8 ms·

A bachelor’s degree could cost $10,000 total. Here’s how

48 points by vellum 13y ago

mdturnerphys 13y ago
The LDS (Mormon) Church has a new program for members to get an online bachelor's degree from BYU-Idaho for a total tuition cost of $7,800 [1]. Judging from member/non-member tuition on campus, that's probably subsidized at a rate of 1:1, but even $15,600 isn't too bad. [1] http://www.byui.edu/online/pathway/tuition http://www.byui.edu/online/pathway/tuition
- phamilton 13y ago
  BYU in Provo is still less than $10k tuition over 4 years and is arguably a much more prestigious and well rounded school. Also important is the abundance of merit based scholarships at both schools. I know many people who were on either half tuition or full tuition scholarships their whole 4 years.
  - mdturnerphys 13y ago
    Tuition for members would be $19,400 (8*$2,425) over four years [1]. (I was one of the lucky ones with a full+ tuition scholarship. My wife had a half-tuition athletic scholarship, which was essentially full-tuition because her dad is faculty so she only had to pay half.) [1] http://finserve.byu.edu/content/tuition-and-general-fees http://finserve.byu.edu/content/tuition-and-general-fees
tokenadult 13y ago
From the article: "So why not do it? "Kamenetz's plan doesn't lack for details. An as-yet unpublished appendix lays out exactly where spending at Cohort Colleges and Adult Online Us would go, down to the instructor salary level. But it also would uproot thousands of workers in the higher ed sector and radically change the careers of those who remained. Kamenetz acknowledges the concern, but thinks reform is too important to not do something drastic. "'I recognize the political pain involved, but the purpose of public higher ed is to educate people, not to employ them,' she e-mails. 'One of the travesties of the current system is the percentage of classes taught by low-paid adjuncts. I envision a system that might have fewer jobs, but they're better jobs.'" And my comment on that is that this always requires political courage. To make a large government appropriations plan (and higher education is often the second or third largest budget category in a state budget) work, you have to keep your eye on the people who are supposed to be served by the program. But the people who are employed by the program will almost always be more organized to lobby for their benefit before the state legislature, especially because they can use purported benefits to students as a fig leaf for demands for more administrators and less checking of the effectiveness of how higher education is delivered. Most of the suggestions in the article seem sound. They also sound rather radical compared to what is usually proposed to improve the bang for the buck of colleges in the United States. It will be interesting to see how much uptake there is of any of these ideas.
trg2 13y ago
Link to the non print-friendly version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/26/a-bachelors-degree-could-cost-10000-total-heres-how/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/26/a...
jlgaddis 13y ago
This -- and other similar -- ideas are great and certainly feasible. Unfortunately, it'll never happen because there's simply too much money involved in the academic world. The people running the educational institutions, the people running the corporate world, and the people running government are all good friends and none of them want to do anything to screw over the other.
- gojomo 13y ago
  Sure, they can deprive the idea of state funding, and discriminate against it in credential-centric systems. But ultimately, if you can manage a nearly-as-good (or in some cases, better) education, for $10K true out-of-pocket cost rather than $200K+, then eventually a lot more people will complete, and be loyal to, the $10K system than the legacy $200K+ one.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- aspensmonster 13y ago
  Fohr a dollah fifty at the public librahry.
aspensmonster 13y ago
How? Lower prices. Tuition+Fees used to hover around 10k total at public institutions.
- beagle3 13y ago
  The high prices are a symptom. The cause is cheap student loans: Since it is easy to get a loan, people will borrow as much as needed to get to the highest tier institution that will accept them. The private ones can thus increase their prices, and lure the staff with higher salaries. Now the public institutions need to level up salaries of professors and administrators, or they will leave for the private institutions. That has been happening over the last 20 years. Remove the government guarantees for student loans and make them dischargeable in bankruptcy (that is, return their status to a normal loan, from the special status that they have now) - and all of a sudden, lenders will start caring about making reasonable loans, people will have less credit to spend on education, and the prices will go down significantly to a reasonably supported level. (It is likely to cause an implosion of the higher-ed bubble in the US in the process. So be it - popping this bubble is long overdue)
  - mjburgess 13y ago
    or just federally cap tuition fees
  - uptown 13y ago
    Quartz has some great charts showing the outstanding US Student Debt: http://qz.com/search/student+debt http://qz.com/search/student+debt
    - aspensmonster 13y ago
      http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/outstanding-us-student-debt-in-trillions-of-_chartbuilder.png?w=1024&h=576 http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/outstanding-us-stu... That's depressing.
- volkadav 13y ago
lnanek2 13y ago
