If I were college-age and I were planning on going to college I would certainly do one of two things. I would postpone college until the COVID issues died down -or- I would use the fewer applicants to get into a more prestigious school banking on a better 3 year experience (out of 4) starting in the fall of 2022 and more impressive degree going forward. Either way, I can imagine admittance numbers falling off.
For me it's been a drastically different experience compared to my in-person undergrad. Whereas my Bachelor's degree was full of camaraderie and formative life experiences, my Master's has been more or less bereft of social or personal growth and focused entirely on course material. This is okay for me since my primary goal is to develop a deeper technical background, but I would not recommend such an experience for your average 18 year old kid who is about to start their first university experience.
Apart from the labs, I do not see a reason to go to college to learn.
You just described a campus.
And my online classes were explicitly taken online, with professors who had done online stuff before, not hastily moved online in the midst of a pandemic. Knowing how computer-averse some of my professors were, I can only imagine the transition to online was rough, and I bet I'd be scared away from online classes in college if I had to go through high school like that, even if I got a full ride.
And, as others have said, going to college isn't just for the degree. Yes, that's a big part of it (the expensive piece of paper at the end), but just being able to be away from your parents really helps you grow up and become independent.
Universities are moving into a new space by taking so much online, and people will realize that some institutions are better at this than others. MOOCs can be done well, but it is largely not those traditional institutions that will be doing that.
I'm very interested to see if some education disruptors come out of this time.
https://thetech.com/2021/03/18/regular-admissions-2025
Tuition has doubled since I went there, but at least they can afford good financial aid for those who can get in.
Education is primarily a prestige product. Secondarily, the social and alumni effects of the network around you when you attend. Thirdly, it is the college campus experience. Fourthly, it is what you actually learn.
If you just price the value of each of these four pieces, the dynamic in the market is completely explained. Community college still provides learning, but not much on the other three factors. That is, it has become poor value for the fees it charges despite them being lower in absolute terms than prestige schools.
But if you’re going to a second-tier state university I really wonder if any of those students are getting a positive payback.
Couldnt it just be wanting to waive fees for those it would help? How are they supposed to only waive fees for those who have a shot at getting in?
The problem is, the pandemic has been in full swing for the past two application seasons, and you can only take so many gap years.
There is a large backlog of very talented students. It's not a good time to be an applicant.
What would you do instead?
Where the hell is the money _going_?
Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money? Are they publicly traded and distributing dividends? Are they building rockets?
I know some of it goes back to financial aid, and some goes to football coaches...
But we're talking about so much freaking money, and I just can't visualize where it's going.
1970-71: $81,798
2018-19: $88,703
Mean salary of American college and university presidents in 1983: $160,640 (2018 dollars).
Median compensation of private college and university presidents in 2018: $668,000.
Median compensation of public college and university presidents in 2019: $495,808
More, and primary source links:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/03/university-admi...
"ALL FIGURES ARE INFLATION-ADJUSTED INTO CONSTANT 2018 OR 2019 DOLLARS."
Much of the growth in administration is driven by a significant rise in the costs to comply with federal regulation. Those regulations are not bad--it's the cost of complying with things like disability laws, Title IX, etc--but they require collecting and reporting significant amounts of data, and that isn't free.
There's other stuff too; some colleges do have the lazy rivers and fancy dorms, many colleges lose money on their football program, etc. But those aren't the fundamental drivers.
By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the money is definitely NOT going to faculty salaries. Salaries for full-time faculty have been stagnant for decades even though an increasing percentage of classes are taught by poorly-paid adjuncts.
Similar things happen in healthcare. My SO works in pharma and the amount of red tape they are required to navigate significantly increases the complexity of their administrative work and decreases the cost-efficiency of their business, partially passing on the costs to the price of drugs.
Again, like you said, the regulations are not bad (like regulating the types of communication they can have with doctors), but there is a price to pay to keep them.
Also, medical profession trade unions/cartels (aka AMA) constricting the labor market for medical work.
These things probably could actually be resolved by governmental regulation.
They could, but I wonder if it would actually improve the state of things. We would then need to increase the size of the bureaucracy (in the government and in each institution that does any of these things) to meet these regulations, and given that a bureaucracy becomes less efficient with size it may not actually make things any cheaper.
Then there are other leaks, like $50k/yr hosting bills for a CMS serving under 200k pageviews per day, or other ancillary a11y compliance tools that cost nearly as much. If there is budget, it has to be spent.
