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A comment on More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years. Parent comment

Re:More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest nu... by ativzzz on Thursday January 13, 2022 @12:13PM (#29923404)
> 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

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.

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Re:More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest nu... by whimsicalism on Thursday January 13, 2022 @12:16PM (#29923474)
Also, prices aren't visible before hand, so it is more difficult for price competition to work.

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.

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Re:More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest nu... by ativzzz on Thursday January 13, 2022 @12:32PM (#29923758)
> 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.

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Re:More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest nu... by whimsicalism on Thursday January 13, 2022 @01:12PM (#29924342)
No, I think public prices would definitely make things cheaper. It would also incentivize keeping bureaucracy lean, there is little to no price incentive to do so now.
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