Kind of a non-sensical article that conflicts with itself: 1. spend less on admins and have massive class sizes 2. spend less on sports, food, dorms, and other perks 5. cut most of the majors vs. 3. oh, wait, another school reduced costs by spending more on personal instruction and having micro size classes because students actually graduated with less trouble - let's do that too! 4. offering more variety in learning methods actually proved successful, not less, so do that too!
lostlogin 13y ago
This is what it cost me in New Zealand - with the fairly notable exception of the taxes I now pay to help others though their degrees.
- beagle3 13y ago
  May I ask how much your taxes are? People in NYC or California making $200K/year often pay >40% (getting close to 50% if you are in the $300K/year range) of their salary in taxes (33-35% federal, 8-13% state, and then there's sale tax. And estate tax) and get no reasonable-cost tuition nor reasonable-cost healthcare. Every time this discussion comes up, US people are quick to quote federal tax rates but when I compared actual rates in NYC and CA, it seems like americans pay comparable taxes, and get nothing in return. How does NZ fair in this respect? What's the real tax like (remember sales tax / vat), and what do you get for it?
  - mappu 13y ago
    Income tax is around 30-35% depending on income. There's a 15% GST applied at point of purchase, so you don't really notice it, and if you're a business it can be claimed back. The NZ Government provides free student allowance (a few hundred dollars per week living allowance for your first 4? years of tertiary education, means-tested against your parents' income, not paid back) as well as interest-free student loans (for as long as you stay within the country).
    - lostlogin 13y ago
      I agree with all this. Just one addition - fuel is taxed quite a lot and in many places here a car is a necessity as public transport is poor. Its a bit over $2 per litre. Edit: Property taxes are about $2k per year on an average house in Auckland. An average house is about $500k in Auckland as the New Zealand love of property makes the market rather expensive when compared to income. I'm using NZ dollars.
coyotebush 13y ago
Alternate degree structures and modes of instruction are definitely worth exploring. Points #1 and #5, though, would likely not go over well with current university faculty. Reshuffling of faculty roles seems much better designed by those with classroom/advising experience. And who's to judge which are similar or niche fields of study, besides departments themselves?
willchilcutt 13y ago
How about go to an in-state school, get a scholarship (many go unclaimed every year), and get an on campus job? I, along with many people I know, got paid to go to school this way. Why people are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year/semester is beyond me.
- Romoku 13y ago
  I never got the whole scholarship thing. All of the websites that advertise them sound like scams. I'd prefer to get an online bachelor's degree if they existed.
  - willchilcutt 13y ago
    Most schools have lists of scholarships that are applicable to the school. No need to go to third party websites.
- bane 13y ago
  Taking it further, do you first two years at a community college then transfer 100% of your credits to the local state school and start there as a Junior.
- pwthornton 13y ago
  What years did you attend? College costs have risen sharply, especially as states cut funding to state institutions.
  - willchilcutt 13y ago
    2009-2012
mrxd 13y ago
Is there any data showing that the cost of college is increasing? I know the price (i.e. tuition) is increasing, but this is due to colleges increasing tuition rates to make up for shortfalls as state budgets for higher education are cut. But I haven't seen any data showing that the costs have risen. It's also worth noting that the #2 suggestion is mostly just an accounting trick that would increase the price to students, not decrease it. If "perks" like room and board aren't provided out of tuition, students will have to pay for that somehow anyway - they're necessities, not perks. And removing state subsidies for those things means that students will be paying even more, if you add up tuition + room + board.
- lelandbatey 13y ago
  I've got absolutely no data to support this, so make no mistake that this is anything other than the wildest speculation: The feeling that's "in the air" is that what's really happened is buildup of too much management in the school systems. There seem to be far more "managers" per professor than there were before, and those managers are being paid far to much, especially in comparison to the professors doing the actual teaching. It's pretty classic: most large-ish universities have marketing departments (or hire marketing departments), large non-educational functions and services that take up tremendous man power, overly large "cultural" aspects like sports, and many more. The cost of educating hasn't really changed, but that's not what most universities are focused on doing anymore.
  - mrxd 13y ago
    This article[1] from the WSJ shows that administration varies between 3-10% of education spending. So probably not a significant driver. [1]:http://graphics.wsj.com/documents/NONCLASS1212/ http://graphics.wsj.com/documents/NONCLASS1212/ Unless there is data showing otherwise, I would argue that costs haven't changed, only the price. The cost of providing education in 2013 at University of Washington is a little less than it was in 1990: $16,800 vs. $17,000. The difference is that in 1990, the state paid for 82%, where today it pays 29%.[2] That's where your tuition increases are coming from. [2]:http://www.washington.edu/discover/budget/ http://www.washington.edu/discover/budget/
ballard 13y ago