At this point, my feeling is that the local maximumizations that have driven us to this point are irrecoverable. There is no “fixing” this system. It will carry on for a while yet out of momentum, but something disruptive will dethrone it eventually.
The one place is almost certainly not going its faculty salaries. The industry's shift to adjuncts has been great for university endowments but terrible for those who got their PhD in the last couple decades
My point is I don’t think the money is going to university teaching staff at least…
There is so many overspending problems its not even funny - and yet the people actually teaching the classes are TA's, probably getting $20K/year, while the professors work on their 'research' and are rarely available to students.
Starting to think the whole higher-education model is hopelessly broken.
The vast majority of college sports programs in the U.S. are losing a lot of money for the school. They are operating at a detriment to the school's main goal of learning.
Also a Universities goal of learning is research, not teaching, especially not undergrad teaching.
Maintaining physical health is huge, but the demographic that needs to be targeted is lower performance level that club sports. Even THOSE are quite competitive. Even the (very fit) people who participate often cease physical activity and healthy eating soon after graduation.
On the other hand, subsidizing college gym facilities does tend to reach most of the student body. Required athletics classes is even more effective and pays long-term dividends (if they haven't been canceled due to COVID by now). But even more-so than that, consistent physical activity for grade school and high school would be even better from a whole society perspective.
When I was an undergrad in the mid 1990s, the dorms were square rooms with cinderblock walls, concrete floors, metal frame beds, and a simple desk, the cafeteria was like an oversized high school cafeteria, and the gym was a basic weight room. A couple of years ago I received a brochure from my alma mater asking for donations and showing the modernized campus - the dorms were now luxury apartments, the cafeteria was a gourmet eatery, and the gym looked like a Lifetime.
I'd bet a lot of it comes down to how modern values are implemented.
Being kind and embracing meritocracy should be completely free.
But adding a department of "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" isn't.
Where football coaches have very large salaries (EDIT: compared to peer schools), those salaries are paid by athletic department revenue and boosters.
They are. Why wouldn't they? Kids and parents can get massive loans from the government, it would be silly for universities and all their admin staff to pass up the opportunity to enrich themselves.
Universities have started to compete on which ones have more gyms, clubs, luxury dorms, various interest groups. Well, the basket weaving club needs an instructor, a secretary, a janitor, a new facility, a maintenance person for it etc. Some of them may be friends and cousins of the existing administrators, but you're not supposed to notice that too much.
I couldn't stop laughing when I visited my alma mater, a decade later and seeing how they had build a brand new gym with a huge lazy river around it. In my head I could hear the enthusiastic tour guide "Your child can type their homework while floating around in a lazy river, isn't that great!". But then, of course, I realized that it was my tuition that has paid for the lazy river.
On one hand, I am not sure I agree. My son is going to the same state university I went to, and it's substantial more expensive, but they 've also built a ton of infrastructure that I find questionable.
On the other hand, I don't really have data and when I look for it I find articles like https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig... :
"Deep state cuts in funding for higher education over the last decade have contributed to rapid, significant tuition increases and pushed more of the costs of college to students, making it harder for them to enroll and graduate."
I’d take that with a big grain of salt. They love to play up this angle but I just don’t see where funding has been cut at the same rate as tuition has increased.
I remember back when I was in school, one year the state government asked for some belt-tightening, to the tune of a 2% budget cut. Y’know, asking the school to go back to the budget they had like two years prior. The admin started going nuclear, “there’s no fat in our budget, these cuts will go straight to the bone!”, saying they’d have to cut the entire music department, 10% of all class sections, etc. Even got the students riled up enough to march on the capitol building. Even at the time, being significantly less jaded than I am now, I knew this was complete BS. Ever since I’ve been very wary of this narrative that colleges are driving up tuition because of state budget cuts. And it didn’t help shake my belief when I went back to campus a few years later and saw that they did a complete renovation of the library to include multiple gaming kiosks (!) and other such creature comforts.
Simply put, the schools can basically charge whatever they want and students will pay because any 18 year old with a pulse will get approved for unlimited money so long as it goes toward college. Put limits on student loans and you’ll see the situation change quickly.
TL;DR it's like a shiny name plaque for billionaires.
Also such donations kind of guarantee your kids will get into the university, so some additional perks are there too
https://247sports.com/LongFormArticle/Ranking-college-footba...
As far as where it goes, I think a ton goes into new buildings and amenities. I went to Auburn a decade ago and the campus looks completely different. Everything is new and shiny. I assume there are also a ton of administrators.
