Yup, they increased tuition without increasing tuition by making every student pay an additional fee which, in my case, added roughly 10% (not to mention the other fees) to help pay for a stadium we didn't need. They literally funded the stadium in part by students taking out non-dischargable loans.
Since then, administrative and real estate bloat has only gotten worse. The whole system needs a drastic re-think if it is to become a public good.
Maybe something where students cannot graduate until they achieve a successful score on a test in their profession. Annual tuition is set by, and split among, the professors of the classes they take. A 10% overhead on the tuition would go to the school. The professors who best enabled passing the test would be able to demand the most money. I look at what I wrote and realize this is sounding like the model of Coursera, Udacity, etc.
If someone wants to go to a college to learn to play a sport then there should be a college for that sport. I think perhaps that is what's perceived to be missing.
Lots of colleges have mixed curriculums. So if you go to college to major in some sport and minor in mathematics then... shouldn't the college have all of the tools to allow you to learn your major? And if you go to college to major in mathematics and minor in some sport then... shouldn't the college have all of the tools to allow you to learn your minor?
Perhaps the real problem is a college that has their own tools -- their own sports complex, their own stadium, their own laboratory, their own microscopes. A college shouldn't be able to opt-out of using government-owned stadiums or government-owned laboratories. Except... how will the schedule of the college work with the public? It seems like there could be a lot of conflicting schedules and events; public stadiums need to be available to the public and not monopolized by the college. Public laboratories need to be available to the public and... wait do we even have public laboratories?
There's lots of problems with our education system. This is just a symptom :)
What I don't care one bit for is the professionalization and commercialisation of collegiate athletics. It becomes a detraction, a purpose unto itself which should be made separate from the school.
Why? Such a policy is either regressive, or inefficient. If you do like the Germans do and limit college enrollment to what the economy really needs (1/4 of the population, maybe less than that), then you have middle class people subsidizing upper middle class and rich people. If you open up college to everyone like America is trying to do, then you generate huge amounts of waste. In America, half of bartenders have a college degree, and that's without free tuition!
limits are based on the capacities of each university. if the demand grows then capacities need to be expanded.
the big difference is that universities do not decide who qualifies. anyone with a highschool diploma qualifies automatically. but not every student enters high school. many students instead learn a trade after middle school.
The root of the problem is that a career is treated like a product. It's a product that you won't know whether it's good or bad until you graduate four years later or more. The job market changes faster than this, and a lot students find themselves changing careers later to adjust to market demand, and in some cases they just can't get a job in the field at all.
One potential solution here, is have companies pay for schools. The way it would work is that companies hire new grads and they pay some form of education insurance. If you can't get a job within a certain time period, the school should take the loss, until you get the job later. This would force schools to rethink what they're offering.
Ideally, tuition shouldn't exist in the first place. Certainly not for ostensibly "public" schools.
If not, then a subsidy that provides universities only charge 5% of income to $50k, 10% of annual net income per year if making up to $150k, then 20% of any net income exceeding $150k. Add a break to deduct from taxable income the tuition donated to a blind trust scholarship up to a certain amount. That scholarship is then used to offset high achievers for whom college tuition might still be a burden. That gives universities a fair share of money while still allowing everyone to go to college.
If it keeps going the way it's going, the only people who will be able to go to anything other than a community college are those whose parents are making in excess of $200k per year. Mind you community college is often a great education, but you don't get the extra opportunity benefits you would at a university: increased networking, professors who can demand a higher salary (come of these will work at community colleges because they want to), wider range of curriculum, more research opportunities, easier to get published.