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Not to be another commenter claiming to know the real reason college costs so much but... The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all servic

by elil17 6y ago

Not to be another commenter claiming to know the real reason college costs so much but... The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. See: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/disruptiveinnovationinhighereducationudemyv5-160129191225/95/disruptive-innovation-in-higher-education-full-course-slides-25-638.jpg?cb=1454095471 https://image.slidesharecdn.com/disruptiveinnovationinhigher... Archibald and Feldman, 2010 The reason the cost of all services provided by people with doctorate or professional degrees has risen is complicated and could arise from many factors. For instance, it could be that there’s more industry demand for highly educated labor. The rise in college costs relates primarily to overall changes in labor costs, not to anything wrong with the education system in particular.

darkerside 6y ago
A very specific type of labor costs, what I would call "non-essential services". These are the types of jobs where, now that we've grown the economic pie such that everyone can get what they need, increasing resources are devoted to "fairly allocating" those resources, via politics and legal actions, with the rest spent on objects of status.
xupybd 6y ago
One other factor is the cost of educating the work force has increased. This might not be due to an increase in the education requirements of the job market. If degrees are common place they get used as a proxy metric for who is capable and who is not (while this is often not the case). This means it's hard to measure the effectiveness of the current student load system. Is the investment increasing productivity? Or just creating another hurdle for people to jump over to get a good job?
mulcahey 6y ago
Perhaps part of the reason those professionals are more expensive is that their degree programs saddle them with debt! It’d be somewhat of a feedback loop
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. No, it's not. > The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. Most doctorates are not like those cherry-picked professional degrees and have not seen this inflation.

by elil17 6y ago

darkerside 6y ago

A very specific type of labor costs, what I would call "non-essential services". These are the types of jobs where, now that we've grown the economic pie such that everyone can get what they need, increasing resources are devoted to "fairly allocating" those resources, via politics and legal actions, with the rest spent on objects of status.

xupybd 6y ago

One other factor is the cost of educating the work force has increased. This might not be due to an increase in the education requirements of the job market. If degrees are common place they get used as a proxy metric for who is capable and who is not (while this is often not the case). This means it's hard to measure the effectiveness of the current student load system. Is the investment increasing productivity? Or just creating another hurdle for people to jump over to get a good job?

mulcahey 6y ago

Perhaps part of the reason those professionals are more expensive is that their degree programs saddle them with debt! It’d be somewhat of a feedback loop

dragonwriter 6y ago

> The real reason college costs so much is that the price of all services provided by people with doctorate Or professional degrees has risen. No, it's not. > The cost of higher education has risen at the same rate as the cost of dentist services and legal services. Most doctorates are not like those cherry-picked professional degrees and have not seen this inflation.