6 ms·

I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable. No sympathy here for the college industry.

vidanay 7y ago
Gotta pay for those basketball and football programs somehow. (Yes, SOME athletics programs are net positive - most are not)
- mgav 7y ago
  I didn't realize that. Do you have a source for this, please?
  - vidanay 7y ago
    This article is a few years old, but I don't think the situation has changed radically. http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athletics-departments-make-more-they-spend-still-minority http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athlet...
  - notyourwork 7y ago
    It depends on the school which means maybe some schools should not have sports teams? How crazy is it to think that a school should be focused on education and not go into debt to finance extracurriculars. Big brand name schools that are regularly competing at top level in sports are usually seeing huge financial surplus due to sports.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- krn1p4n1c 7y ago
  Big sports inside universities are usually structured as a separate corporation for maximum tax effect.
- czinck 7y ago
  Your source says "athletic departments", not football or basketball programs, which is an important distinction. Football and basketball are the only money-makers (I think hockey or baseball make money at a few schools), and all of the other sports drag down the athletic departments budget. That's also ignoring that FBS is basically advertising. There's been a steady increase in applications (and subsequently an increase in average GPA and similar numbers) at University of Alabama under Nick Saban, and I know I would have been less likely to go to Virginia Tech if it wasn't for their football program drawing me in when I was in middle/high school.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    A couple of other examples: Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma did more to take the University of Connecticut to national prominence than 100 deans. And Auriemma did it by excellence in a non-revenue sport. While Mark Few at Gonzaga made the NCAA tournament 20 years in a row, this small Jesuit school in Spokane doubled the number of applicants, increased the proportion of students from outside Washington, increased incoming student test scores and dramatically grew the endowment.
  - rwmurrayVT 7y ago
    Slightly off-topic, but the recent performance of VT's football program has been depressing. I'd hate to see things sway over to UVlame. :(
  - snapetom 7y ago
    Boston College received triple their number of average applications the year after Doug Flutie threw his Hail Mary.
mgoblu3 7y ago
There’s a bit of a rat race in colleges posturing to get ahead of each other always, and that takes capital investment and the recourse to raise funds ends up being tuition. These things and reputations take years and tons of willpower and planning, so the risk of falling behind is immense.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  If only we were somehow able to remove the ability to peacock and ensure everyone going through the system got a good education.... then rich people and employers would have much less to work with in terms of picking candidates based on school "reputation".
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > If only we were somehow able to remove the ability to peacock and ensure everyone going through the system got a good education Good professors are rare. Good classmates are rare. Distributed education lets benefits from the former scale, albeit with degradation. There is no known way to scale access to the network of a good college experience. Education quality varies with respect to both of the above. As a result, there is a scaling limit. As a result, there will be scarcity until the preconditions are solved or the scaling limits released.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    One solution I heard is changing the loan requirement to be a fixed price sole payment accepted with zero required additional bundling. They can have scholarships but none of this "must stay in our dorms the first year and meal plan, books must be bought from here now suddenly several thousand each" mark up smuggling opportunity bullshit. So there would be a driven for efficiency. You want federal money for education? It is accept $35K/yr per student or get bent. There would be fine tuning in the numbers and parameters but that would kill price as a signal as a good thing as it forces either public rates or exorbitant private school which thinks they can actually make more without the massive prime consumer pool.
  - JackFr 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gowld 7y ago
$15k/yr is not expensive. That's about the same as K-12. Most schools are $30-$60k/yr
- mrlala 7y ago
  >That's about the same as K-12 Are you forgetting the entirely free K-12 option here that most people grow up with? >$15k/yr is not expensive Ok....
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    They're not free, they're differently funded. My kids' school spends $21k/pupil/year.
  - runawaybottle 7y ago
    Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Very few of our parents shelled out the 15k a year in public school costs. We distributed the cost, but 15k a year is absolutely unaffordable for most Americans.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    $12k/student is the national average for K-12 spending https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/quality-counts-2019-state-finance/map-per-pupil-spending-state-by-state.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/quality-counts-2019-st...
fatnoah 7y ago
> I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable. My town currently spends about $12,635 per pupil for public schools. Other towns in the state spend over $20k. Compared to that, $15k tuition seems right in line.
- Glyptodon 7y ago
  I do think there's an argument to made that college should be cheaper (at least excluding housing and other secondary costs) than K-12 given that K-12 has a bunch of mandatory cost centers like special education (which is to say dealing with kids who destroy classrooms, abusive parents, etc.), that class size can be larger in college, that students in college (at least excluding community college) should be above the average in K-12, time in classroom per student/semester is lower, etc.
  - kenjackson 7y ago
    But the salary of the faculty is more expensive, at least on a per instructor basis. Although maybe you need fewer instructors. And facilities will cost more. You're not likely to have a nano-technology lab at your K-12 school. I think university could be cheaper than it is today, but probably not much cheaper than K-12.
    - Glyptodon 7y ago
      Of course actual faculty wages are balanced against boatloads of adjuncts and grad students working for a pittance.
    - intended 7y ago
      Frankly education is too cheap, which is why people are getting crappy outcomes and then debating on it. The idealized form of studying is education with mentoring, see Blooms 2 sigma results. But that is too expensive, who wants to have that number of teachers ! It would cost a fortune! So instead people try to cut costs, and or keep making it a discussion on price, since this is America, instead of just making colleges public and free.
michaelt 7y ago
> I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable. I believe people who support such things think as follows: 1. $15k a year tuition for 4 years is a great deal if it turns you into a banker or programmer with a $150,000 a year salary and a 40-year career. Indeed, it would be unjust for a garbage man's taxes to be paying for a stockbroker's education. 2. Majoring in poetry might not be such a clearly great decision, but if you're on the left politically, banning poetry is anti-intellectual; and if you're on the right market demand is its own justification.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  It's not unjust if that garbageman went to university too, or at least had the same opportunity. Society is better off with better educated citizens. It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other countries simply carry that farther. On the poetry point specifically, I really think writing degrees in general would be more successful if they were granted by trade schools (i.e. a focus on doing the thing, not a focus on academic scholarship about the thing).
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other countries simply carry that farther. To be fair, we also have compulsory schooling for that period as well, and it makes complete sense to use tax revenue to pay for something the same government is making you do. Note that I don't oppose the use of tax revenue to fund voluntary education, and I personally benefited heavily from it. Its just that using the example of the government paying for something it made mandatory is not much of an argument in itself for having it pay for something that is voluntary.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      There are scores of government services that aren't compulsory/universal though. I don't think that's a key differentiator. And there's plenty of things the government makes you do that they don't pay for, either.
eachro 7y ago
15k in just tuition does not seem outrageous. Suppose a year is 30 weeks, and you spend 10 hours a week in classes (not even counting the other benefits that college/a college campus may offer), thats about 50 dollars/hr you're spending for lecture. For some classes/fields it's clearly a much better deal. But 40k+ in tuition? Yea agreed, that's pretty outrageous.
jimbokun 7y ago
$15k is a great price, must private universities are far more than that. And public state universities, if you are paying out of state tuition.