Or $0, if the sheepskin, corrected homework and grades won't matter. Audit classes at the large institution of your choice means just sitting in on whatever lectures you like. In big lecture halls, even with attendance, it's really quite simple to go unnoticed. Interactive classes JD/MBA might get dicey, but otherwise the worst that can happen is you get thrown out. BFD. Also, Coursera, Udacity, OCW, Kahn and iTunes Pluses of going legit: - dorm life is a unique experience unlike any other, worth it just for that - parties - according to Thomas J. Stanley, college is by far the best place to meet a quality spouse - monetize pizza [0] - pedigree if it's a big name or hipster elite school - paid internships - hustle yourself into a paid ugrad research assistant gig - connections - meet potential cofounders Hazards: - alcohol spending - textbook costs (buy used and sell them back) - dorm food -> "freshman 30" - all-nighters - unpaid internships - min wage jobs on campus [0] http://m.reviewjournal.com/business/economy/better-slice-hsieh-traces-genesis-business-operations-pizza http://m.reviewjournal.com/business/economy/better-slice-hsi...
- prostoalex 13y ago
  Not all degrees can be attained by reading a book and passing a test. Chemistry, physics, medical school and others all require labs and pretty expensive equipment.
- L_Rahman 13y ago
  I've found that the smallest classes at my school have also been the most rewarding. Sure you could sit in every day on my morning Thermo lecture and go unnoticed, but I've learned very little in that class that I couldn't already get out of an excellent textbook. On the other hand Pharmacokinetics meets once a week in the professor's office. He also happens to be one of the leaders of the field. For two hours a week we get to discuss complex pharmacokinetic practices, ask open ended questions and, as he would say "learn how to learn". Museum Display Theory also meets once a week off campus with the head curator of the city art museum and today we discussed Foucault's Panopticon as it relates to museum curation. These are things worth paying for, or as in my case, working hard enough to get financial aid for.
  - 13y ago
glesica 13y ago
Universities are like any large organization, mission drift occurs and keeping your customers happy can means offering non-core services in a bundle. I think the real trouble is that college is still awesome for people who can afford it. It's like anything in capitalism, whatever the people who can pay want is what happens. I read an article awhile back that discussed how one of the private schools in NYC was building new luxury student housing and sending limos to pick students up from the airport, that's about as far from these recommendations as you can get. The point is that change isn't going to come from the elite schools, not real change. They may offer online programs and such, just dabbling really, but they have no trouble attracting wealthy students and donors, so they have no real incentive to radically change what they are doing. At best, they may tack on some extra programs under different names that just further cement the inequality in education we have in the US. So, change needs to come from the bottom, from the small state schools and community colleges whose students are struggling to fund their educations. But state schools are on strict budgets, and small ones have small endowments. So real change won't come from there either because those institutions can't afford to make such radical changes, they literally don't have enough money. All they can do in many cases is what they've been doing in the past until they can't do that any more and then they can close up shop. Either way, I personally have a pretty bleak view of the future of higher education in the US.
OldSchool 13y ago
$10K Isn't too far off from what tuition for my EE degree cost in the late 80's. Even adjusted for real inflation it shouldn't be a penny more than $20K, possibly as low as about $15K today. That was of course at a state school. The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing. The same phenomenon is responsible for almost all bubbles in modern history. Interest rates dropped and qualification criteria got loose and house prices tripled in some areas, also rising in almost all. VC's got sloppy and we had the dot-com bubble. The serious problem facing America today is that easy money is already flowing yet this bubble is also called "barely getting by as a nation."
- jseliger 13y ago
  The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing. Based on my reading of Archibald and Feldman's book Why Does College Cost So Much?, that doesn't seem to be the case: their data show that Baumol's Cost Disease is the real culprit.
- ImprovedSilence 13y ago
  Even the price of state schools vary wildly these days. I graduated from a large state school in 07. In-state tuition there is now double from when I was enrolled. DOUBLE. In five years.
gph 13y ago
How I plan on getting a bachelor's degree for ~15k. 1. Go to a community college in a county that you are a resident for your two-year associates. The money I'm getting from Pell grants is paying my 18-credit hours per semester tuition right now (Roughly $120 per credit hour tuition). Books on top of that are costing me about 300 a semester (buy cheap old editions as much as possible). I've gotten scholarship money to cover that, and I'll also get Tax credit money. 2. Transfer to an in-state 4-year public university. Tuition rates will double for me during this transition, but YMMV (I'm in Maryland FYI). The hike in tuition will cost me about 7k a year for two years. Hence ~15k out of pocket for a degree. Moral of the story: If you really want a premier education where you will be learning from those on the forefront of research, by all means spend 100k at an elite private college. If you want to be part of academia or research projects this is probably the route you have to take. If instead you know what career you are going into and you have a desire to learn those skills on your own, then go the cheap route and just get the piece of paper to prove to HR you are worthy of a job. *Obviously some careers might not fit this model, but I'd guess most people throwing money away at private universities could go this route with the same basic outcome.
