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Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t wan

Double edged sword. What the author proposes can be found. Go to some small low endowment private or public school for less money. Oh wait, you say, I don’t want to go there! The buildings aren’t as nice, the dorms are cramped and drab, there aren’t as many resources, the food sucks, the Wi-Fi is spotty, heck even the website sucks. Why is this? Because they don’t have the human or financial resources to do so. You get what you pay for. Student and parent expectations have changed and so have college and universities. If you want what colleges used to be like 50 years ago go to a small private or public school that is just barely staying afloat, it will be more or less similar to the so called halcyon days of low cost, no frills college. The thing is—people don’t want this as voted for by their choice in school. The biggest drops in enrollment are at community colleges, state schools, and small private schools. If people were price sensitive cheap schools would have people busting down the doors to get in. They don’t. In fact, when a college lowers their tuition, they paradoxically often see a dip in enrollments. Why? Because human brains are broken. We connate price with prestige and prestige with quality. Colleges get punished if they lower the price, so what do they do instead? They increase the discount rate. Rarely do families pay the sticker price. Google any college tuition and you will see average price paid. It is typically anywhere from 50-75% of sticker price.

chrisseaton 4y ago
I don't think Colorado State is a top-tier college - in a pretty quiet place - no big names - but when I visited it from the UK for a conference I could not believe how nice and polished everything was. Beautiful buildings and spaces. I did some coding in a kind of forum with a large open fire and two-storey glass walls looking out over the snow. Very inspirational. I guess it costs though.
aaomidi 4y ago
Then why is this only mainly a US problem?
- kragen 4y ago
  Student loans make tuition-payers cost-insensitive.
- etempleton 4y ago
  Student loans are easily secured and, relative to the size of the loans, cheap money.
  - listless 4y ago
    This is the reason - because we are lending to anyone and everyone. It’s similar to subprime - no need to prove ability to pay the loan back. Only you can’t discharge student loans with bankruptcy so it’s almost worse in the long run. It’s predatory lending by another name.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  The students (and families) take on the debt. The government backs the debt. The schools get cash.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Yes, the entire problem self resolves by getting rid of > The government backs the debt.
- banannaise 4y ago
  This is how that argument works. You come up with a bunch of logical-sounding explanations for why it must be this way, completely ignoring the material reality that there are numerous working examples of other ways to do it. You keep everything as abstract as possible, and you hand-wave real-world counterexamples as sounding so extreme that they must be highly unusual and therefore irrelevant. And if someone presses the issue, you simply allow it to immediately devolve into bikeshedding, discussing the minutiae of that specific issue while ignoring the larger context. I'm not sure if there's a name for this style of argument, but it happens a lot, particularly in defenses of uniquely or primarily American phenomena.
kragen 4y ago
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined by dorm quality or cafeteria food, much less administrative headcount that harms the educational experience if it has any effect at all on it. If you want what colleges used to be like 50 years ago — more power in the faculty senate, greater academic freedom, more focus on doing research and less on grantwriting, greater freedom to research moonshots, very few adjuncts — you aren't going to find it at small private or public schools that are barely staying afloat.
- bumby 4y ago
  >Colleges with quality gain prestige How do you define quality in this sense?
  - kragen 4y ago
    Teaching and research. But mostly research.
    - bumby 4y ago
      What would you advocate as the best metrics across those domains?
      - kragen 4y ago
        What would you advocate as the best metrics across the domains of literary merit and moral fiber? It sounds like you need to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
        bumby 4y ago
        Ha! As a matter of fact I’m re-reading it at the moment. But as a former reliability engineer, i bristle as Persig’s claim that quality can’t be defined.
bell-cot 4y ago
> You get what you pay for. Yes - loudly signalling that the parents can blow $100K/year on an exclusive country club-cum-college for their kids, and never miss it. Treatment #1 - Immediately start treating the $$$$$$-no-object "colleges" as for-profit luxury resort corporations. Donations NOT deductible, fully subject to property taxes, zero state/federal money for anything, rights to have their own police forces yanked, subject to all SEC regulations, degree-granting powers revoked, etc., etc.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> If people were price sensitive cheap schools would have people busting down the doors to get in. I think government backed so urgent loans are a big reason why people are not price sensitive.
