Also bear in mind - while still pricy, higher education in Canada is leagues cheaper than in the US. My degree from UofT - usually internationally ranked among or at least near the Ivy Leagues - was about $5000 a year.
So I’m not sure this belongs in the same category of educational institution excess or Bermuda Triangle of finance stuff you’re talking about.
Thats the problem though right? "Paying for itself" means students paying higher costs which is the problem.
That was the upshot of the second paragraph of my post - in Canada, students don’t pay an absurd amount, so it’s not really a problem.
You don't need a lot of space for dance halls and music studios for under 2000 students. People add sound insulation to existing rooms at relatively low cost and it's cheaper when your starting from scratch.
So, in terms of education they really could have done the same thing for under 50 million, but why build a utilitarian box when you want to attract students.
The school only has 20k student population and music students are going to other buildings. So, it's not simultaneously unless you mean as an audience.
I mean sure it looks nice, but that price tag is not due to utility. 60 million still pays for a huge building even at 1/3 the cost.
A building that has studio space for 1800 should be much cheaper, building costs should be on the order of $500/student/year to keep tuition reasonable.
1. Students are price insensitive for college if they don't have to pay for it up front.
2. Banks are incentivized to loan unlimited money to students because the federal government guarantees the loans with zero exceptions-- the bank gets repaid no matter what, so it's very low risk.
3. Colleges and universities are incentivized to increase tuition, because the demand curve is almost completely flat because of 1 and 2.
The solution seems obvious to me: stop guaranteeing student loans, and stop subsidizing them. But nobody want to do it because it's political suicide.
I like that this works for both readings.
If you say to yourself "Obviously the solution is to eliminate federally backed student loans" that's political suicide because it means most people can't have a tertiary education (even if at some future date this chance means the institutions charge less than today)
If you say to yourself "Obviously the solution is to make tertiary education free at point of use" that's political suicide because it means a big tax hike to pay for it, plus either an unprecedented interference by the state in the operation of non-state entities offering education OR the state builds loads of extra institutions in competition with those pre-existing non-state establishments.
Of course, never say never, twenty years ago who'd have guessed major US politicians would be saying actually maybe we should just have single payer healthcare?
https://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/montgomery_bill.asp
Bonus points.. you learn skills/trades/work-ethic/survival-skills/basic-medical-training, and will be useful in an emergency for the rest of your life.
My brother recently built a house, and the taxes and fees from the local city council are sky high. Of course, the city council did just build themselves a lavish new office building for $20M that looks like it belongs in a contemporary art museum.
It's no secret if they had just built a nice and functional building with the same office space for $10M everyone would be paying less city rates. But that's not how our world works.
So although some may think that things like music studios are not a necessity, they are in this case.
No one said it was unnecessary; the GP questioned why it needed to be "state of the art".
It seems logical for out-and-out fraud to muscle in on "pork" situations. The university is building a status symbol, as much for the prestige of the administration as for any use. They're likely sending the contract to "friends" since they're clearly not terribly concerned with cost-benefits. So you wind-up with a bunch of money just bleeding out with little oversight. And so someone takes even more "initiative" and just scams some of those millions away. Maybe that someone even had some acquaintance with the whole scheme.
Yes, overt crime thrives in a situation of "generalized corruption".
That said, institutions are quick to exploit this romanticism and things start to lose perspective.
$180MM / (20 yrs x 1800 people) = $5000/yr/person
Is that unreasonable?
It's the end result of applying capitalism to all human activities. Schools have to compete for students and they do so with activities that prospective students and parents will respond to. It's also why health care costs are higher when privatized, they're similar "markets".
I would argue both extremes work: free education works (see Europe), completely capitalistic education should also work. But America doesn't apply captitalism to education. Schools have all the pressure of competition you describe, but normally the lifetime profitability of gaining a degree as would put a reasonable ceiling on education costs (outside of elite institutions for the rich and gifted). But in the US, student loans with their subsidies and special legal status remove monetary restrictions from the market, allowing most people to pay whatever the schools ask for. And for the supply side of any capitalist market it is only rational to raise prices to what the market is willing and able to pay.
In a free, unsubsidized, unpriviledged market for student loans we wouldn't see massivley rising education costs. Social mobility might be even worse though, so free education is likely still superiour.
Why does a college need a building that costs a large fraction of a billion dollars? Early this week we had an article about college education costs being one corner of the "Bermuda triangle" of personal finance. Out of control spending on new, shiny things is part of the problem, I think.