- daguar 13y ago
  Applying that strategy in California works superbly well; I've known a number of folks who took advantage of the community college system here and then transferred to Berkeley or UCLA and have a top-tier credential for a fraction of the cost of an equivalently-reputed institution.
- austenallred 13y ago
  Yeah, my bachelor's degree would cost about $10,000 if I went to all four years (Mormon BYU student)
- ahallock 13y ago
  This is exactly what I did for my BS in Comp Sci. I finished my degree at SUNYIT in Utica, NY, which at the time, offered the last two years of your bachelor's degree, dovetailing nicely with community college. Final cost was about 16k. I remember people scoffing at community college, but don't pay attention to the elitism; you're being prudent.
gojomo 13y ago
Economist Garrett Jones has observed that by the signalling-theory of education, the race for ever-more-degrees is an individually-attractive but net-socially-destructive activity, almost like pollution… and generally you don't want to subsidize pollution: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/degree_pollutio.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/degree_pollutio.... As a few of the comments there note, this could actually form an argument for taxing rather than subsidizing schooling. I believe the reasoning can be refined (as my bottom-most comment there notes): actual education still has positive social externalities. It's the granting of prestigious, rationed credentials that leads to the negative-sum competition, institutional rents, and growing costs. So maybe, we could subsidize education… but tax credentials. The unbundling of education and assessment, as is happening with online offerings and could be further encouraged by policy, could make this easier.
mebreuer 13y ago
The education that Kamenetz describes could be offered for free at wikipedia.org. By removing research, extracurriculars, sports, and on-campus living, she is paring a university education down to a simple exchange of knowledge, which is free online. These things all add to the essence of college, a place to transition from a child to an adult. The value of college is not what you learn in classes, but the personal development you go through by taking leadership positions in student organizations and pursuing passions with other young thinkers. University is expensive because it's an adult development camp in addition to a knowledge exchange. The most expensive camps produce well developed, open minded individuals who are generally better positioned to succeed. I'd be surprised if I'm using anything I learned in a classroom even 5 years out of college, but the lessons learned outside the classroom will stay with me for life.
Totient 13y ago
My problem with the online course idea (aside from the fact that this is pretty much already available) is that it lacks interactivity. The only reason I went to half of my lectures as an undergrad was because I could ask questions and get an near instant, expert response. And sure, it's possible to pause a video lecture and look something up, but in my experience, it's just not the same. If I'm trying to understand something for the first time, and a part of the lecture just doesn't quite make sense, I want the transaction cost of clarifying a point to be as low as possible.
oakaz 13y ago
10.000? Is this affordable for people who make no money? We're talking about people aged 18-22. Do they make money? How the hell is it fair to elect people by the wealth of their families?! Come on people! Don't you see the huge discrimination? This system is a blood sucker. Please demand a real change instead of dealing with it
- aet 13y ago
  $10,000/k for a Bachelor's equates to about $15 per a class period. At a class size of 30 that is $450 per class in revenue for the school. A professor spends 2 hours a week doing prep, 2 hours a week in office hours, 2 hours grading and 2 hours in class. Lets say overhead is 40%. That is equivalent to ~$30 dollars an hour to teach a class at 8 hours a week. Teach four classes and you are at ~40 hours a week. That puts you at about $50K a year after taxes. Most professors teach 1 or 2 classes a semester to leave time for grad students and research. --- are my assumptions way off here? 2 classes would mean $25k a year -- poverty line for family of 4.
  - oakaz 13y ago
    oh, dude, seriously, there is no school outside of US, right?
    - aet 13y ago
      IT is a Washington Post story about universities in the U.S. -- but okay, change the currency, doesn't matter.
      - oakaz 13y ago
        Sorry, but, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you know the amount of the universities that you can study for free? Dozens. and I mean: no fee at all. I studied in three of them. And one of them was a great university with a lot of foreign students. Teachers were quite good. And I was also served high quality food (much better than the garbage you pay for every day) for free, every morning, noon and evening. Open your eyes bro. Not so many people are able to pay thousands to the schools. And my point here is to tell your kind of god damn middle class; start considering everybody. Don't be one of those fucking selfish dicks.
hobzy 13y ago
Have young american students looking for a university ever thought of studying abroad ? I mean hell, my (swiss) bachelor's degree costs 580$ a semester, so 3480$ ... Add 1160$ and you have a Master's degree. Average salary is between 84K$ - 96K$ / year when I'm done. Even with a foreign diploma they can come back to the US if they want to work there.

