were so many of us and b. more people were seeing a college education as valuable) that colleges expanded. It's interesting to consider how college costs have increased compared to other indexes: US inflation : ~300% https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980 US college costs: ~300% https://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tui.. https://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tui.... US GDP per capita: ~500% https://mgmresearch.com/us-gdp-data-and-charts-1980-2020/ https://mgmresearch.com/us-gdp-data-and-charts-1980-2020/ Keep in mind that those college and gdp graphs have inflation removed.

lordleft 7y ago

There has to be some upper bound to the cost of education, right? Or will I have to put aside a few million to send my kids to college twenty years from now?

koolba 7y ago
As long as the government continues to give people loans (ie demand side) rather than directly provide a competitor to schools (ie supply side), the price will continue to grow.
- tzs 7y ago
  I haven't been able to find much online historical tuition data, but the little I have found (about 100 years of Stanford tuition) shows that it was increasing before there were government loans at about the same rate it increased after government loans. This makes me doubt the theory that government loans are behind high tuition.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    To add to that: many other countries subsidize or offer student loan and grant programs (including Canada) and domestic costs have not risen to the same extent. A loose example: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/13/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-go-to-college-in-the-us-compared-to-other-countries.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/13/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-g... I think there are just too many counterpoints for the student loan thing to be accurate outside of a vacuum.
  - wtvanhest 7y ago
    Stanford is not a good proxy bc the students were well funded before the loans poured fuel on the fire. Loans help increase the cost of schools with lower social economic status (middle class) schools like state schools. Loans allowed many schools to charge private costs for public education. Professor salaried have risen, cost structures are too high to support unloaned demand.
    - 7y ago

cleandreams 7y ago

Another great cost saving idea of Ronald Reagan was the closing of all the mental hospitals, supposedly to be replaced by community clinics (which never happened). The unrolling disaster of homeless with severe mental illness continues, on and on and on. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. What a legacy.

larnmar 7y ago
a) off topic, and (b) representative of a global trend that was going on at the time, led by the psychiatric profession, rather than being any kind of personal whim of who your president happened to be at the time. We in Australia closed our mental asylums at the same time, with the same effect. Blame Jack Nicholson if you want to blame someone; or rather the rash of 1970s “aren’t asylums terrible?” asylum fiction.
- retrac 7y ago
  Asylums were terrible. It's a dynamic that's extremely prone to abuse. I do think some people should probably be institutionalized involuntarily, but I can see the argument where, even as a mentally ill homeless person, you at least still have the freedom to physically escape someone who is abusing you. That's not something to be deprived lightly. And yes, it was very much a global phenomenon, largely predating the 1980s.
astura 7y ago
Reagan did not personally come up with the idea of deinstitutionalisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

ltbarcly3 7y ago

The increasing tuition of most college is the result of intentional fraud. When the US Government computes your 'financial need', the two primary inputs are your parents' income and the cost of tuition. If your parents' income is low enough, then the government will give you a grant based on the cost of tuition. Schools that have low tuition get a smaller check from the government for the same student than schools that have high tuition. As a result, schools push tuition higher and higher, then give grants to students to cover the high costs that remain after the government grant. For example, say school A charges $5000 per year. A low-income student is accepted and maxes out their government grants, the school can get a check for up to $5000. School B charges $50,000 per year. For that same student, they can get $23k per year (or something like that), plus the student now qualifies for subsidized loans to pay for room and board. The school can then give that student a scholarship for the remaining $27k. For this student, the higher tuition school is much cheaper. This isn't a theoretical exercise, this is exactly what Universities have been doing for over 20 years.

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alexhutcheson 7y ago

In-state tuition at the UC schools is now moderately above the median tuition rates at comparable flagship state universities. However, it's worth pointing out that the California State University system has done an amazing job keeping tuition and fees low[1]. You can get a nationally ranked education from San Diego State, Fresno State, Cal Poly Pomona, etc. for less than $7,600/year in tuition and fees. This is obviously still a lot of money, but it's far cheaper than comparable options in most other states. Florida, North Carolina, New Mexico, Montana, and Wyoming are the only other states that have similar options at that price. [1] https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Documents/19-20-coa.pdf https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Document...

hackeraccount 7y ago

I think University prices are like some weird mirror of airline ticket prices. Time was that airlines sold tickets at a premium but the service was great. Now you can get tickets at incredibly low prices but the service is at cattle car level. People complain but at a fundemental level - that's what they want. The airlines say "If you want 60's service then fly first class and pay 60's level prices" And the response of virtually everyone is - No, thank you, I just want to get to wherever I'm going as cheaply as humanly possible. It seems like the same thing in reverse happened with University. Have you seen or read about dorms in the 50's? Or all the ancillary things that went with going to a university? It was all crap. And it's like everyone went "I would like a very nice University experience. I want a nice dorm. I want a beautiful campus. I want a sports team that wins and gym to go to. I want administrators that will hold my hand." And the Universties resonse was "You go it. If you want the cheap version go to community college" Now by bent I'm classically liberal. If you asked me why prices have gone up I'd tell you a tale of government action. Make student loans widly available. Making student debt non-dischargable in bankruptcy. You may not but I find the argument plausible. What if that's not a root cause though? Because truelly none of that stuff happens by chance. It's everyone who votes putting people in government. It's everyone who votes saying- "These are my priorities" and then the people in government saying "this is how we're going to meet those priorities" and both walking away happy to some greater or lesser degree. All of which indicates to me that free University for all isn't going to cut it. If it's publically financed it won't in the long run be able to afford what people seem to want to get out of University. If that's true then they'll all run to a non-free private system and get the politicians to help them to pay for it.