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Re:The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis by katmannthree on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @07:31PM (#21001123)
Short answer: Because they can.

Longer answer, according to the universities: Because modern students demand more than just classes, they also want social services (on-site counseling, bias incident response teams, etc).

Longer answer, according to a cynic: Because universities are more or less guaranteed the money from the federal government, they've grown to spend the money on inflated administration. As costs go up the government allows students to borrow more and more to cover the costs, and universities find ways to jack up their prices to match the money on the table. While the government loaning poor students money to better themselves with an education is a great thing in theory, I think it's what directly lead to the current situation. I don't want to turn this into a long post against capitalism, but I think that the unfettered capitalistic worldview we have here in the US is the root problem.

Re:The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis by bluedino on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @07:36PM (#21001151)
A project will grow to fill the timeline, and departments will grow to fill the budget
Re:The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis by hinkley on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @08:20PM (#21001366)
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. -Oscar Wilde (And Civ IV)
Re:The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis by mooselumps on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @10:29PM (#21001963)
> I think that the unfettered capitalistic worldview we have here in the US is the root problem.

It seemed to me like the government subsidizing the market in stark contrast to unfettered capitalistic principles is the root of the issue.

Perdue’s income sharing plan mentioned in the article seemed really interesting off the cuff.

I think it would have been really beneficial had I been required to create a pitch deck to get financing for my education.

Re:The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis by katmannthree on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @03:08AM (#21003009)
ISAs are definitely interesting, it's nice to see a system that incentives the school to deliver value to its students.

>It seemed to me like the government subsidizing the market in stark contrast to unfettered capitalistic principles is the root of the issue.

My opinion was apparently unpopular, but I'm not claiming that the government is the cause of the problem. Instead I'm claiming that the government's noble effort is subverted by the fact that the schools care about maximizing immediate profits more than altruistic goals like building healthy strong societies. The cause of skyrocketing costs is, in my opinion, the simple fact that the schools seek to maximize their revenue and since there's no government-sponsored damping (as that would go against capitalist principles) we get a feedback loop as the government tries to educate its populace.

Re:The Long Road to the Student Debt Crisis by gnusty_gnurc on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @08:16AM (#21004514)
It’s too controversial to raise the idea that both super-expensive sectors (education and healthcare) are both heavily regulated and funded through government. Most act like it’s a mad-max capitalist free-for-all already when in fact it’s quite the opposite.