I just checked it out because I remember that a very small part of even Ivy League students pay sticker price.

[0]: https://www.collegedroid.com/colleges/yale-university/cost

https://www.rit.edu/admissions/aid/costs#2018-2019-estimated...

Please don't phrase it that way. College was free or nearly free in many parts of the country, especially California before Reagan removed funding. From what I can tell, the push towards private sector funding has only made college more expensive.

College used to be viewed as a public good in America, which means that an educated populace contributed more to society than the cost of its education (which is self-evidently true). In the 80s, republicans made the argument that it was unfair for non-attendees to subsidies attendees (which I agree with upon shallow inspection). This backfired (as predicted by democrats) by creating profit opportunities where none previously existed. So we ended up where we are today, with ballooning debt loads and artificial scarcity in college availability but only marginally more students attending.

What we should have done instead was adjust public education from k-12 to k-16 to compete with the rest of the world. We should have aimed for full attendance and built the campus infrastructure needed to accomplish that.

I think this can still be done, but it starts with getting everyone on the same page. Especially in STEM fields, so that we can provide the innovation needed to get back to providing full educations in liberal arts. That will prepare us for the coming automation age post-2040 where the remaining work available is in humanities (like on Star Trek).

This only applies to retail buyers; governments and corporate sponsors pay the full fare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_affili...

[1] Through the Excelsior Scholarship: (a) SUNY: https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/types-of-financial-aid/schol... (b) CUNY: https://www2.cuny.edu/financial-aid/scholarships/excelsior-s...

I'd rather see the U.S. spend a trillion dollars making sure there are good public colleges within commuting distance of 90% of Americans than a trillion dollars forgiving student loans (and then the U.S. should get out of the student loan business!).

Basic research will probably suffer, but that seems not to be a concern of the people running those institutions into the ground. I do hope we can find some way to encourage competent people to do large volumes of basic research, and aggressively reproduce studies which are cited.

Americans buy altogether too much education: you can buy all the mechanical keyboards you want, but you'll still have to actually learn to type.

So basically education cost grows only slightly faster than median income. Given the biggest portion of the cost is human capital, this makes economical sense.

reference: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149575704/the-1940-census-72-...

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N [1] https://finaid.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/EA_FYYE_Cl... [2] https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4074-the-cost-of-yal...

How many workers actually have the capability of choosing between vastly different fields? There are dozens of factors that lead to people choosing career paths in the short, medium, and long term. Evidence in support of this Baumol effect is at best a correlation and not really an explanation or causation.

This has the unintended consequence that universities can keep raising tuition and you have to pay it. They will keep raising tuition far in excess of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_an...

He vetoed an earlier form of the bankruptcy bill in 2000.

Notably Elizabeth Warren lobbied against this bankruptcy bill in one of her major forays into national politics.

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/11/731370440/democratic-presiden...

He did sign the Higher Education Amendment in 1998, however that was bipartisan and near unanimous in both Congress. That bill introduced federally funded work study, and new types of loans such as PLUS and Perkins loans which did likely contribute to the cost inflation. It appears support for increased financialization of education went across the aisle at that time.

Weirdly, attempts to roll back these ridiculous restrictions have been bipartisan, too. In 2007, Hillary Clinton tried to restore the 7 year limit, and right now there's some Republican senator whose name I can't remember pushing a bill that would eliminate the hardship test.

Bankruptcy prevents banks and schools from shunting all the risk onto students. Given the state of higher ed, going to school isn't a guaranteed paycheck, and they need to stop lending like it is. This will hopefully force schools to control tuition costs.

Or we can just make college free. :)

So the goal was not successful, but the consequences is as bad as ever. The mistake made by Clinton now has this major issue that's being discussed by the Democratic presidential nominees. https://time.com/5613425/student-loan-forgiveness-bernie-san...

I suspect the better solution would have been Clinton not screwing up in the first place; but better yet until this is fixed the tuition problem will continue to be worse and worse.