- etempleton 4y ago
  This is very much the case. Consumers are not price sensitive in the US and therefore quality of experience is valued over price. Colleges and universities responded predictably. Not by some grand scheme or even consciously, more so organically.
- bnralt 4y ago
  And we're lending this money to high school students who often have no sense of what it means. These are all amounts that most students have never had to handle before, and they'll be repaid when students are at jobs they've never previously had making more than they could possibly imagine. The whole thing is probably so abstract for them that a lot probably don't grasp what the difference between $8,000 a year tuition and $40,000 a year tuition _actually_ means for their day to day lives. On top of that students are sold the idea that, as the above poster said, "you get what you pay for," and that cheaper schools are somehow worse and will mean they'll earn less money. If you're getting into debt to increase your earning potential anyway, it makes sense that you would try to maximize things. But you're 17, and might not realize that these adults who are in positions of power are likely misleading you. Also, honestly, a lot of 17 year olds don't seem to be able to grasp the idea that debt is something you actually have to pay back (a lot of adults even don't seem to grasp that). What do people think would happen if they gave every 17 year old a credit card? Yet their financial competence is somehow expected to be completely different if we give them a much larger loan?
rayiner 4y ago
Even American community colleges having amazing facilities compared to schools in Europe. It’s a luxury product.
ozzythecat 4y ago
We visited my granddaughter at a Midwest state school last week. I was actually surprised with how beautiful the university grounds were. They likely spend a fortune on landscaping alone. Our older grandson went to the same school studying CS and EE. I’d say he’s doing very well. I agree education is over priced, much like any other investment or asset in this day and age. Perhaps my world view is narrow, but what are examples of these “affordable” schools with spotty wifi? I think the old buildings or drab dorm argument isn’t a huge deal. Call me old fashioned, but I’d prefer my grand kids being safe but having some challenges. Otherwise, we’re keeping them in a bubble. As long as their is climate control and cleanliness, I’m fine with them not getting a 4.5 star hotel treatment.
aerovistae 4y ago
Yet these colleges were nice in 1980 too, before the price of tuition went up 1200% per the graph in the article. I don't think your argument really makes any sense in view of that.
- etempleton 4y ago
  Did they have giant fitness center with a rock climbing wall and full time staff? What about a lazy river with life guards on duty? What about a counseling center or career center? Were the dorms apartments with individual bedrooms per student? How was the food? Were there vegan, gluten free, and nut allergy options available every day? Was the menu set by a chef?
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Yes, at least where I went to school in the early 90s (UCLA)
sam345 4y ago
actually the Wikipedia article itself doesn't support your statement. Even if you take for granted there are some other explanations that contribute to the cost rise, administrative overhead is clearly a big factor and that's the issue that can be addressed and he's tackling, not e.g., the relative difference in productivity of educators and everyone else which is a questionable facto.
wheels 4y ago
That's really not true. Where I went to college has gone from $14,000 to $38,240 in the past 22 years. Inflation would have predicted it be $24,130. That's a private school that back then had a beautiful campus, good food, good wi-fi, a good website and good dorms. (Though, notably, food and dorms don't come out of tuition.) The price increases are massive, across the board, and not obviously linked to quality of facilities. There's definitely something more than you're suggesting at work here.
- etempleton 4y ago
  I would be interested to know what they average net tuition price actually paid is. I suspect it is lower than the sticker price, though 38k is sadly low by today’s standards.
  - wheels 4y ago
    The average annual net price is $26,482, but it was also significantly below sticker price 22 years ago as well. $38k is not low for modern tuition (it's in fact well above average -- though almost exactly average for private liberal arts schools). I have the feeling that you're looking only at elite institutions. At the time I was in college, the place came in around #100 on the list of top liberal arts schools in the country, which while not especially shabby, also wasn't in any way elite. In comparison, the one elite university that I'd applied to back then was $36k/year for tuition, and is now $59k/year. Surprisingly, its tuition has grown at a slower rate.
smeagull 4y ago
My university education was cheap and world class. Look overseas to see how badly America is doing.
giantg2 4y ago
"Why? Because human brains are broken. We connate price with prestige and prestige with quality." Agree. Part of what is enabling this is all the easy money to pay that tuition.
arlort 4y ago
> the food sucks How is this related to tuition? Do you not cook your own food or eat from private restaurants in US universities?