48 points by vellum 13y ago

The LDS (Mormon) Church has a new program for members to get an online bachelor's degree from BYU-Idaho for a total tuition cost of $7,800 [1]. Judging from member/non-member tuition on campus, that's probably subsidized at a rate of 1:1, but even $15,600 isn't too bad. [1] http://www.byui.edu/online/pathway/tuition http://www.byui.edu/online/pathway/tuition

phamilton 13y ago
BYU in Provo is still less than $10k tuition over 4 years and is arguably a much more prestigious and well rounded school. Also important is the abundance of merit based scholarships at both schools. I know many people who were on either half tuition or full tuition scholarships their whole 4 years.
- mdturnerphys 13y ago
  Tuition for members would be $19,400 (8*$2,425) over four years [1]. (I was one of the lucky ones with a full+ tuition scholarship. My wife had a half-tuition athletic scholarship, which was essentially full-tuition because her dad is faculty so she only had to pay half.) [1] http://finserve.byu.edu/content/tuition-and-general-fees http://finserve.byu.edu/content/tuition-and-general-fees

tokenadult 13y ago

From the article: "So why not do it? "Kamenetz's plan doesn't lack for details. An as-yet unpublished appendix lays out exactly where spending at Cohort Colleges and Adult Online Us would go, down to the instructor salary level. But it also would uproot thousands of workers in the higher ed sector and radically change the careers of those who remained. Kamenetz acknowledges the concern, but thinks reform is too important to not do something drastic. "'I recognize the political pain involved, but the purpose of public higher ed is to educate people, not to employ them,' she e-mails. 'One of the travesties of the current system is the percentage of classes taught by low-paid adjuncts. I envision a system that might have fewer jobs, but they're better jobs.'" And my comment on that is that this always requires political courage. To make a large government appropriations plan (and higher education is often the second or third largest budget category in a state budget) work, you have to keep your eye on the people who are supposed to be served by the program. But the people who are employed by the program will almost always be more organized to lobby for their benefit before the state legislature, especially because they can use purported benefits to students as a fig leaf for demands for more administrators and less checking of the effectiveness of how higher education is delivered. Most of the suggestions in the article seem sound. They also sound rather radical compared to what is usually proposed to improve the bang for the buck of colleges in the United States. It will be interesting to see how much uptake there is of any of these ideas.

trg2 13y ago

Link to the non print-friendly version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/26/a-bachelors-degree-could-cost-10000-total-heres-how/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/26/a...

jlgaddis 13y ago

This -- and other similar -- ideas are great and certainly feasible. Unfortunately, it'll never happen because there's simply too much money involved in the academic world. The people running the educational institutions, the people running the corporate world, and the people running government are all good friends and none of them want to do anything to screw over the other.

gojomo 13y ago
Sure, they can deprive the idea of state funding, and discriminate against it in credential-centric systems. But ultimately, if you can manage a nearly-as-good (or in some cases, better) education, for $10K true out-of-pocket cost rather than $200K+, then eventually a lot more people will complete, and be loyal to, the $10K system than the legacy $200K+ one.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

aspensmonster 13y ago
Fohr a dollah fifty at the public librahry.

aspensmonster 13y ago

How? Lower prices. Tuition+Fees used to hover around 10k total at public institutions.

beagle3 13y ago
The high prices are a symptom. The cause is cheap student loans: Since it is easy to get a loan, people will borrow as much as needed to get to the highest tier institution that will accept them. The private ones can thus increase their prices, and lure the staff with higher salaries. Now the public institutions need to level up salaries of professors and administrators, or they will leave for the private institutions. That has been happening over the last 20 years. Remove the government guarantees for student loans and make them dischargeable in bankruptcy (that is, return their status to a normal loan, from the special status that they have now) - and all of a sudden, lenders will start caring about making reasonable loans, people will have less credit to spend on education, and the prices will go down significantly to a reasonably supported level. (It is likely to cause an implosion of the higher-ed bubble in the US in the process. So be it - popping this bubble is long overdue)
- mjburgess 13y ago
  or just federally cap tuition fees
- uptown 13y ago
  Quartz has some great charts showing the outstanding US Student Debt: http://qz.com/search/student+debt http://qz.com/search/student+debt
  - aspensmonster 13y ago
    http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/outstanding-us-student-debt-in-trillions-of-_chartbuilder.png?w=1024&h=576 http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/outstanding-us-stu... That's depressing.
volkadav 13y ago

lnanek2 13y ago

Kind of a non-sensical article that conflicts with itself: 1. spend less on admins and have massive class sizes 2. spend less on sports, food, dorms, and other perks 5. cut most of the majors vs. 3. oh, wait, another school reduced costs by spending more on personal instruction and having micro size classes because students actually graduated with less trouble - let's do that too! 4. offering more variety in learning methods actually proved successful, not less, so do that too!

