The problem here is the sheer cost of college. Since college is so damn expensive, it creates a lot of risk aversion. You can't flunk a student or take away their scholarship because they'll end up with a lifetime's worth of debt without any degree. That's potentially life ruining. College as a whole is way more risky. The baby boomer idea of using college to explore one's passions becomes untenable when a single year costs 80k.
The paradox here is that while college is extremely expensive, it's also still very much a gateway to white collar, middle class life. So you end up with a lot of students who are forced into college by their parents, who don't really want to be there, and who need decent grades. So yeah, they're not going to study that hard. To avoid this, we need cheaper college, and more routes into the middle class that don't involve college.
You don't get to have that though. College could be cheaper in a past era, because in some ways it was the byproduct and not the actual product. Byproducts can be sold cheaply, because the main product is where the profit center lies. But byproducts are also really limited... there was just enough for 5-10% of the population to attend. When that was asked to be scaled up to something approaching 100%, the original supply could not handle it. And if you do scale up for a byproduct, it's no longer the byproduct. Turns out it was costly. Someone has to pay.
That's not even the only mechanism at work causing costs to spiral out of control. If universities have to compete to persuade students to attend their own campus rather than some rivals, it seemed really expedient to build nicer dormitories. One lady I worked with described that when she attended back in the 1940s, it was four students sharing square footage that sounded like a closet to me. The modern dorms at the local university are now about x6 the square footage, but only house 2 students. They're much more nicely furnished, larger, and have more amenities. But not just the dorms... the grounds are nicer. Lots of nice new halls and buildings. All networked like a spaceport. I wonder how many big flatscreens I could count if I wandered through campus for an hour.
All of these things cost, and the cost was passed on to students for tuition. All so universities could try to take market share from other universities. But even if you change that, the universities didn't pay for those things in cash. It was all financed, and they'll be paying the mortgage on them for decades more. Someone has to pay for that.
None of this comes without maintenance either. The number of staff exploded. They all need salaries. And to manage so many staff, administrative overhead grew. They all need big salaries.
College can't ever get cheaper. And any attempt to tinker with it will result in catastrophe I think. If someone tries, a few of those with the largest endowments might limp along, but most of the states will consolidate and downsize state schools, and the smaller privates will just wither away into insolvency and closures. There are hints that this might already be starting.
Residential college. For most, college will look more like community college, commuter college, night school and other extension sites, or online college.
As you say, this is already underway in the US (due to the “demographic cliff” in projected high school graduates in most states).
Is the college not failing students for the benefit of the student or for the benefit of themselves (continuing to collect the student's tuition money). I'd argue it's the latter. Current colleges are not these selfless organizations centered around doing good for their students. Sure maybe a lot of professors and TA's care about the education but administrators who dominate the system now only care about sucking in as much money as possible and dont really care how they do it.
>> becomes untenable when a single year costs 80k.
Where are people going to college where its 80K a year? I went to a neighboring four year state college where I got reciprocity and graduated with only 15K in debt which I was able to pay off in about 4 years.
College is not "extremely expensive" if you actually do your research. A lot of my friends saved money by taking all their generals at a community college, then transferred to a four year college where they finished in two years because all they had left to get done was their program specific classes.
You also have tons of two year technical colleges where you can get a degree in tons of different areas, and there's also trade schools where day 1, you're working in your field and you apprentice under a master to become a journeyman. The trades are in crazy high demand and most of those entry level at around 60K/year and go up from there.
College is only expensive if you make it expensive. It doesn't take much to get a decent degree and find an in-demand industry where you can make good money. Tons of my friends opted for two year tech degrees. Many of them went into graphic design and networking and had a fraction of the debt I had and were all earning-40-50K/year right out of school.
There are also thousands of different scholarships and grants available to low income families and if you're a decent student, you can also get a fractional scholarship that would take care of some of it. You also have to consider the military or National Guard. I had several close friends that said the only reason they were in the guard was to get college paid for free and the bonus was getting paid extra in the meantime.
Also, schools yank scholarships all the time. When I was in college, I saw several frat guys lose their academic scholarships and saw three athletes have theirs yanked as well.
This. People just pull random sticker prices from Ivies/Stanford/MIT type of schools, without realizing that almost no one attending those schools pays that much. They have amazing need-based financial aid programs. “I got accepted into Stanford/MIT/Ivies, but cannot afford to attend” isn’t really a thing.
Unless your family is extremely wealthy, you can only realistically spend that much by either going to a small expensive private school (aka one that doesn’t have Ivies-tier financial aid) or to a hyped public school out of state (e.g., UCs as a non-CA resident). Which is a mostly silly idea, but even then, you wont really be hitting $80k/year.
