6 ms·

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.
    - jdkee 7y ago
      "Professor salaried[SIC] have risen,...." This is untrue. If anything, the rapidly growing pool of poorly paid adjuncts has lowered the median salary. Perhaps you could take a look at this book for a deeper understanding of the issue. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/16/herb-childress-discusses-his-new-book-adjunct-underclass https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/16/herb-childres...
      - wtvanhest 7y ago
        This is one story. If you pull the financials of major public colleges, prof salaries per credit hour taught are increasing. No other metric matters. The cost has to come down, and that includes the cost of instruction etc.
        chongli 7y ago
        No other metric matters That’s simply not true. The vast majority of the increase in cost is due to the explosive growth of non-teaching administrative staff. When wealthy donors earmark their gift for a new library or sports complex, it’s the students who end up paying for all of the staff to maintain the building and run the programs.
        craftinator 7y ago
        Ding, +1. Schools spend their vast income on administrators, marketing, and marketing gimmicks, such as sports and very expensive new buildings. They are in competition with other schools to bring in more students and manage more students (thus bringing in more cash), so they optimize for that goal.
        wtvanhest 7y ago
        I've looked at a bunch of school financials, and I am not really seeing the admin bloat that everyone quotes. That said, its not really the only metric that matters, but it does matter a lot. And it matters a lot more than all other metrics around cost because you can easily reduce those other metrics if they are truly bloat. Professor salaries cannot easily come down, and you cannot easily add more kids per class.
- larnmar 7y ago
  Also as long as US education remains a strongly positional good — that the value of your education continues to be mostly dependent on where your university sits in the pecking order, rather than on some absolute value (e.g. of the knowledge you actually learn). With a positional good, demand can never be really satisfied, because everyone always wants something further up the chain, so prices expand to whatever people can possibly pay.
- 0000011111 7y ago
  Government loans for college could very well cause the next recession. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/785527874/student-loans-a-lot-like-the-subprime-mortgage-debacle-watchdog-says https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/785527874/student-loans-a-lot... The economic effects will be more indirect than the last one. Folks will delay homebuying, they will have fewer children later in life. Schools and Colleges will be competing for fewer people. Many small liberal arts colleges will close.
  - 0000011111 7y ago
    https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-universities-have-closed-since-2016/539379/ https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-uni...
virmundi 7y ago
You’d think but with Siemens requiring a college degrees because people can’t read at a 9th grade level, probably will have to take out a million Dollar loan.
rjkennedy98 7y ago
I think tuition can keep going up as long as its offset with grants and aid (insured by the federal government). A few weeks ago there was an article about how University of Chicago was on track to have 100K per year tuition. That would put you at almost half a million to send you kids to school.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wahern 7y ago
A few years ago, shortly after the birth of our first child, our financial advisor recommended $350k in case we wanted a private college. We're nowhere near making that goal, nor do we have any particular preference for a private school, but it's an interesting number nonetheless. But I think the trend to keep an eye on isn't the price of an undergraduate degree, but a graduate degree, as an undergraduate degree won't be nearly as useful as today, which already isn't as useful as 20 years ago in many fields. Indeed, both my wife and I have graduate degrees. My wife came from a middle-class family that was college oriented. I came from a working-class/poor environment. My mom sent me off to college with $200 and a suitcase, and I subsequently paid for everything else, including housing and tuition, myself. But I barely made it through; I just wasn't culturally or academically equipped to do college. For example, my first week of school I was preoccupied with finding a job, I always prioritized working over school even when, financially, I didn't need to, and I didn't appreciate the value in developing relationships with professors (that felt more like cheating, reflecting not enough time spent studying). So what concerns me more than college right now is primary and secondary school--preparing my kids so the transition to college is seamless and natural. Fortunately, San Francisco has many excellent public and private schools. The public school district has language immersion programs in several different languages in addition to non-immersion early language programs, as well as other enrichment programs; and the parochial private schools in particular are relatively affordable--cheaper than daycare, even. (Though daycare can be crushingly expensive--whether run out of a garage or attached to a fancy private school, rates are similar--so I guess that doesn't say much.) So the price of college? Meh. That's poor people thinking. My goal is to put my kids on a college trajectory and let that carry them through--hopefully to graduate school. Of course we'll save as much as we can, but that's not something I'm concerned about. In my hometown middle school and high school counselors often discouraged kids from college because the costs were presumed insurmountable for most families. In truth 1) they were ridiculously misinformed and misleading about the options and alternatives, and 2) setting kids up for failure whether or not they ended up going to college. Nope... worrying about cost right now is counterproductive.
- beefield 7y ago
  > A few years ago, shortly after the birth of our first child, our financial advisor recommended $350k. Amazing. Land of the free seems to be quite keen to come up with innovative ways to enslave its citizens...
geogra4 7y ago
You can send them to study for free in Germany, in English[0]. That's my plan. 0: https://www.daad.de/en/study-and-research-in-germany/plan-your-studies/ https://www.daad.de/en/study-and-research-in-germany/plan-yo...
- brewdad 7y ago
  Last time I looked, most undergraduate universities in Germany required proficiency in German as the courses are not taught in English. Graduate study courses frequently are however.
- bjourne 7y ago
  Pretty sure that's for EU citizens only. Some EU countries used to offer free tuition even to non-EU nationals but most are now charging fees meaning that they are roughly as expensive as American universities.
  - geogra4 7y ago
    This bachelor degree in applied math appears to be free. Is there some place it explicitly says it's for EU citizens only? https://www2.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/international-programmes/en/detail/4725/#tab_overview https://www2.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/internation...
  - chmod775 7y ago
    I might be wrong, but I am currently studying at a German university with about 30% foreign students and I believe it's still essentially free (cost is under 500 dollar / semester). Though people who wish to study here from outside the EU have to prove that they are financially solvent and able to support themselves before they come here. This is done by depositing about 10k euros into a German blocked bank account. This site is a great resource for foreign students, detailing pretty much everything involved: https://www.studying-in-germany.org/how-to-study-in-germany/ https://www.studying-in-germany.org/how-to-study-in-germany/
    - bjourne 7y ago
Reedx 7y ago
> Or will I have to put aside a few million to send my kids to college twenty years from now? No, because that wouldn't make sense as an investment. Already it often doesn't make sense. Hence the student debt crisis. Colleges will have to adapt and bring costs down as people increasingly opt for alternatives.
vkou 7y ago
Send them to study in Canada. Even paying international student rates, their education will be much cheaper.
jhedwards 7y ago
I don't understand this sentiment. In-state tuition for state school in still only around $15,000 a year. Assuming your children get no financial aid and take out zero loans, you still only need to have $60k saved for four years. That's not much more than it was when I went to college fourteen years ago.
- brewdad 7y ago
  Tuition is only about half the cost of attendance at most state schools. Room and board, books, living expenses. I would expect the total price tag to be at least $25,000/yr at a school like your example.
- vkou 7y ago
  Add $800-1000/semester in must-buy-brand-new-because DRM books, a mandatory meal plan, enrollment fees (That all active students pay, regardless of their course load), mandatory dorm housing, and you'll be hitting $35,000/year. Meanwhile, my entire education (5 years, 144 credit hours, compared to the usual 4/120) cost me ~$32,000... In Canada. I didn't live in a dorm, didn't buy a meal plan, and paid for pretty much all of it over two summer internships, and one fall one.

