> let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else

The state schools already do this. It's called "out of state tuition". For example, UC Berkeley charges California residents $14k/yr tuition while everyone else pays $44k/yr. Not surprisingly, the number of out of state students admitted to the UC system is increasing every year. [0]

[0]https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-plannin...

I am picturing the same thing but 14k vs, say, 500k.

The problem is at some point in the future the university only accepts the actually paying kind of students. This is already an issue for the UC system.

Is grade inflation for rich students really an issue at many colleges? Most majors at most colleges are honestly not that hard. Anyone who shows up and does a modicum of work can skate by with a gentleman's C.

At D1 schools the football and basketball programs generate huge revenue, which is used to subsidize less popular sports (particularly women's teams under Title IX). For better or worse a lot of prospective students care about sports and it's a factor in making colleges more attractive.

Grade inflation for everyone is an issue at most colleges. Grades should reflect your credibility in a subject, and should be roughly normalized across subjects. But because they are so important for the rest of one's career, they end up being heavily pressured towards A's -- which results in careers not paying as much attention to them because they're widely understood to be not meaningful. A better world would see the degree itself as marking credibility in the subject, and grades + GPAs not mattering outside of admissions into higher-education or honor programs -- and 'blow-off' degrees removed entirely.

and --

Lots of people care about sports but that's partly cause lots of people in the past cared and baked it into our culture. It's still a perverse misalignment of incentivizes -- education should be about education; university should be about education + social development + various other forms of development. The American university system is largely about sports and partying for lots of people and I hope no one thinks that's healthy. I don't necessarily think the big sports should be cut, but there's no reason in 2020 that a university should regularly have people who are there on, like, golf scholarships. Universities should certainly take remarkable people of all walks of life -- but the emphasis on sports is insanely beyond what is appropriate.

>But because they are so important for the rest of one's career

Seriously?

I'd never even thought about mentioning college grades _in my country_ and if somebody e.g during interview tried to use tham as strong argument then I'd consider it as a red flag

why anybody competent would need to brag about something unreliable as grades?

I wasn't saying that the grades themselves are important for the rest of anyone's career. They're important for determining what happens to you right after school -- how good of a grad school or job you get -- which has exponential returns for the rest of your life.

For people getting their first job it's the difference between getting an interview or not.

> [grades] are so important for the rest of one's career

This isn't really true beyond specific gates (college admission, grad school administration) and for a couple of years after you graduate. 5 years after graduation no one looks at someone's college grades.

> Lots of people care about sports but that's partly cause lots of people in the past cared and baked it into our culture.

What does this mean? Sport is baked into culture but that's because people still like it. And the changing popularity of different sports (eg MMA 25 years ago vs today) shows that this isn't some forced behavior - people like watching and participating.

> What does this mean?

I meant, the reason college sports are such a big deal in America is that they've been growing for decades with the support of tuition, donations, etc -- which is due to the perverse state of American university system. It didn't necessarily have to end up like this, but it would be hard to undo it now because it has become so important to so many people.

* allow people to pay millions to go to college; allow this to fund student aid for other students. Explicitly stop using it to build buildings

Most elite colleges (not the UCs though) offer 100% need-based aid to accepted students and are need blind in the admissions process. This comes directly from the endownment or the rich alumni and donors already.

* stop having all of these overfunded and weirdly inappropriate sports institutions as a core part of academia.

I completely agree.

* stop with massively-inflated grades that allow the rich-but-undercapable kids to graduate with the appearance of successful academics. They can buy their way in but they have to do as well as everybody else after that.

They do have to do as well as everyone else. Grade inflation is a school-wide phenomenon, but GPA in general is a poor indicator of academic performance: all of the prospective med school students at my school are being advised to apply to colleges which practice grade inflation. The grading system at colleges is taken into account by graduate and preprofessional programs.

* ensure that the influx of money from rich kids' applications doesn't go to administrators in any way, as that would incentivize them to over-prioritize these people.

The admissions office is somewhat decoupled from the rest of the institution, and receive fixed salaries -- this problem does not exist.

> 100% need-based aid to accepted students

With the little weird caveat that poor students at top institutions have to work doing things like cleaning the bathrooms of the richer kids as part of their "term-time work expectation" for receiving financial aid.

I have never seen or heard of that happening. My brother goes to an Ivy on a fully need based scholarship

At Harvard at least, there is a "dorm crew", comprised mostly of poorer students meeting their term-time work requirements that come with finaid, that is responsible for cleaning the in-suite bathrooms.

I think I recall recently reading that some schools might have finally eliminated the requirement (maybe, Yale?) but I'm not sure. It was definitely the case at Harvard as of ~March 2020. (but probably not for this year for obvious reasons!)

Yale has a `student income contribution`, where students on finanical aid are expected to work in some term-time jobs. However these jobs are virtually all administrative (doing paperwork, making calls, etc.), research or teaching assistant-ships. I have not heard of poorer students doing any cleaning.

Here's a brief article on the practice https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/8/dorm-crew-tweets...

> The admissions office is somewhat decoupled from the rest of the institution, and receive fixed salaries -- this problem does not exist.

It's not the admissions office that that was targeted at. The donations today go to programs, buildings, etc -- things that involve lots of administrative staff and leaders who are payed executive-level salaries. This should all be going to support students and educators.

> I'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it.

That's true until the University is so rich that it no longer has any need to acquire any more money. Harvard has a $40 billion investment fund. No amount of rich kids are going meaningful move the needle there. At that point, why bother selling spots to rich kids at all? If you're worried about bribery, why not just literally ban students whose parents are wealthy?

Wealth is one parameter, another is influence.

Harvard benefits from the prestige of its alum network, and admitting the children of wealthy parents ensures a certain level of influence/access to said parent.

> If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else.

The correct way to do this is via marginal tax rates.

What makes it 'correct'?

Taxes are the fairer way for society’s rich to help the poor.

Letting rich people choose who to subsidize results in them building up their own tribes.

Obviously government has some of the same risks, but theoretically, at least they can be countered with laws requiring transparency and allowing for corrective actions if problems are found.

Elite universities have limited enrollments to maintain their exclusivity.

Admittance is a zero sum game, someone paying to get in doesn't subside another student they take their spot.

"let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else."

This is also known as a progressive taxation system.

That's not correct. Taxation is one of many ways that some people's money support other people; we're talking about a different one.