I remember that back in 2013, UCLA was roughly $32k/yr for an out-of-state student. Of course I ended up not going to UCLA and went to GT instead as an in-state student. In-state sticker price of tuition was roughly $10k/yr, but every single in-state student also had access to HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship based on GPA (3.0+ covers 90% of the tuition, 3.3+ covers 100% of the tuition). And that’s on top of federal financial aid. Even without the scholarships, $10k/year is not terrible, and is a far cry from $80k/yr. Out of state costs were roughly $22k/yr, and international costs were around $30k/yr.
I am really curious to see those $80k/yr schools that don’t offer Ivies-tier need-based financial aid. I would bet that the number of those schools in the US can be counted using just two hands at most. I, personally, am yet to find a single school like that. So if someone could list at least a few that are of any noteworthiness, it would be greatly appreciated.
Why do people drag out trade schools? Sure they can make sense financially, but there's a heavy toll of working with your body instead of sitting in an office chair for work. And the numbers don't lie, college graduates make significantly more than non college grads. You might have loans, but your career trajectory can be much higher with a degree.
The problem isn't the cost of college, it's the chronic underpayment of a proper wage post graduation. College costs accurately reflect the impact of inflation. It's wages that are depressed. We can thank our corporate masters for that.
Inflation is a different rate for each person really, but you can group it. The rate for the middle class, spending on things with semi-fixed supply like a desirable house or college, is higher than for lower class. The rate for upper class is the highest. Probably has to do with each one's asset mix (or lack thereof). The only thing shared between them all is our US Dollar which tends to double in supply each decade.
Definitely a both and. We have seen an infantilization of the academy that I believe is in no small part due to the increased economic necessity of a college degree. I think quality education should be available to all who want it. Forcing people to jump through arbitrary and largely irrelevant hoops just to get a middle class job though is definitely hurting a significant segment of our society who are capable but not academically inclined. Catering to these students also deprives resources from the stronger and more motivated students.
By the time I went to college, the institution was already clearly in decline, but it does seem that things have gotten markedly worse in the last 10-15 years, which is quite dispiriting.
Comments
The problem here is the sheer cost of college. Since college is so damn expensive, it creates a lot of risk aversion. You can't flunk a student or take away their scholarship because they'll end up with a lifetime's worth of debt without any degree. That's potentially life ruining. College as a whole is way more risky. The baby boomer idea of using college to explore one's passions becomes untenable when a single year costs 80k.
The paradox here is that while college is extremely expensive, it's also still very much a gateway to white collar, middle class life. So you end up with a lot of students who are forced into college by their parents, who don't really want to be there, and who need decent grades. So yeah, they're not going to study that hard. To avoid this, we need cheaper college, and more routes into the middle class that don't involve college.
You don't get to have that though. College could be cheaper in a past era, because in some ways it was the byproduct and not the actual product. Byproducts can be sold cheaply, because the main product is where the profit center lies. But byproducts are also really limited... there was just enough for 5-10% of the population to attend. When that was asked to be scaled up to something approaching 100%, the original supply could not handle it. And if you do scale up for a byproduct, it's no longer the byproduct. Turns out it was costly. Someone has to pay.
That's not even the only mechanism at work causing costs to spiral out of control. If universities have to compete to persuade students to attend their own campus rather than some rivals, it seemed really expedient to build nicer dormitories. One lady I worked with described that when she attended back in the 1940s, it was four students sharing square footage that sounded like a closet to me. The modern dorms at the local university are now about x6 the square footage, but only house 2 students. They're much more nicely furnished, larger, and have more amenities. But not just the dorms... the grounds are nicer. Lots of nice new halls and buildings. All networked like a spaceport. I wonder how many big flatscreens I could count if I wandered through campus for an hour.
All of these things cost, and the cost was passed on to students for tuition. All so universities could try to take market share from other universities. But even if you change that, the universities didn't pay for those things in cash. It was all financed, and they'll be paying the mortgage on them for decades more. Someone has to pay for that.
None of this comes without maintenance either. The number of staff exploded. They all need salaries. And to manage so many staff, administrative overhead grew. They all need big salaries.
College can't ever get cheaper. And any attempt to tinker with it will result in catastrophe I think. If someone tries, a few of those with the largest endowments might limp along, but most of the states will consolidate and downsize state schools, and the smaller privates will just wither away into insolvency and closures. There are hints that this might already be starting.