chrisseaton 4y ago

I don't think Colorado State is a top-tier college - in a pretty quiet place - no big names - but when I visited it from the UK for a conference I could not believe how nice and polished everything was. Beautiful buildings and spaces. I did some coding in a kind of forum with a large open fire and two-storey glass walls looking out over the snow. Very inspirational. I guess it costs though.

aaomidi 4y ago

Then why is this only mainly a US problem?

kragen 4y ago
Student loans make tuition-payers cost-insensitive.
etempleton 4y ago
Student loans are easily secured and, relative to the size of the loans, cheap money.
- listless 4y ago
  This is the reason - because we are lending to anyone and everyone. It’s similar to subprime - no need to prove ability to pay the loan back. Only you can’t discharge student loans with bankruptcy so it’s almost worse in the long run. It’s predatory lending by another name.
i_am_proteus 4y ago
The students (and families) take on the debt. The government backs the debt. The schools get cash.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Yes, the entire problem self resolves by getting rid of > The government backs the debt.
banannaise 4y ago
This is how that argument works. You come up with a bunch of logical-sounding explanations for why it must be this way, completely ignoring the material reality that there are numerous working examples of other ways to do it. You keep everything as abstract as possible, and you hand-wave real-world counterexamples as sounding so extreme that they must be highly unusual and therefore irrelevant. And if someone presses the issue, you simply allow it to immediately devolve into bikeshedding, discussing the minutiae of that specific issue while ignoring the larger context. I'm not sure if there's a name for this style of argument, but it happens a lot, particularly in defenses of uniquely or primarily American phenomena.

kragen 4y ago

I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined by dorm quality or cafeteria food, much less administrative headcount that harms the educational experience if it has any effect at all on it. If you want what colleges used to be like 50 years ago — more power in the faculty senate, greater academic freedom, more focus on doing research and less on grantwriting, greater freedom to research moonshots, very few adjuncts — you aren't going to find it at small private or public schools that are barely staying afloat.

bumby 4y ago
>Colleges with quality gain prestige How do you define quality in this sense?
- kragen 4y ago
  Teaching and research. But mostly research.
  - bumby 4y ago
    What would you advocate as the best metrics across those domains?
    - kragen 4y ago
      What would you advocate as the best metrics across the domains of literary merit and moral fiber? It sounds like you need to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
      - bumby 4y ago
        Ha! As a matter of fact I’m re-reading it at the moment. But as a former reliability engineer, i bristle as Persig’s claim that quality can’t be defined.

bell-cot 4y ago

> You get what you pay for. Yes - loudly signalling that the parents can blow $100K/year on an exclusive country club-cum-college for their kids, and never miss it. Treatment #1 - Immediately start treating the $$$$$$-no-object "colleges" as for-profit luxury resort corporations. Donations NOT deductible, fully subject to property taxes, zero state/federal money for anything, rights to have their own police forces yanked, subject to all SEC regulations, degree-granting powers revoked, etc., etc.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> If people were price sensitive cheap schools would have people busting down the doors to get in. I think government backed so urgent loans are a big reason why people are not price sensitive.