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.
  - jdkee 7y ago
    "Professor salaried[SIC] have risen,...." This is untrue. If anything, the rapidly growing pool of poorly paid adjuncts has lowered the median salary. Perhaps you could take a look at this book for a deeper understanding of the issue. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/16/herb-childress-discusses-his-new-book-adjunct-underclass https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/16/herb-childres...
    - wtvanhest 7y ago
      This is one story. If you pull the financials of major public colleges, prof salaries per credit hour taught are increasing. No other metric matters. The cost has to come down, and that includes the cost of instruction etc.
      - chongli 7y ago
        No other metric matters That’s simply not true. The vast majority of the increase in cost is due to the explosive growth of non-teaching administrative staff. When wealthy donors earmark their gift for a new library or sports complex, it’s the students who end up paying for all of the staff to maintain the building and run the programs.
        craftinator 7y ago
        Ding, +1. Schools spend their vast income on administrators, marketing, and marketing gimmicks, such as sports and very expensive new buildings. They are in competition with other schools to bring in more students and manage more students (thus bringing in more cash), so they optimize for that goal.
        wtvanhest 7y ago
        I've looked at a bunch of school financials, and I am not really seeing the admin bloat that everyone quotes. That said, its not really the only metric that matters, but it does matter a lot. And it matters a lot more than all other metrics around cost because you can easily reduce those other metrics if they are truly bloat. Professor salaries cannot easily come down, and you cannot easily add more kids per class.
larnmar 7y ago
Also as long as US education remains a strongly positional good — that the value of your education continues to be mostly dependent on where your university sits in the pecking order, rather than on some absolute value (e.g. of the knowledge you actually learn). With a positional good, demand can never be really satisfied, because everyone always wants something further up the chain, so prices expand to whatever people can possibly pay.
0000011111 7y ago
Government loans for college could very well cause the next recession. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/785527874/student-loans-a-lot-like-the-subprime-mortgage-debacle-watchdog-says https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/785527874/student-loans-a-lot... The economic effects will be more indirect than the last one. Folks will delay homebuying, they will have fewer children later in life. Schools and Colleges will be competing for fewer people. Many small liberal arts colleges will close.
- 0000011111 7y ago
  https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-universities-have-closed-since-2016/539379/ https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-uni...

virmundi 7y ago

You’d think but with Siemens requiring a college degrees because people can’t read at a 9th grade level, probably will have to take out a million Dollar loan.