vidanay 7y ago

Gotta pay for those basketball and football programs somehow. (Yes, SOME athletics programs are net positive - most are not)

mgav 7y ago
I didn't realize that. Do you have a source for this, please?
- vidanay 7y ago
  This article is a few years old, but I don't think the situation has changed radically. http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athletics-departments-make-more-they-spend-still-minority http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athlet...
- notyourwork 7y ago
  It depends on the school which means maybe some schools should not have sports teams? How crazy is it to think that a school should be focused on education and not go into debt to finance extracurriculars. Big brand name schools that are regularly competing at top level in sports are usually seeing huge financial surplus due to sports.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
krn1p4n1c 7y ago
Big sports inside universities are usually structured as a separate corporation for maximum tax effect.
czinck 7y ago
Your source says "athletic departments", not football or basketball programs, which is an important distinction. Football and basketball are the only money-makers (I think hockey or baseball make money at a few schools), and all of the other sports drag down the athletic departments budget. That's also ignoring that FBS is basically advertising. There's been a steady increase in applications (and subsequently an increase in average GPA and similar numbers) at University of Alabama under Nick Saban, and I know I would have been less likely to go to Virginia Tech if it wasn't for their football program drawing me in when I was in middle/high school.
- JackFr 7y ago
  A couple of other examples: Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma did more to take the University of Connecticut to national prominence than 100 deans. And Auriemma did it by excellence in a non-revenue sport. While Mark Few at Gonzaga made the NCAA tournament 20 years in a row, this small Jesuit school in Spokane doubled the number of applicants, increased the proportion of students from outside Washington, increased incoming student test scores and dramatically grew the endowment.
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but the recent performance of VT's football program has been depressing. I'd hate to see things sway over to UVlame. :(
- snapetom 7y ago
  Boston College received triple their number of average applications the year after Doug Flutie threw his Hail Mary.

mgoblu3 7y ago

There’s a bit of a rat race in colleges posturing to get ahead of each other always, and that takes capital investment and the recourse to raise funds ends up being tuition. These things and reputations take years and tons of willpower and planning, so the risk of falling behind is immense.