Residential college. For most, college will look more like community college, commuter college, night school and other extension sites, or online college.
As you say, this is already underway in the US (due to the “demographic cliff” in projected high school graduates in most states).
Is the college not failing students for the benefit of the student or for the benefit of themselves (continuing to collect the student's tuition money). I'd argue it's the latter. Current colleges are not these selfless organizations centered around doing good for their students. Sure maybe a lot of professors and TA's care about the education but administrators who dominate the system now only care about sucking in as much money as possible and dont really care how they do it.
Where are people going to college where its 80K a year? I went to a neighboring four year state college where I got reciprocity and graduated with only 15K in debt which I was able to pay off in about 4 years.
College is not "extremely expensive" if you actually do your research. A lot of my friends saved money by taking all their generals at a community college, then transferred to a four year college where they finished in two years because all they had left to get done was their program specific classes.
You also have tons of two year technical colleges where you can get a degree in tons of different areas, and there's also trade schools where day 1, you're working in your field and you apprentice under a master to become a journeyman. The trades are in crazy high demand and most of those entry level at around 60K/year and go up from there.
College is only expensive if you make it expensive. It doesn't take much to get a decent degree and find an in-demand industry where you can make good money. Tons of my friends opted for two year tech degrees. Many of them went into graphic design and networking and had a fraction of the debt I had and were all earning-40-50K/year right out of school.
There are also thousands of different scholarships and grants available to low income families and if you're a decent student, you can also get a fractional scholarship that would take care of some of it. You also have to consider the military or National Guard. I had several close friends that said the only reason they were in the guard was to get college paid for free and the bonus was getting paid extra in the meantime.
Also, schools yank scholarships all the time. When I was in college, I saw several frat guys lose their academic scholarships and saw three athletes have theirs yanked as well.
This. People just pull random sticker prices from Ivies/Stanford/MIT type of schools, without realizing that almost no one attending those schools pays that much. They have amazing need-based financial aid programs. “I got accepted into Stanford/MIT/Ivies, but cannot afford to attend” isn’t really a thing.
Unless your family is extremely wealthy, you can only realistically spend that much by either going to a small expensive private school (aka one that doesn’t have Ivies-tier financial aid) or to a hyped public school out of state (e.g., UCs as a non-CA resident). Which is a mostly silly idea, but even then, you wont really be hitting $80k/year.
I remember that back in 2013, UCLA was roughly $32k/yr for an out-of-state student. Of course I ended up not going to UCLA and went to GT instead as an in-state student. In-state sticker price of tuition was roughly $10k/yr, but every single in-state student also had access to HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship based on GPA (3.0+ covers 90% of the tuition, 3.3+ covers 100% of the tuition). And that’s on top of federal financial aid. Even without the scholarships, $10k/year is not terrible, and is a far cry from $80k/yr. Out of state costs were roughly $22k/yr, and international costs were around $30k/yr.
I am really curious to see those $80k/yr schools that don’t offer Ivies-tier need-based financial aid. I would bet that the number of those schools in the US can be counted using just two hands at most. I, personally, am yet to find a single school like that. So if someone could list at least a few that are of any noteworthiness, it would be greatly appreciated.
Demand for college has sharply increased, and I don't think we've seen supply meet it yet. That can solve itself, and there are also trade schools.
Why do people drag out trade schools? Sure they can make sense financially, but there's a heavy toll of working with your body instead of sitting in an office chair for work. And the numbers don't lie, college graduates make significantly more than non college grads. You might have loans, but your career trajectory can be much higher with a degree.
You don't need a college degree to have an office job.
The problem isn't the cost of college, it's the chronic underpayment of a proper wage post graduation. College costs accurately reflect the impact of inflation. It's wages that are depressed. We can thank our corporate masters for that.
Inflation is a different rate for each person really, but you can group it. The rate for the middle class, spending on things with semi-fixed supply like a desirable house or college, is higher than for lower class. The rate for upper class is the highest. Probably has to do with each one's asset mix (or lack thereof). The only thing shared between them all is our US Dollar which tends to double in supply each decade.
Definitely a both and. We have seen an infantilization of the academy that I believe is in no small part due to the increased economic necessity of a college degree. I think quality education should be available to all who want it. Forcing people to jump through arbitrary and largely irrelevant hoops just to get a middle class job though is definitely hurting a significant segment of our society who are capable but not academically inclined. Catering to these students also deprives resources from the stronger and more motivated students.
By the time I went to college, the institution was already clearly in decline, but it does seem that things have gotten markedly worse in the last 10-15 years, which is quite dispiriting.