lostlogin 13y ago

This is what it cost me in New Zealand - with the fairly notable exception of the taxes I now pay to help others though their degrees.

beagle3 13y ago
May I ask how much your taxes are? People in NYC or California making $200K/year often pay >40% (getting close to 50% if you are in the $300K/year range) of their salary in taxes (33-35% federal, 8-13% state, and then there's sale tax. And estate tax) and get no reasonable-cost tuition nor reasonable-cost healthcare. Every time this discussion comes up, US people are quick to quote federal tax rates but when I compared actual rates in NYC and CA, it seems like americans pay comparable taxes, and get nothing in return. How does NZ fair in this respect? What's the real tax like (remember sales tax / vat), and what do you get for it?
- mappu 13y ago
  Income tax is around 30-35% depending on income. There's a 15% GST applied at point of purchase, so you don't really notice it, and if you're a business it can be claimed back. The NZ Government provides free student allowance (a few hundred dollars per week living allowance for your first 4? years of tertiary education, means-tested against your parents' income, not paid back) as well as interest-free student loans (for as long as you stay within the country).
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    I agree with all this. Just one addition - fuel is taxed quite a lot and in many places here a car is a necessity as public transport is poor. Its a bit over $2 per litre. Edit: Property taxes are about $2k per year on an average house in Auckland. An average house is about $500k in Auckland as the New Zealand love of property makes the market rather expensive when compared to income. I'm using NZ dollars.

coyotebush 13y ago

Alternate degree structures and modes of instruction are definitely worth exploring. Points #1 and #5, though, would likely not go over well with current university faculty. Reshuffling of faculty roles seems much better designed by those with classroom/advising experience. And who's to judge which are similar or niche fields of study, besides departments themselves?

willchilcutt 13y ago

How about go to an in-state school, get a scholarship (many go unclaimed every year), and get an on campus job? I, along with many people I know, got paid to go to school this way. Why people are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year/semester is beyond me.

Romoku 13y ago
I never got the whole scholarship thing. All of the websites that advertise them sound like scams. I'd prefer to get an online bachelor's degree if they existed.
- willchilcutt 13y ago
  Most schools have lists of scholarships that are applicable to the school. No need to go to third party websites.
bane 13y ago
Taking it further, do you first two years at a community college then transfer 100% of your credits to the local state school and start there as a Junior.
pwthornton 13y ago
What years did you attend? College costs have risen sharply, especially as states cut funding to state institutions.
- willchilcutt 13y ago
  2009-2012

mrxd 13y ago

Is there any data showing that the cost of college is increasing? I know the price (i.e. tuition) is increasing, but this is due to colleges increasing tuition rates to make up for shortfalls as state budgets for higher education are cut. But I haven't seen any data showing that the costs have risen. It's also worth noting that the #2 suggestion is mostly just an accounting trick that would increase the price to students, not decrease it. If "perks" like room and board aren't provided out of tuition, students will have to pay for that somehow anyway - they're necessities, not perks. And removing state subsidies for those things means that students will be paying even more, if you add up tuition + room + board.

lelandbatey 13y ago
I've got absolutely no data to support this, so make no mistake that this is anything other than the wildest speculation: The feeling that's "in the air" is that what's really happened is buildup of too much management in the school systems. There seem to be far more "managers" per professor than there were before, and those managers are being paid far to much, especially in comparison to the professors doing the actual teaching. It's pretty classic: most large-ish universities have marketing departments (or hire marketing departments), large non-educational functions and services that take up tremendous man power, overly large "cultural" aspects like sports, and many more. The cost of educating hasn't really changed, but that's not what most universities are focused on doing anymore.
- mrxd 13y ago
  This article[1] from the WSJ shows that administration varies between 3-10% of education spending. So probably not a significant driver. [1]:http://graphics.wsj.com/documents/NONCLASS1212/ http://graphics.wsj.com/documents/NONCLASS1212/ Unless there is data showing otherwise, I would argue that costs haven't changed, only the price. The cost of providing education in 2013 at University of Washington is a little less than it was in 1990: $16,800 vs. $17,000. The difference is that in 1990, the state paid for 82%, where today it pays 29%.[2] That's where your tuition increases are coming from. [2]:http://www.washington.edu/discover/budget/ http://www.washington.edu/discover/budget/