tehjoker 7y ago
If only we were somehow able to remove the ability to peacock and ensure everyone going through the system got a good education.... then rich people and employers would have much less to work with in terms of picking candidates based on school "reputation".
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > If only we were somehow able to remove the ability to peacock and ensure everyone going through the system got a good education Good professors are rare. Good classmates are rare. Distributed education lets benefits from the former scale, albeit with degradation. There is no known way to scale access to the network of a good college experience. Education quality varies with respect to both of the above. As a result, there is a scaling limit. As a result, there will be scarcity until the preconditions are solved or the scaling limits released.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  One solution I heard is changing the loan requirement to be a fixed price sole payment accepted with zero required additional bundling. They can have scholarships but none of this "must stay in our dorms the first year and meal plan, books must be bought from here now suddenly several thousand each" mark up smuggling opportunity bullshit. So there would be a driven for efficiency. You want federal money for education? It is accept $35K/yr per student or get bent. There would be fine tuning in the numbers and parameters but that would kill price as a signal as a good thing as it forces either public rates or exorbitant private school which thinks they can actually make more without the massive prime consumer pool.
- JackFr 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gowld 7y ago

$15k/yr is not expensive. That's about the same as K-12. Most schools are $30-$60k/yr

mrlala 7y ago
>That's about the same as K-12 Are you forgetting the entirely free K-12 option here that most people grow up with? >$15k/yr is not expensive Ok....
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  They're not free, they're differently funded. My kids' school spends $21k/pupil/year.
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Very few of our parents shelled out the 15k a year in public school costs. We distributed the cost, but 15k a year is absolutely unaffordable for most Americans.
- bluedino 7y ago
  $12k/student is the national average for K-12 spending https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/quality-counts-2019-state-finance/map-per-pupil-spending-state-by-state.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/quality-counts-2019-st...

fatnoah 7y ago

> I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable. My town currently spends about $12,635 per pupil for public schools. Other towns in the state spend over $20k. Compared to that, $15k tuition seems right in line.

Glyptodon 7y ago
I do think there's an argument to made that college should be cheaper (at least excluding housing and other secondary costs) than K-12 given that K-12 has a bunch of mandatory cost centers like special education (which is to say dealing with kids who destroy classrooms, abusive parents, etc.), that class size can be larger in college, that students in college (at least excluding community college) should be above the average in K-12, time in classroom per student/semester is lower, etc.
- kenjackson 7y ago
  But the salary of the faculty is more expensive, at least on a per instructor basis. Although maybe you need fewer instructors. And facilities will cost more. You're not likely to have a nano-technology lab at your K-12 school. I think university could be cheaper than it is today, but probably not much cheaper than K-12.
  - Glyptodon 7y ago
    Of course actual faculty wages are balanced against boatloads of adjuncts and grad students working for a pittance.
  - intended 7y ago
    Frankly education is too cheap, which is why people are getting crappy outcomes and then debating on it. The idealized form of studying is education with mentoring, see Blooms 2 sigma results. But that is too expensive, who wants to have that number of teachers ! It would cost a fortune! So instead people try to cut costs, and or keep making it a discussion on price, since this is America, instead of just making colleges public and free.

michaelt 7y ago

> I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable. I believe people who support such things think as follows: 1. $15k a year tuition for 4 years is a great deal if it turns you into a banker or programmer with a $150,000 a year salary and a 40-year career. Indeed, it would be unjust for a garbage man's taxes to be paying for a stockbroker's education. 2. Majoring in poetry might not be such a clearly great decision, but if you're on the left politically, banning poetry is anti-intellectual; and if you're on the right market demand is its own justification.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
CydeWeys 7y ago
It's not unjust if that garbageman went to university too, or at least had the same opportunity. Society is better off with better educated citizens. It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other countries simply carry that farther. On the poetry point specifically, I really think writing degrees in general would be more successful if they were granted by trade schools (i.e. a focus on doing the thing, not a focus on academic scholarship about the thing).
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other countries simply carry that farther. To be fair, we also have compulsory schooling for that period as well, and it makes complete sense to use tax revenue to pay for something the same government is making you do. Note that I don't oppose the use of tax revenue to fund voluntary education, and I personally benefited heavily from it. Its just that using the example of the government paying for something it made mandatory is not much of an argument in itself for having it pay for something that is voluntary.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    There are scores of government services that aren't compulsory/universal though. I don't think that's a key differentiator. And there's plenty of things the government makes you do that they don't pay for, either.

eachro 7y ago

15k in just tuition does not seem outrageous. Suppose a year is 30 weeks, and you spend 10 hours a week in classes (not even counting the other benefits that college/a college campus may offer), thats about 50 dollars/hr you're spending for lecture. For some classes/fields it's clearly a much better deal. But 40k+ in tuition? Yea agreed, that's pretty outrageous.

jimbokun 7y ago

$15k is a great price, must private universities are far more than that. And public state universities, if you are paying out of state tuition.