> This holds as long as an additional $1,000 made from foreign students does not, on average, result in admin salaries rising >$1,000. That would seem to be a p

> This holds as long as an additional $1,000 made from foreign students does not, on average, result in admin salaries rising >$1,000. That would seem to be a pretty safe assumption, and I doubt anyone can come up with a plausible mechanism for why it should not be the case. That's exactly what is happening, and the mechanism is simple. It's the original bundle and upsell model. It doesn't take terribly much imagination to consider why this might be the case: - second largest purchase (maybe single largest purchase) most Americans now make in their life - purchased when prefrontal cortices haven't fully developed (~18yo in most cases) - sold as an "investment" to parents (you "need a bachelor's degree to get a good job") - purchased as an investment by students (I want a career after college) but also as an "experience" (I need to party, mingle, socialize with the opposite sex for the only 4 year span of your life where I will ever experience actual freedom) - financed with debt products guaranteed by the government - .. but which often cannot be discharged in bankruptcy (!!) Why wouldn't such a "product" balloon in breadth, depth and average cost given that it's an enormous industry? The US student debt market alone is ~$1.6T. To give a benchmark for comparison, the US mortgage market is $11T, and those consists of bonds securitized by assets. > There's like five comments with this "huge salaries for administrators" theme. Is that some political party's talking point? Did it feature in some Netflix hit? Your argument boils down to "I can't haven't researched any of the details here and I can't come up with any off the top of my head so it must be the result of ideological astroturfing." In doing so, you completely ignore one of most insidious modern forms of legalized debt slavery. Don't reduce and flatten arguments you don't agree with. It's not just wrong, but it conditions you into ignorance and against engaging in a basic investigation of the details.