ballard 13y ago

Or $0, if the sheepskin, corrected homework and grades won't matter. Audit classes at the large institution of your choice means just sitting in on whatever lectures you like. In big lecture halls, even with attendance, it's really quite simple to go unnoticed. Interactive classes JD/MBA might get dicey, but otherwise the worst that can happen is you get thrown out. BFD. Also, Coursera, Udacity, OCW, Kahn and iTunes Pluses of going legit: - dorm life is a unique experience unlike any other, worth it just for that - parties - according to Thomas J. Stanley, college is by far the best place to meet a quality spouse - monetize pizza [0] - pedigree if it's a big name or hipster elite school - paid internships - hustle yourself into a paid ugrad research assistant gig - connections - meet potential cofounders Hazards: - alcohol spending - textbook costs (buy used and sell them back) - dorm food -> "freshman 30" - all-nighters - unpaid internships - min wage jobs on campus [0] http://m.reviewjournal.com/business/economy/better-slice-hsieh-traces-genesis-business-operations-pizza http://m.reviewjournal.com/business/economy/better-slice-hsi...

prostoalex 13y ago
Not all degrees can be attained by reading a book and passing a test. Chemistry, physics, medical school and others all require labs and pretty expensive equipment.
L_Rahman 13y ago
I've found that the smallest classes at my school have also been the most rewarding. Sure you could sit in every day on my morning Thermo lecture and go unnoticed, but I've learned very little in that class that I couldn't already get out of an excellent textbook. On the other hand Pharmacokinetics meets once a week in the professor's office. He also happens to be one of the leaders of the field. For two hours a week we get to discuss complex pharmacokinetic practices, ask open ended questions and, as he would say "learn how to learn". Museum Display Theory also meets once a week off campus with the head curator of the city art museum and today we discussed Foucault's Panopticon as it relates to museum curation. These are things worth paying for, or as in my case, working hard enough to get financial aid for.
- 13y ago

glesica 13y ago

Universities are like any large organization, mission drift occurs and keeping your customers happy can means offering non-core services in a bundle. I think the real trouble is that college is still awesome for people who can afford it. It's like anything in capitalism, whatever the people who can pay want is what happens. I read an article awhile back that discussed how one of the private schools in NYC was building new luxury student housing and sending limos to pick students up from the airport, that's about as far from these recommendations as you can get. The point is that change isn't going to come from the elite schools, not real change. They may offer online programs and such, just dabbling really, but they have no trouble attracting wealthy students and donors, so they have no real incentive to radically change what they are doing. At best, they may tack on some extra programs under different names that just further cement the inequality in education we have in the US. So, change needs to come from the bottom, from the small state schools and community colleges whose students are struggling to fund their educations. But state schools are on strict budgets, and small ones have small endowments. So real change won't come from there either because those institutions can't afford to make such radical changes, they literally don't have enough money. All they can do in many cases is what they've been doing in the past until they can't do that any more and then they can close up shop. Either way, I personally have a pretty bleak view of the future of higher education in the US.

OldSchool 13y ago

$10K Isn't too far off from what tuition for my EE degree cost in the late 80's. Even adjusted for real inflation it shouldn't be a penny more than $20K, possibly as low as about $15K today. That was of course at a state school. The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing. The same phenomenon is responsible for almost all bubbles in modern history. Interest rates dropped and qualification criteria got loose and house prices tripled in some areas, also rising in almost all. VC's got sloppy and we had the dot-com bubble. The serious problem facing America today is that easy money is already flowing yet this bubble is also called "barely getting by as a nation."

jseliger 13y ago
The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing. Based on my reading of Archibald and Feldman's book Why Does College Cost So Much?, that doesn't seem to be the case: their data show that Baumol's Cost Disease is the real culprit.
ImprovedSilence 13y ago
Even the price of state schools vary wildly these days. I graduated from a large state school in 07. In-state tuition there is now double from when I was enrolled. DOUBLE. In five years.

gph 13y ago

How I plan on getting a bachelor's degree for ~15k. 1. Go to a community college in a county that you are a resident for your two-year associates. The money I'm getting from Pell grants is paying my 18-credit hours per semester tuition right now (Roughly $120 per credit hour tuition). Books on top of that are costing me about 300 a semester (buy cheap old editions as much as possible). I've gotten scholarship money to cover that, and I'll also get Tax credit money. 2. Transfer to an in-state 4-year public university. Tuition rates will double for me during this transition, but YMMV (I'm in Maryland FYI). The hike in tuition will cost me about 7k a year for two years. Hence ~15k out of pocket for a degree. Moral of the story: If you really want a premier education where you will be learning from those on the forefront of research, by all means spend 100k at an elite private college. If you want to be part of academia or research projects this is probably the route you have to take. If instead you know what career you are going into and you have a desire to learn those skills on your own, then go the cheap route and just get the piece of paper to prove to HR you are worthy of a job. *Obviously some careers might not fit this model, but I'd guess most people throwing money away at private universities could go this route with the same basic outcome.