etempleton 4y ago
This is very much the case. Consumers are not price sensitive in the US and therefore quality of experience is valued over price. Colleges and universities responded predictably. Not by some grand scheme or even consciously, more so organically.
bnralt 4y ago
And we're lending this money to high school students who often have no sense of what it means. These are all amounts that most students have never had to handle before, and they'll be repaid when students are at jobs they've never previously had making more than they could possibly imagine. The whole thing is probably so abstract for them that a lot probably don't grasp what the difference between $8,000 a year tuition and $40,000 a year tuition _actually_ means for their day to day lives. On top of that students are sold the idea that, as the above poster said, "you get what you pay for," and that cheaper schools are somehow worse and will mean they'll earn less money. If you're getting into debt to increase your earning potential anyway, it makes sense that you would try to maximize things. But you're 17, and might not realize that these adults who are in positions of power are likely misleading you. Also, honestly, a lot of 17 year olds don't seem to be able to grasp the idea that debt is something you actually have to pay back (a lot of adults even don't seem to grasp that). What do people think would happen if they gave every 17 year old a credit card? Yet their financial competence is somehow expected to be completely different if we give them a much larger loan?

rayiner 4y ago

Even American community colleges having amazing facilities compared to schools in Europe. It’s a luxury product.

ozzythecat 4y ago

We visited my granddaughter at a Midwest state school last week. I was actually surprised with how beautiful the university grounds were. They likely spend a fortune on landscaping alone. Our older grandson went to the same school studying CS and EE. I’d say he’s doing very well. I agree education is over priced, much like any other investment or asset in this day and age. Perhaps my world view is narrow, but what are examples of these “affordable” schools with spotty wifi? I think the old buildings or drab dorm argument isn’t a huge deal. Call me old fashioned, but I’d prefer my grand kids being safe but having some challenges. Otherwise, we’re keeping them in a bubble. As long as their is climate control and cleanliness, I’m fine with them not getting a 4.5 star hotel treatment.

aerovistae 4y ago

Yet these colleges were nice in 1980 too, before the price of tuition went up 1200% per the graph in the article. I don't think your argument really makes any sense in view of that.

etempleton 4y ago
Did they have giant fitness center with a rock climbing wall and full time staff? What about a lazy river with life guards on duty? What about a counseling center or career center? Were the dorms apartments with individual bedrooms per student? How was the food? Were there vegan, gluten free, and nut allergy options available every day? Was the menu set by a chef?
- colordrops 4y ago
  Yes, at least where I went to school in the early 90s (UCLA)

sam345 4y ago

actually the Wikipedia article itself doesn't support your statement. Even if you take for granted there are some other explanations that contribute to the cost rise, administrative overhead is clearly a big factor and that's the issue that can be addressed and he's tackling, not e.g., the relative difference in productivity of educators and everyone else which is a questionable facto.

wheels 4y ago

That's really not true. Where I went to college has gone from $14,000 to $38,240 in the past 22 years. Inflation would have predicted it be $24,130. That's a private school that back then had a beautiful campus, good food, good wi-fi, a good website and good dorms. (Though, notably, food and dorms don't come out of tuition.) The price increases are massive, across the board, and not obviously linked to quality of facilities. There's definitely something more than you're suggesting at work here.

etempleton 4y ago
I would be interested to know what they average net tuition price actually paid is. I suspect it is lower than the sticker price, though 38k is sadly low by today’s standards.
- wheels 4y ago
  The average annual net price is $26,482, but it was also significantly below sticker price 22 years ago as well. $38k is not low for modern tuition (it's in fact well above average -- though almost exactly average for private liberal arts schools). I have the feeling that you're looking only at elite institutions. At the time I was in college, the place came in around #100 on the list of top liberal arts schools in the country, which while not especially shabby, also wasn't in any way elite. In comparison, the one elite university that I'd applied to back then was $36k/year for tuition, and is now $59k/year. Surprisingly, its tuition has grown at a slower rate.

smeagull 4y ago

My university education was cheap and world class. Look overseas to see how badly America is doing.

giantg2 4y ago

"Why? Because human brains are broken. We connate price with prestige and prestige with quality." Agree. Part of what is enabling this is all the easy money to pay that tuition.

arlort 4y ago

> the food sucks How is this related to tuition? Do you not cook your own food or eat from private restaurants in US universities?