I remember when my public college was banned from starting new building projects due to state wide budget restrictions. The year the ban was lifted, half a dozen projects immediately kicked off.
Sports team boondoggles are a popular way to spend tuition money.
Administrative salary and staffing bloat.
To be fair, this kind of means that universities should be completely public. And although they are for all intents and purposes, in theory they are still non-governmental entities. And that's strange as well.
Most public state schools keep their pricing in line with these caps ($35k in loans + ~$5k in grants). I just picked on Iowa because, and here's a list I found:
https://www.universityreview.org/iowa-colleges/
You'll notice that in-state tuition for all public state schools is around $8k a year. Here's the same for Tennessee:
I believe this only applies to the subsidized federal student loans that don't collect interest while you're in school. The limit on unsubsidized federal loans that start collecting interest right away is much higher.
When I started college in 2009, I got $9,000 in federal student loans for my freshman year.
Perhaps you were classified as a independent student?
And no, they do NOT make good money.
Giving out loans with no cap on how much schools can charge and with no ability-to-repay check is a recipe for catastrophe.
I think option 2 is the best equitable outcome but is probably politically unsavory given the heterogeneity in public school costs/quality across states (which typically aligns with political divides).
Either society puts their money where their mouth is and actually pays for people to be educated, or they can choose to keep taxes lower and let people fend for themselves. Either of these options is fine, but the bullshit blank check taxpayer funded loans non dischargeable in bankruptcy is only good for politicians and taxpayers today at the expense of taxpayers and members of society tomorrow.
We know college can be cheaper, Brigham young goes for 5k/yr, European and Canadian schools still charge less than 10k/yr.
This is partly true. The US also DID use to subsidize more University tuition.
However: Agreed. The loans are dumb. They feed into the issue in exactly the way you describe. They should be interest free as long as you are making regular payments.[1]
> Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less...
This is so thorny... I have a younger cousin, and what he ended up doing was going to a community college for two years, then transferring. It worked out well for him! But it was a gamble.
When I was in school my parents were very obsessed with me "having the college experience" even though we were much less well-off than they were in uni and were not able to support me financially[0]. I say this to point out: I am not advocating for this. College should not be fun! If it is: Great! Glad you had a good time. But that is not necessarily the reality you should expect.
However: I have noticed a lot of people made a lot of friends in Uni, and those develop into professional relationships later in life.
Additionally, if you are an ambitious person, going to community college has the risk of failing to prepare you for higher level university teaching.
Finally: I am an extremely extroverted person. I found the community aspect of going to class, studying with friends, etc. extremely helpful in my motivation and understanding of the material. I've tried to do the MIT classes and such, but it rarely sticks.
0: Not their fault, not whining. Shit happens!
EDIT:
1: AS A VERY MODERATE ACCOMMODATION. I'm not advocating for this policy as the end-all-be-all, but I feel like this is a very reasonable suggestion.
If you wonder why Democrats get so hesitant to do anything about the situation there is one of your reasons why. (there are alot more reasons but thats a decent reason)
I’m not American, but there are lots of stories on here I’ve seen of people being able to dual enroll in a local community college or university in grades 11/12 and shorten the time spent in college.
The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad. But absent Sallie Mae (or Navient, whatever it is now) students would be paying whatever Harvard or Stanford asked, and that would determine pricing for the next tier of schools.
Of course students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs and research opportunities. But asking someone who might have been getting $5/week allowance to figure out how much a newer dorm is worth when the prices are in the 10s of thousands is an impossible task. They don't know how much money is worth.
And then to tell them that they can't discharge it in bankrupcy because they knew what they were getting into is very much bullshit.
And I don't say all this because I have student loans. I was very lucky, I went to a state college with a full tuition scholarship. But I've seen a lot of my peers struggle with student loans because teenagers don't understand fiscal policy, and shouldn't be expected too.
I have a vested interest in this problem. But saying popular things for upvotes isn't going to change the underlying problem of how to allocate scarce resources.
I disagree with you on "teenagers don't understand fiscal policy, and shouldn't be expected too.". This isn't fiscal policy. This is a pretty straightforward introduction to being an adult and budgeting. I went through it, too. A mortagage was harder and more daunting. Rental terms on apartments were more predatory. The fact that people even discuss bankruptcy to discharge student loan debt is a horrible sign, given how much of ones' life potential one i throwing away to recover prime loan eligibility.