daguar 13y ago
Applying that strategy in California works superbly well; I've known a number of folks who took advantage of the community college system here and then transferred to Berkeley or UCLA and have a top-tier credential for a fraction of the cost of an equivalently-reputed institution.
austenallred 13y ago
Yeah, my bachelor's degree would cost about $10,000 if I went to all four years (Mormon BYU student)
ahallock 13y ago
This is exactly what I did for my BS in Comp Sci. I finished my degree at SUNYIT in Utica, NY, which at the time, offered the last two years of your bachelor's degree, dovetailing nicely with community college. Final cost was about 16k. I remember people scoffing at community college, but don't pay attention to the elitism; you're being prudent.

gojomo 13y ago

Economist Garrett Jones has observed that by the signalling-theory of education, the race for ever-more-degrees is an individually-attractive but net-socially-destructive activity, almost like pollution… and generally you don't want to subsidize pollution: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/degree_pollutio.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/degree_pollutio.... As a few of the comments there note, this could actually form an argument for taxing rather than subsidizing schooling. I believe the reasoning can be refined (as my bottom-most comment there notes): actual education still has positive social externalities. It's the granting of prestigious, rationed credentials that leads to the negative-sum competition, institutional rents, and growing costs. So maybe, we could subsidize education… but tax credentials. The unbundling of education and assessment, as is happening with online offerings and could be further encouraged by policy, could make this easier.

mebreuer 13y ago

The education that Kamenetz describes could be offered for free at wikipedia.org. By removing research, extracurriculars, sports, and on-campus living, she is paring a university education down to a simple exchange of knowledge, which is free online. These things all add to the essence of college, a place to transition from a child to an adult. The value of college is not what you learn in classes, but the personal development you go through by taking leadership positions in student organizations and pursuing passions with other young thinkers. University is expensive because it's an adult development camp in addition to a knowledge exchange. The most expensive camps produce well developed, open minded individuals who are generally better positioned to succeed. I'd be surprised if I'm using anything I learned in a classroom even 5 years out of college, but the lessons learned outside the classroom will stay with me for life.

Totient 13y ago

My problem with the online course idea (aside from the fact that this is pretty much already available) is that it lacks interactivity. The only reason I went to half of my lectures as an undergrad was because I could ask questions and get an near instant, expert response. And sure, it's possible to pause a video lecture and look something up, but in my experience, it's just not the same. If I'm trying to understand something for the first time, and a part of the lecture just doesn't quite make sense, I want the transaction cost of clarifying a point to be as low as possible.

oakaz 13y ago

10.000? Is this affordable for people who make no money? We're talking about people aged 18-22. Do they make money? How the hell is it fair to elect people by the wealth of their families?! Come on people! Don't you see the huge discrimination? This system is a blood sucker. Please demand a real change instead of dealing with it

aet 13y ago
$10,000/k for a Bachelor's equates to about $15 per a class period. At a class size of 30 that is $450 per class in revenue for the school. A professor spends 2 hours a week doing prep, 2 hours a week in office hours, 2 hours grading and 2 hours in class. Lets say overhead is 40%. That is equivalent to ~$30 dollars an hour to teach a class at 8 hours a week. Teach four classes and you are at ~40 hours a week. That puts you at about $50K a year after taxes. Most professors teach 1 or 2 classes a semester to leave time for grad students and research. --- are my assumptions way off here? 2 classes would mean $25k a year -- poverty line for family of 4.
- oakaz 13y ago
  oh, dude, seriously, there is no school outside of US, right?
  - aet 13y ago
    IT is a Washington Post story about universities in the U.S. -- but okay, change the currency, doesn't matter.
    - oakaz 13y ago
      Sorry, but, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you know the amount of the universities that you can study for free? Dozens. and I mean: no fee at all. I studied in three of them. And one of them was a great university with a lot of foreign students. Teachers were quite good. And I was also served high quality food (much better than the garbage you pay for every day) for free, every morning, noon and evening. Open your eyes bro. Not so many people are able to pay thousands to the schools. And my point here is to tell your kind of god damn middle class; start considering everybody. Don't be one of those fucking selfish dicks.

hobzy 13y ago

Have young american students looking for a university ever thought of studying abroad ? I mean hell, my (swiss) bachelor's degree costs 580$ a semester, so 3480$ ... Add 1160$ and you have a Master's degree. Average salary is between 84K$ - 96K$ / year when I'm done. Even with a foreign diploma they can come back to the US if they want to work there.