rjkennedy98 7y ago

I think tuition can keep going up as long as its offset with grants and aid (insured by the federal government). A few weeks ago there was an article about how University of Chicago was on track to have 100K per year tuition. That would put you at almost half a million to send you kids to school.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wahern 7y ago

A few years ago, shortly after the birth of our first child, our financial advisor recommended $350k in case we wanted a private college. We're nowhere near making that goal, nor do we have any particular preference for a private school, but it's an interesting number nonetheless. But I think the trend to keep an eye on isn't the price of an undergraduate degree, but a graduate degree, as an undergraduate degree won't be nearly as useful as today, which already isn't as useful as 20 years ago in many fields. Indeed, both my wife and I have graduate degrees. My wife came from a middle-class family that was college oriented. I came from a working-class/poor environment. My mom sent me off to college with $200 and a suitcase, and I subsequently paid for everything else, including housing and tuition, myself. But I barely made it through; I just wasn't culturally or academically equipped to do college. For example, my first week of school I was preoccupied with finding a job, I always prioritized working over school even when, financially, I didn't need to, and I didn't appreciate the value in developing relationships with professors (that felt more like cheating, reflecting not enough time spent studying). So what concerns me more than college right now is primary and secondary school--preparing my kids so the transition to college is seamless and natural. Fortunately, San Francisco has many excellent public and private schools. The public school district has language immersion programs in several different languages in addition to non-immersion early language programs, as well as other enrichment programs; and the parochial private schools in particular are relatively affordable--cheaper than daycare, even. (Though daycare can be crushingly expensive--whether run out of a garage or attached to a fancy private school, rates are similar--so I guess that doesn't say much.) So the price of college? Meh. That's poor people thinking. My goal is to put my kids on a college trajectory and let that carry them through--hopefully to graduate school. Of course we'll save as much as we can, but that's not something I'm concerned about. In my hometown middle school and high school counselors often discouraged kids from college because the costs were presumed insurmountable for most families. In truth 1) they were ridiculously misinformed and misleading about the options and alternatives, and 2) setting kids up for failure whether or not they ended up going to college. Nope... worrying about cost right now is counterproductive.

beefield 7y ago
> A few years ago, shortly after the birth of our first child, our financial advisor recommended $350k. Amazing. Land of the free seems to be quite keen to come up with innovative ways to enslave its citizens...

geogra4 7y ago

You can send them to study for free in Germany, in English[0]. That's my plan. 0: https://www.daad.de/en/study-and-research-in-germany/plan-your-studies/ https://www.daad.de/en/study-and-research-in-germany/plan-yo...

brewdad 7y ago
Last time I looked, most undergraduate universities in Germany required proficiency in German as the courses are not taught in English. Graduate study courses frequently are however.
bjourne 7y ago
Pretty sure that's for EU citizens only. Some EU countries used to offer free tuition even to non-EU nationals but most are now charging fees meaning that they are roughly as expensive as American universities.
- geogra4 7y ago
  This bachelor degree in applied math appears to be free. Is there some place it explicitly says it's for EU citizens only? https://www2.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/international-programmes/en/detail/4725/#tab_overview https://www2.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/internation...
- chmod775 7y ago
  I might be wrong, but I am currently studying at a German university with about 30% foreign students and I believe it's still essentially free (cost is under 500 dollar / semester). Though people who wish to study here from outside the EU have to prove that they are financially solvent and able to support themselves before they come here. This is done by depositing about 10k euros into a German blocked bank account. This site is a great resource for foreign students, detailing pretty much everything involved: https://www.studying-in-germany.org/how-to-study-in-germany/ https://www.studying-in-germany.org/how-to-study-in-germany/
  - bjourne 7y ago

Reedx 7y ago

> Or will I have to put aside a few million to send my kids to college twenty years from now? No, because that wouldn't make sense as an investment. Already it often doesn't make sense. Hence the student debt crisis. Colleges will have to adapt and bring costs down as people increasingly opt for alternatives.

vkou 7y ago

Send them to study in Canada. Even paying international student rates, their education will be much cheaper.

jhedwards 7y ago

I don't understand this sentiment. In-state tuition for state school in still only around $15,000 a year. Assuming your children get no financial aid and take out zero loans, you still only need to have $60k saved for four years. That's not much more than it was when I went to college fourteen years ago.

brewdad 7y ago
Tuition is only about half the cost of attendance at most state schools. Room and board, books, living expenses. I would expect the total price tag to be at least $25,000/yr at a school like your example.
vkou 7y ago
Add $800-1000/semester in must-buy-brand-new-because DRM books, a mandatory meal plan, enrollment fees (That all active students pay, regardless of their course load), mandatory dorm housing, and you'll be hitting $35,000/year. Meanwhile, my entire education (5 years, 144 credit hours, compared to the usual 4/120) cost me ~$32,000... In Canada. I didn't live in a dorm, didn't buy a meal plan, and paid for pretty much all of it over two summer internships, and one fall one.