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Student debt has exploded because notwithstanding their outrageous tax advantages colleges are demonstrably profit maximizing firms. They induce unlimited deman

Student debt has exploded because notwithstanding their outrageous tax advantages colleges are demonstrably profit maximizing firms. They induce unlimited demand for ever more credentials though a process of continual devaluation and then charge as much as the market will possibly bear through extremely sophisticated price discrimination. Politicians answer to this crisis of rapaciousness is to suggest that the public should pay the ever escalating costs while suggesting nothing to rein in their growth. This suggests that the politicians have been captured in some way.

noobermin 5y ago
Let me explain a line of reasoning that would refute the explanation you provide for the ballooning debt. Universities have not generally changed the way they do things, universities have always been the four things OP listed since forever, even when you likely got your degree (assuming you did, or at the very least most of hacker news did), they were those four things too! Therefore, there is no inherent thing to universities that explains the ballooning debt. Instead, something must have happened between the 90s and now that correlates with the rise of debt. Thus, look for an explanation by looking at the history of policy rather than relying on rationalizations. To that end, a quick google search yields an article that gives a good set of reasons a think-tank that studied the problem found as a set of causes. This is the first result of googling "what caused the student debt crisis": https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-the-student-debt-crisis-so-bad-4-reasons-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-the-student-debt-cris... Now those four items ARE things that have changed between now and then. Generally, the decline state funding of schools means unis now fund themselves by relying on tuition that students do not feel as a cost (at least immediately) because the federal government can give out loans like candy. Again people, please please please don't just conjure up ideas in your head and think you understand the causes in the world that explain how everything works. You would not apply this line of thinking to your own job you are paid for, people have studied these things and generally it is understood why the debt crisis exists, it isn't a mystery!
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.
  - shigawire 5y ago
    Hospitals require an army of admins because the regulatory burden is so high. And for that we can only blame our convoluted insurance model.
    - erosenbe0 5y ago
      Not just insurance model. 1/3 of the population is on government funded insurance and we still have a mess. Healthcare is polluted up and down with regulation that tends to maximize profit or create rent-seeking.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    This is sort of true but also at the same time I rely on a lot of staff to make my job a lot easier. Yes we could cut down on those administrators but it would mean that professors have to do more, taking away from research agendas. Universities have been optimized to make doing researcher easier and I appreciate that. I'd have to pay a lot more attention to my students' personal lives if we didn't have a dean of student affairs and the whole apparatus that is involved with that. There's a whole office of advising that does a better job than I ever could, and I am freed up to focus on other things that I'm good at. As another example, we have a bunch of internal grants. It's basically free money that you can apply for to do whatever you want with it, to the tune of 10s of thousands. We need to pay administrators to handle that whole process. It's a lot of money to handle and it's not a cheap process to administer these grants. We could cut them and it would shrink the budget, but it would also stop the flow of early-stage ideas from forming that later turn into huge grants. If I have an idea that might cost like $10k, I can whip up a proposal and get funding for that lickity split, without having to go to the NSF or some other external agency. Then when the idea is more mature I can go and get external funding. If you cut the administrators just looking at a budget, you're really cutting research without realizing it. I mean, running a University is basically like running a city. You have all the same concerns: infrastructure, food, security, a citizenry, political struggles, etc. You need a government (administrators) to do that kind of work that keeps this huge system running. Yes bureaucracies are expensive and inefficient, and sure there are of course things that could be cut, but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. That machine doesn't just happen, it's administrators keeping it running.
raverbashing 5y ago
> notwithstanding their outrageous tax advantages colleges are demonstrably profit maximizing firms Agreed. See the recent UCLA TA position opening. The unpaid position. https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1505009710717669378 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1505009710717669378

noobermin 5y ago

Let me explain a line of reasoning that would refute the explanation you provide for the ballooning debt. Universities have not generally changed the way they do things, universities have always been the four things OP listed since forever, even when you likely got your degree (assuming you did, or at the very least most of hacker news did), they were those four things too! Therefore, there is no inherent thing to universities that explains the ballooning debt. Instead, something must have happened between the 90s and now that correlates with the rise of debt. Thus, look for an explanation by looking at the history of policy rather than relying on rationalizations. To that end, a quick google search yields an article that gives a good set of reasons a think-tank that studied the problem found as a set of causes. This is the first result of googling "what caused the student debt crisis": https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-the-student-debt-crisis-so-bad-4-reasons-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-the-student-debt-cris... Now those four items ARE things that have changed between now and then. Generally, the decline state funding of schools means unis now fund themselves by relying on tuition that students do not feel as a cost (at least immediately) because the federal government can give out loans like candy. Again people, please please please don't just conjure up ideas in your head and think you understand the causes in the world that explain how everything works. You would not apply this line of thinking to your own job you are paid for, people have studied these things and generally it is understood why the debt crisis exists, it isn't a mystery!

bradleyjg 5y ago
What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.
- shigawire 5y ago
  Hospitals require an army of admins because the regulatory burden is so high. And for that we can only blame our convoluted insurance model.
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    Not just insurance model. 1/3 of the population is on government funded insurance and we still have a mess. Healthcare is polluted up and down with regulation that tends to maximize profit or create rent-seeking.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  This is sort of true but also at the same time I rely on a lot of staff to make my job a lot easier. Yes we could cut down on those administrators but it would mean that professors have to do more, taking away from research agendas. Universities have been optimized to make doing researcher easier and I appreciate that. I'd have to pay a lot more attention to my students' personal lives if we didn't have a dean of student affairs and the whole apparatus that is involved with that. There's a whole office of advising that does a better job than I ever could, and I am freed up to focus on other things that I'm good at. As another example, we have a bunch of internal grants. It's basically free money that you can apply for to do whatever you want with it, to the tune of 10s of thousands. We need to pay administrators to handle that whole process. It's a lot of money to handle and it's not a cheap process to administer these grants. We could cut them and it would shrink the budget, but it would also stop the flow of early-stage ideas from forming that later turn into huge grants. If I have an idea that might cost like $10k, I can whip up a proposal and get funding for that lickity split, without having to go to the NSF or some other external agency. Then when the idea is more mature I can go and get external funding. If you cut the administrators just looking at a budget, you're really cutting research without realizing it. I mean, running a University is basically like running a city. You have all the same concerns: infrastructure, food, security, a citizenry, political struggles, etc. You need a government (administrators) to do that kind of work that keeps this huge system running. Yes bureaucracies are expensive and inefficient, and sure there are of course things that could be cut, but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. That machine doesn't just happen, it's administrators keeping it running.

raverbashing 5y ago

> notwithstanding their outrageous tax advantages colleges are demonstrably profit maximizing firms Agreed. See the recent UCLA TA position opening. The unpaid position. https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1505009710717669378 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1505009710717669378