Also, "And then to tell them that they can't discharge it in bankrupcy because they knew what they were getting into is very much bullshit." - what part of where I wrote, "The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad" is unclear?
If I give you two loan options with bad terms and you have to choose one, then that is a fiscal policy thing and your choice is ultimately pretty inconsequential. You may be slightly better off than the person who made the other choice but the bad policy is affecting both of you.
Ultimately it's both a policy and a personal choice thing, but as with most society-wide issues the personal choice aspect falls away pretty quickly and we need to get realistic and figure out what a solution is instead of just blaming individuals.
It doesn't really matter what students "prefer", if a bank doesn't do their due diligence and a student isn't able to repay their loan, then the bank should be losing that money as a bad investment. They won't give a $1M mortgage loan to buy a 50k lot, and likewise won't give it to someone that doesn't seem like they could pay it back. I do think there's value in people getting degrees that don't pay well - but then you shouldn't be getting a loan to do so.
> students would be paying whatever Harvard or Stanford asked
I don't think this is true - people simply can't go to a school they can't afford and people don't have infinite money. We gave the banks the freedom to tell children that they will indeed be able to pay back loans that they often cannot, so it's the bad actions of one organization(banks) enabling another(school). Ivy league schools may be like Veblen goods where increased prices also increase demand - but that can't be true for all schools and we've seen tuition increases across the board.
The solution that seems best to me is to first fix the bankruptcy issue - if someone can't pay back a loan that is a risk the bank is accepting by giving the loan, just like any other loan. I think that alone would probably have enough of a chilling effect that way less people would be able to attend colleges at first and they would be forced to lower tuition rates. That would correct the market going forward, but it doesn't really help people that already fell victim to this system. That seems like it could be remedied by either making interest rates 0 or capping total interest to some amount relative to the principal (e.g. the total amount can never grow to more than 110% of the principal).
Similar to healthcare, I don't think education shouldn't be profitable in the short term - it's a long term investment a society has to make in itself so you can't really track it as an individual investment in any one person. If someone else becomes a doctor I'm still benefitting from that so it makes sense that I'd pay into some of the cost to educate that person. Unfortunately in the US at least we seem to be totally unable to do anything without a short-term and concrete path to profit regardless of the amount of good it would do.
I wonder what groups of people might be harmed by such a policy, but I would bet it won’t be middle and upper class families who are willing to co-sign for loans.
Changing that in isolation would almost definitely have an effect where low income families can't afford college. I see that as a gap the govt should be filling either through public colleges or directly funding people to go to school, probably both. The core issue I see here is we're letting private companies make bad investments without liability, into something that probably shouldn't be profit-driven to start with
Research is usually grant funded.
Research may be funded. But research salaries are high as are facility costs and upkeep. There are numerous costs to support a top tier research program and maintain it that are not covered by grants.
Unrelated question: does "Cal" mean Berkeley here? Do you really need to "supplement it with self-teaching"? I don't really understand why state schools are viewed that way, since Berkeley consistently ranks world top-10.
That’s very true for mortgages, but in my experience this isn’t how student loans work. Nobody I knew before college had any idea what their loans would cost on a monthly basis once they went into repayment, and I don’t think it was disclosed to me (or I forgot).
Also unlike my mortgage, my loans have trivially changed repayment plans. I changed some of them several times based on my economic circumstances without refinancing, which makes nailing down a single payment kind of hard, even if the interest rate hasn’t changed.
I would not want to be on the team that does a risk assessment with these facts as inputs, because the results would be politically untenable.
I was simply pointing out the most politically hot topic that such a risk assessment would run into, but if you prefer to put class first that is your prerogative. Of course, with even a small amount of research you might find that these issues tend to collide and ethnicity is what gets talked about the most. You might also find out that the disparate rate of repayments between ethnicities is perhaps the leading issue for those who favor debt forgiveness, many of whom frame it as a civil rights issue [0][1][2][3].
That said, it's perhaps a moot point because Biden's not forgiving anything, and the way things are looking I don't imagine Congress will any time soon either.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/us/black-borrowers-debt-study...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/06/us/black-student-loan-crisis/...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-20/calls-for...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/66percent-of-black-borrowers...
Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less than $50k/yr so try going to Cal and/or your best local public school and supplement with self teaching (e.g. via public/free lectures from MIT)? The self directed learning/motivation is the hard part for many people of that age, but few have said living frugally should or would be easy.